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Grand Rapids school district uses 30 year old Amiga for HVAC control

Started by sprite75, June 16, 2015, 12:20:46 PM

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sprite75

From EnGadget;

QuoteThink the Windows XP workstation you use at the office is ancient? It doesn't hold a candle next to what the Grand Rapids Public School district is using to control its climate systems. All 19 schools covered by the authority depend on a nearly 30-year-old Commodore Amiga 2000 to automate their air conditioning and heating. It communicates to the other schools using a pokey 1,200 baud modem and a wireless radio so behind the times that it occasionally interferes with maintenance workers' walkie talkies. Oh, and a high school student wrote the necessary code -- if something goes wrong, the district has to contact the now middle-aged programmer and hope that he can fix it. It's a testament to the dependability of the Amiga in question, but you probably wouldn't want to trust the well-being of thousands of students to a computer that's probably older than some of the teachers.

There's a good reason why the school district has been hanging on to this vintage solution for so long. Replacing it with a modern system could cost up to $2 million dollars, which isn't exactly chump change when an HVAC controller upgrade is usually low on the priority list. There may be relief in sight, however. If the electorate passes a $175 million bond proposal, the district will have the cash it needs to replace its Amiga with a computing platform that was built sometime this century.

Here's a video a local TV channel posted on it;

My last job they had some pretty old computer equipment they were still using.  Like the district when parts were needed it was often to the eBays to find parts.
God of making the characteristic which becomes dirty sends the hurricane.

Ed, Ego and Superego

I love this... Its interesting our ICBM systems are running on ancient computers.  However they are 100% self contained and 100% hacker proof.   So they can't figure out how to replace them.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

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