News MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 still run train dashboards at German railway — company listed admin job for 30-year-old operating system

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warezme

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I used to like MS-DOS and WIndows 3.11. This is quick OS on a 166 to 200Mhz CPU. It's probably a simple program designed to display data from some serial or RS232 connected sensors on the train. Quick efficient and simple. As cheap as all that is it would be simple to make is super redundant and shock and weather proof. Nothing wrong with any of that. You don't need a super CPU with tons of memory to do any of that unless you are redesigning the whole train with new displays and camera monitoring.
 
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COLGeek

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I would imagine this is a very closed, tightly controlled environment, with minimal external risk. Assuming that is true, I don't see an issue here for the purpose being met.

Definitely a novel thing to read about.
 
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bigdragon

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Simple, understood, and reliable -- why wouldn't you use an old OS or custom OS to manage a train system? As long as the control interface isn't on the internet there shouldn't be a problem. Modern OS implementations have a penchant for interrupting, suggesting distractions, or buried bugs.
 
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Maybe 10 years ago, I fired up a 3.11 PC and the damn thing was FAST. Booted much quicker than my XP and later stuff. Worked well, but my NEC CPM Z80A PC worked like a sewing machine.
 
sirsquishy67

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Admin said:
A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just ahead of the weekend. In addition to possessing skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups, the recruiter wants a candidate with MS-DOS experience.

MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 still run train dashboards at German railway — company listed admin job for 30-year-old operating system : Read more
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The problem isn't the OS, as there are many ways to secure that from attacks and such. But the big issue will be skill debt by holding down that 30year old OSE. As many from that era retire, or are already retired, and the fact that no one is going to take the time to dedicate to learning DOS/3.1x to the level that is required to support such a closed system, these companies are going to find themselves in a very hard place where its far cheaper to replace the software and controls then it is to maintain the engineering expertise. Want an example, look at Mainframes.
 
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The OS issues aside, I would be just as worried about hardware that is that old and all of the aging issues that are bound to occur. For a system of that age, at least the IC feature size of the CPU, memory, and other parts are massively large (100's of micrometer size) and won't have the internal migration issues that happen with newer CPUs in the <10 nm feature size range.

But terrestrial radiation accumulation will cause CMOS threshold voltage shift downward (making the enhancement mode CMOS gates act as depletion mode devices = "on" at zero volts). And any bipolar devices will also have ELDR failure modes as well, which will also happen to unpowered spares sitting around. Radiation aging is a real pain.

Then there is drift on other aging parts such as caps, resistor drift, copper traces and connector pins (heat and humidity issues), tin whisker generation from heat cycling and mechanical forces, and other detrimental troubles. And what if there are any latent ESD issues? I once saw a 20+ year old aerospace IC failure that was due to ESD that occurred from manufacturing damage from over 20 years prior. So yes, ESD can take a long time to manifest into a hard failure. Think about that they next time you build your PC without using a $6 ESD strap.

I have scopes that have 24 year old motherboards that just stop working and it take much TLC to bring them back, and sometimes over several months. I'm not sure people will want to wait on repairs like that for a train to be out of service.
 
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bit_user

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Blastomonas said:
Simple and reliable. The more complexity introduced, the more unreliable things seem to become.
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For Win 3.1.1, I guess. It has memory protection, at least. DOS doesn't, however. A DOS program could trash the heap without the OS taking notice and issuing a General Protection Fault. Worse yet, a buggy DOS program can even trash devices that use memory-mapped addresses.

If I had to maintain DOS software, I'd be tempted to port it to Linux, just so I could test it with various sanitizers and other instrumentation. Assuming it's written in C or C++, that is. Let's hope it's not written in assembly language!

With regard to such old systems, you'd want to make sure the BIOS doesn't suffer bit rot. If it's like NAND flash, the charge will eventually drain away and you'd have to try and re-flash it.
 
USAFRet

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bit_user said:
If I had to maintain DOS software, I'd be tempted to port it to Linux, just so I could test it with various sanitizers and other instrumentation. Assuming it's written in C or C++, that is. Let's hope it's not written in assembly language!
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USAFRet said:
www.joelonsoftware.com

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Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0, was released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long tim…
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What does that have to do with what I said? I didn't say I wanted to rewrite it - just make it compile (with as few changes as possible), so I could try to find any latent bugs in it! I did not say I wanted to change their platform over to Linux. I just would use Linux & its suite of modern compilers and debugging tools to test the existing software!

Geez. Please take a moment to actually try and understand what someone is trying to say, before firing back.
 
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USAFRet

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bit_user said:
What does that have to do with what I said? I didn't say I wanted to rewrite it - just make it compile (with as few changes as possible), so I could try to find any latent bugs in it! I did not say I wanted to change their platform over to Linux. I just would use Linux & its suite of modern compilers and debugging tools to test the existing software!

Geez. Please take a moment to actually try and understand what someone is trying to say, before firing back.
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Yes, I fully understood what you wrote.

"(with as few changes as possible)"
But if a team were to port that to Linux, it would invariably lead to a rewrite. Added features, etc.
Once managers get their fingers into it, things will be added.

Seen it, been there.

I've been guilty of a full rewrite.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

It works.
I'd leave it alone.
 
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bit_user

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USAFRet said:
Seen it, been there.

I've been guilty of a full rewrite.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
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Yeah? Well, I've seen plenty of old software and used new static analysis and debugging tools to find latent bugs in it.

As a programmer, I cut my teeth in the world of DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0. The development tools it had were nothing remotely like what we have today. And virtually none of today's tools will work in DOS, so you have to get at least portions of it compiling in a more modern OS, in order to really use them.

USAFRet said:
It works.
I'd leave it alone.
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Maybe, but you don't actually know how often they have to reboot their consoles or how often they notice glitches. There's no harm in at least looking under the covers, as long as you have enough restraint and judgement to know what's worth fixing and what to leave alone.
 
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USAFRet

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bit_user said:
Yeah? Well, I've seen plenty of old software and used new static analysis and debugging tools to find latent bugs in it.

As a programmer, I cut my teeth in the world of DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0. The development tools it had were nothing remotely like what we have today. And virtually none of today's tools will work in DOS, so you have to get at least portions of it compiling in a more modern OS, in order to really use them.
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I'm just saying...a system as large as that which runs a train system is not a simple recompile.
 
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bit_user

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USAFRet said:
I'm just saying...a system as large as that which runs a train system is not a simple recompile.
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You haven't seen the software and neither have I. You also have no idea how much code I've ported nor how much I know about DOS development.

Given that amount of ignorance, I'd say it's foolish to carry this debate any further.


Also, as someone mentioned in another thread, the real tragedy is that we're wasting time debating such pointless topics and not reading reviews of the new AMD processors that dropped today:
 
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At the chemical factory where I work we have been slowly been migrating from Siemens Apacs+ control software run on Pentium 4s because some critical hardware for it is no longer manufactured. We have some on Allen Bradley, but somebody decided to go with DeltaV with a modern server/thin clients setup.

The old software is so better written that it flies on a Pentium 4, 512 EDIT: KB MB ram, 32GB HDD compared to the newer stuff. It's response is near instant and the new stuff has a significant lag time and doesn't always respond. Apacs+ also is much more intuitive, keeps better logs and is easier to control. We've been migrating in pieces and the new software is so full of bugs.

My impression isn't just because I have more time with that software, I have shown people trained on the newer systems how fast and easy the about 20 year old system is and they are in complete agreement, then I show them what it is running on. IDE cables and everything. The control systems are also isolated from the outside world, the software really isn't secure by any means. Probably the same with the rail software.

The software to run the rail may be as good as it needs to be and getting the software/pc hardware/rail hardware to all match, all at once may be a heck of a job and might be why it has been put off so long.
 
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rluker5 said:
The old software is so better written that it flies on a Pentium 4, 512 KB MiB ram, 32GB HDD
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Whoops!

In 2002, my job gave me a P4 (Northwood) 2.53 GHz with 512 MiB RAM as a development machine. The GPU was an ATI 9700 Pro and the monitor was the first LCD I'd used.

jackt said:
Better 3.11 than 11...
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Eh, I know Win 3.11 was popular at the time, but I wouldn't go that far. I'll say Windows NT 3.5 was good. That's the earliest version of NT I've used.

I had a friend upgrade from Win 3.1 to 3.11 and I thought he was weird for spending actual money to do so. However, I mostly used DOS, at the time. The main thing I did in Windows was internet. Of course, back in Windows 3.1, you had to use a 3rd party TCP/IP stack (anyone else remember Trumpet Winsock?). I gather that was one of 3.11's (Windows for Workgroups) main selling points.
 
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