this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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We're still running a CNC mill powered by DOS. It's in great mechanical shape, the legacy software makes a specific product that we have a good market for, it's obviously a completely standalone unit with no security concerns.
It's kind of ridiculous actually, we've upgraded the mainboards and processors from 486 to Celeron, SSDs with SATA-> IDE adaptors etc but the software and the hardware drivers run on DOS and there's no practical upgrade path. We will run her until she can't make tooling anymore
Used to support a pick-and-place line for SMT that still ran on DOS, it's exactly as you say. We upgraded every bit of it but when we tried to get a hold of the software co that made the instructions, and found out that all but one of them had passed away from old age and no one had the source anymore.
As far as I know they're still using it.
Another reason I am a big proponent of Open Source.
I've been collecting any and all documentation pertaining to this machine and in many cases the guys I've ended up talking to are the only ones who haven't retired. Fortunately everyone so far has been happy to give me a huge data dump of everything on their drives, knowing that nobody on their end will be available to support it in a few years.
What really scares me is not the software but the aging protocols that talk to obsolete hardware. Lose one of the old AC servomotor drives and good luck finding a way to integrate a modern unit. Easy enough to mate something up to the motor and feedback, not so easy to get it to speak whatever specific flavour of SERCOS was used on the machine. At least it isn't a proprietary protocol... I'm still hoping I never have to do it.