367
Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS
(www.tomshardware.com)
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
Posts must be:
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
Once upon a time I couldn't understand why companies and governments still used ancient computer systems running DOS, Win3.1, or 9x, or computers like C64s. "Upgrade! Your new systems will be far more powerful and efficient; and that means they're better!" -teenage me at some point, probably.
However, as I've gotten older I've realized that it's because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". While Southwest may spend more money than necessary on maintenance due to the ancient systems needing now-specialized skills, those systems are also time-proven to be as functional and dependable as they need them to be. Ironically, they might actually be more secure than most modern systems due to a combination of decades of specialized security/stability patches they've probably had and simple security-through-obsolescence.
Edit: misremembered the phrase, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
It becomes an issue when hardware is involved. I've seen industrial machines with 386 based touchscreens. Things as simple as a PS2 keyboard start getting hard to find and downtime costs a lot.
Are there PS2 to USB dongles?
They exist, but they might not work with all hardware and keyboards. The problem with the industrial space is that nobody really thinks to keep something around like that just in case. Something stops working and then it's a scramble to get it back up and running again.