this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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We're only 5 years on from the US defense system relying on 8 inch floppy disks (out of production since the 80s), and Sony only stopped producing Betamax in 2015.
Formats have long hidden lives when enough money gets spent on their implementation.
I'm an electronic security tech. I've installed alarm systems in 2024 whose design hasn't changed since the 80s. If they want "modernized" remote control over a network, they usually slap on some sort of external unit like a cell radio or Ethernet adapter that does the translation to the decades-old protocols.
We still have to program the damn things with a USB to RS-232 adapter too.
I got to leave RS-232 behind a couple years ago when I no longer needed to maintain my own rack switches. My condolences.
It might be old and slow, but I love RS-232. It works on every platform, you can write a client or server in just about any programming language in a handful of lines (and understand what they all do). I’ve literally made working RS-232 connections with paperclips and scotch tape. After the corpo wars when we’re all computing on salvaged tech you’ll come to appreciate it.
Not just programming languages either, the hardware side is dead simple too. You can literally implement it in a few lines of VHDL or similar language on an FPGA.
It's like telnet, I'm happy to know its there when I need it but I'd rather not need it.
I know of a door access control company that's replacing systems from the 90s. The architecture back then was to have one central box that spiders out to each door. The doors only have an electric latch and a scanner.
Which isn't how you'd design it today. That one box is a central point of failure for the whole building. You'd have microcontrollers at point of use that can cache access data and operate on their own if the server goes down. But these places want it to work like the old stuff, so it's still designed that way.
RS-232 isn't going away anytime soon. It's so simple that any microcontroller can use it.
old doesn’t mean bad.
Plus honestly I miss the certainty of screwing my cable in.