At least it’s not windows 8.
Could be good money in this because who wants to so this… :)
Thats the reason, why they have Problems to find drivers (If you know, what i mean) 😜
Based
Misleading title: SIEMENS Mobility is looking for said Windows 3.11 admin. NOT the German Railway
Deutsche Bahn is the circus and Siemens in this case the clowns.
Clown Siemens, you say?
If the system can’t run perfectly on its own by now… I can teach them how to play the snakes game on it.
Time for a rewrite
Rewriting a legacy system that’s been patched and amended for 30 years… Good luck with that. It seems simple on paper but it’s anything but.
Just make it from scratch?
For sure there is so much useless shit in there, that’s why nobody gets their head around it anymore.
Just make it from scratch?
And miss some tricky edge cases, which were covered in old code?
It’s a railroad. Those edge cases could be disastrous.
Can I install Linux on the old systems so they work better?
why would you think it would run better if you don’t even know if is it possible to install it in the first place? 🤔
i like linux but this sounds as nightmarish as rewriting everything, because thats probably what you’d need to do to make it work.
This, I had multiple old machines with these kinds of specs, I put Slackware on them, dropped in an ethernet card (or two), and used them for all sorts of things, iptables firewall/router, email server, network storage, irc server, etc. It breathed new life into seriously outdated hardware.
Those german railways shouldn’t be running proprietary winblows garbageware to begin with. Shouldn’t they be running Suse?
Better hope those systems are not network enabled
They’re probably still running on their own Netware network. Is there still Win16 compatible malware going around?
Johnny Castaway can live on at least.
Hey, I have a wall-mounted tablet that runs Johnny all the time. My 5-year old loves him.
Nice. Mine runs on top of the fish tank on an old netbook. What sort of tablet?
Don’t forget MOPY ;)
If it’s in a current metasploit package you can be sure that someone is scanning the IP at some point.
own Netware network
So say we all.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Is it broke if no one is able to fix it?
The reason for it to run on such an ancient device is because nobody wants to touch the scripts running on these devices.
A lot of these systems are also always on.
Used to work at an airport that had a similar issue, turning some of these systems off simply isn’t possible. So you end up having to run the replacement system simultaneously with the old system for a few days. Can’t simply take it off line for a day.
Running two systems simultaneously for a couple of days, that’s a huge problem, not solvable
It’s an expensive problem, especially if it’s a system that’s being used all across the airport by regular staff.
You need to train thousands of employees to use the new software, you need to have one person using the old software as a backup, while the other uses the new software, often while surrounded by hundreds of often angry customers.
And if something goes wrong, which it invaribly does (even if it’s user error or someone snagging a cable), shit can get very expensive. Small delays, add up to larger delays, and cascade through the entire system. Delayed flights, tens of thousands of euros in costs, hotels for thousands of passengers, missed flights, missed meetings, damages, lawsuits, penalties for missed landing/take-off slots, missed time windows for certain cities which don’t allow flights after a certain time, etc. And often you discover legacy stuff while you’re upgrading that needs fixing, stuff that no one knows how to replace anymore or is physically hard to access.
Sometimes it is genuinely better to leave it. COBOL is 60 years old. There’s still plenty of stuff running on it, exactly because it’s often too expensive and too risky to replace.
Until it becomes obsolete, unsupportable, the crux of your operation, and/or the basis for all of your decisions 😬
(Yes, I read the article, it’s just the signs, but yes, the above still applies!)
Not to mention when you want to change the entire system it becomes a huge operation and problem.
COBOL has entered the chat
e: good for legacy employment though. A relative of mine is a Z80 programmer by trade, and he can effectively walk into a job because the talent pool is so small now. Granted - the wages are never great but never poor, and the role is maintenance and troubleshooting rather than being on the leading edge of development - but it’s a job for life.
Every time I hear about COBOL I feel like I should try to learn it as a backup plan…
You have to unlearn everything you know to learn it, go look its bad.
I’m in two minds about that. One the one hand, yes, of course - as all the original COBOL folks die off, the skills will be even rarer and thus worth more.
On the other hand, if we keep propping up old shit, the businesses will keep relying on it and it’ll be even more painful when they do eventually get forced to migrate off it.
On the other other hand, we know it works, and we don’t want to migrate everything into a series of Electron apps just because that’s popular at the moment.
Part of the problem is the cost of moving off it. Some companies simply can’t pay what that would cost, and that’s before you consider the risk.
Tough spot to be in.
Let COBOL die, it’s terrible.
If it works, why would we want to go through the trouble of switching to another language that will also eventually be regarded as needing to be retired? There’s decades of debugging and improvement done on their system, start over with a new system and all that work needs to be done again but with a programming language that’s probably much more complex and that leaves the door open to more mistakes…
In what way is it terrible?
It wasn’t for me, too wordy and felt more like something for accounting/corporate than a programmer. I was offered a good-paying job programming COBOL out of college but turned it down because I didn’t want to spend my life with it. But that’s just me.
Your feelings regarding the language being designed for use by accountants/corporate are completely correct. COBOL was originally designed to be very verbose for this exact reason (i.e. to make COBOL programs accessible/readable for business folk).
I’m a programmer but personally I like the verbosity of COBOL. I like self-documenting code. The code I write in other languages often ends up being pretty wordy too. Certainly there can be a long debate about how verbose programs should be.
I wouldn’t say that COBOL is terrible and deserves to die for this design decision though, especially when it outperforms other languages in the places that really matter (i.e. doing business transactions quickly and accurately).
For what it’s worth, it’s possible to make COBOL less verbose. Standard COBOL syntax is still getting updated (iirc the last standard COBOL update was in 2023). These updates have often made keywords that were otherwise mandatory before optional. If you add COBOL dialects to the mix you can get code which is very similar to other languages depending on which dialect you choose.
🥲
I’d consider those various states of not working. So… Don’t fix it if it’s not broken!
Oh, everyone who ever travels by train in Europe will tell you that the German infrastructure is very much broken. You’re lucky if your delay is less than a day travelling through Germany.
Afaik Deutsche Bahn loses 5 mil a day: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/14/its-the-same-daily-misery-germanys-terrible-trains-are-no-joke-for-a-nation-built-on-efficiency
Germany doesn’t really seem like a very efficient country, they still use fax for things and every person has to manage like 10,000 different insurances for everything. Seems like an old (and inaccurate) ww2 trope.
I have no doubt their bureaucrats perform world-class efficiency in their handing out, filling in, faxing and archiving a sophisticated system of paper forms.
I guess it’s the trap of getting complacent and stopping modernizing as soon as you’ve convinced yourself you have the best system in the world.
It’s more that the bureaucracy is so complex and fragmented that it’s incredibly hard to digitalize. Lots of small fiefdoms that are entitled to make IT purchasing decisions themselves means paper is the only universal interchange format. In addition there is an unwillingness to change how things have always been done, or to simplify procedures. So there you have it: The German bureaucracy is too fat to move.
I work for german government agencies from time to time and they are working on it… It’s just really slow because there is so much of it, and due to organizational overhead. Also, there is not a single push for the entirety of Germany, but some things everyone does for themselves.
It’s mostly a misunderstanding of what is valued in German society. The common trope is that German society covets precision. This is not the case. German society covets unwavering precision in the adherence to norms. To the point where innovation is akin to revolution in the negative sense, and pigheadedness in procedure is considered a workplace virtue. In the mean time nothing gets done. Source: expat in Germany.
Source: expat in Germany.
Is this the same as a migrant?
No, the way it’s often used is closer to “posh guest worker”.
Expatriate, as in living elsewhere. It is a sort of migrant I guess, of the nonpermanent kind, generally speaking.
Expat moved there non-permanently
Immigrant moved there permanentlyThough if I ever somehow became an expat, I wouldn’t use the word because of how people associate it.
No it’s just about moneymaking and education level. If you’re a foreigner and highly educated and get a good paying job like IT consultant or doctor, you’re an expat. If you’re low educated and get a low paying job like construction or factory or no job, you’re a migrant. One is liked more than the other, hence the difference they make. The first doesn’t speak local language, but does speak English, and few people care. The second doesn’t speak local language and no English and is disliked for it.How long you stay is not very relevant. AfD doesn’t hare expats as much as other migrants, for example…
What you call an expat is a temporary immigrant. “Expats” fill immigration forms in their country of migration, not expatriation forms. Politicians pass laws that govern immigration, not expatriation.
That word is meant to differentiate rich (and white, often) workers from the poor, because “immigrant” has a negative connotation. That’s why I take issue with it.
The truth is, the poor might be temporary migrants too (cf Pakistanis in Dubai). The media still uses the word migrants for those. We don’t know if they’re “expats” or not, we just assume because they’re not rich or white enough.
Quick disclaimer here: I’m not saying you are racist for using the word. I just wanted to explain why I react so strongly when I hear it.
Yes, as long as they’re also white and middle/upper class!
As an outside observation, Germans seem to make things better than they need to be in a detrimental way. For example, we redid one of our bathroom showers using the Schluter Kerdi waterpoofing system. They have very specific instructions on how to space the screws, how to seal the screws, how to seal the edges, how to mix the thinset, and probably some other things I can’t remember off the top of my head. They put it through a battery of tests, including going under 100’ of water. Who needs that? Don’t worry about it.
This stuff replaces cement board, which isn’t strictly waterproof, at least not on its own. It’s also significantly more expensive.
I do think it’s worthwhile for a home DIYer to get. The instructions are clear and it’s less likely you’ll screw something up that could result in disaster. That said, this thing is just waiting for a Japanese company to come along and make something 90% as good for 50% of the price. That’s basically what happened in the German vs Japanese car market, and there’s already some products on this market like that.
An old mechanic friend of mine used to say “German cars are over-engineered and under-designed”, lol.
Having worked on every brand of car out there, his description, and your explanation make a lot of sense together.
I’ve never seen such a clear and concise comparison of German/Japanese manufacturing, you really nailed it.
Both approaches have their place, the key is to know when to apply them.
Well I live in germany and therefore use the train network on short and long distance frequently and while it is unreliable, “a day” of delay is something I have never experienced.
Most of the delayed trains are late by less than one hour (still atrocious, but not a day’s worth by any means).
I actually experienced only once a situation where we were given the choice of a hotel or a continuation of our travels by taxi (which we chose) because the train we were in was late one hour or something and the other (last for the day) train could not wait.Well, it’s based on experiences travelling through Germany proper - for example Denmark to France or Italy, including transfers. Often the delay will just be a couple of hours, but then you miss your transfer and you’re screwed.
Also if you’re on your way to Switzerland the Swiss have no patience for disruptions in their services, so if a train is delayed coming from Germany they’re likely to just not accept it into the country at all.
I have also heard from people who were told to spend the night in the train, which DB just parked in the outskirts of the city for the night. That way they could offer passengers a place to sleep in the cheapest possible ways. Pregnant women or families with young children were asked to check in to hotels.
That’s another part of the infrastructure, though: We just don’t have enough rail as well as backup rolling stock.
And as the federation finally decided to spend some money it’s going to get worse in the next decade or so due to outages due to new constructions being linked up to the old stuff.
As to the age of the infrastructure – I mean it’s the railway. If a rarely-used branch line still uses mechanical interlocks and there’s no need to upgrade the capacity then the line is going to continue using infrastructure build in the times of the Kaiser. It’s not like those systems are unsafe, it just might be the case that unlike in the days of ole those posts with a gazillion levers aren’t manned all the time so you’ll see an operator drive to it with a car while the train is on its way. Which really isn’t that much of a deal when the branch line goes to a, what, quarry maybe sending out a train every two months or so. Certainly better than to demolish the line and use trucks instead.
German re-unification cost trillions. It’s entirely unsurprising.
Too critical to be upgraded is something I wish I’d never hear or see again in my professional career.
ha, whats the failover look like???
Manual and boot a machine with the same IP somewhere else. Very robust
Not gonna lie, part of me wants to relive the SoundBlaster and DOS extenders era and watch stuff with QuickTime. Tinkering with config.sys and autoexec.bat was quite fun back then.
Was it really FUN or is it not just nostalgia? I would not reaaaally want to fiddle with the autostart-crap again. It often took soooo long. Even with those auto-optimizers…
With dos 5.x I started creating some fancy auroexec menu at boot that switches between several configurations depending if I wanted to run windows, need a lot of xms or a big chunk of Ems (640k was NOT enough for everything).
It was somehow fun.
But at least, if something is not working, it was entirely your fault. Now? It’s probably windows update who fucked up something you desperately need right now.
That’s a good point, yes. At least we knew what fucked up. Today you can’t. It’s too much and too complex. And nearly nothing is under your direct control anymore. Only android or ios are doing it worse and take all of your controls away.
I am so happy not to have to mess with that. LOADHIGH agony.
So do you want EMS or XMS this time? I’m sorry, you had too many TSRs, you can’t run X-Wing now…
Damn, should I load the mouse driver or the CD-ROM driver? If I load both, I can’t run strike commander!
Aye. But then again… The fiddling with windows to make it do what u want and don’t what you don’t, is not much less time wasted. You can just use a mouse now 😂
just nostalgia
Surely mostly nostalgia. But I do remember feeling a sense of accomplishment whenever I managed to run a game and get the sound working 😅
If it works, don’t change it!
Yeah, that’s kinda the problem
The secret is to develop your software, then fire all the developers. Then it never changes again!
Come to think of it keeping developers on staff, and familiar with the codebase enough to debug it efficiently, almost guarantees they’re gonna be adding new features. “Well we’ve got this talent sitting around …” and then it’s new features and ….
I mean I guess this is evidence they’ve managed to isolate themselves from dependencies they don’t control. It’s the external dependencies updating and losing support that causes at least the minimum of codebase maintenance.
The fact they’ve stayed on this older platform indicates they’ve managed to avoid that constant upgrading. Because if any part of the system has to upgrade, it tends to pull the rest of the system with it.
This gem requires this version of ruby requires this operating system etc.
Or maybe they’ve isolated the parts really well and this is just some window3.11 container that’s one of a hundred services.
I’d love to go back to tech without the constant insomnia and panic attacks.
Remote? Do you connect yourself over telnet or what?
SSH to a KVMoIP or IPMI?
BMC is doubtful, other sources indicate that the hardware is from 1996, so it’s not just old software. So I’ll guess a KVMoIP device is bolted on (probably a relay on the power input, VGA, USB for keyboard and ‘floppy’ (Win3.11 was well before USB, but the hardware from 96 may have USB and the BIOS would likely make it viable for a DOS to use it).
10/10 would install Doom on it.
Play doom with physical rails and trains
Use railroad switches as logic gates and trains as binary information?
Tbh I think people would understand why it had to be done.
Why use MS-DOS? Why don’t we just re-write it in Rust?
The fact they’re still running on dos is a clue that either they can’t figure out how to upgrade or they don’t want to upgrade or they simply won’t allocate the budget to upgrade.
It generally boils down to money. Shops like that are toxic. They somehow don’t have the budget to keep their business afloat, means you’re not getting a raise.
If you take this job, you’re obsolete. Getting the next job will be tough. You’re interview at the next potential role what did you do at your current role? I ran dos on 30 year old machines. Interviewer: I’m sorry, but we need someone with experience in Windows ME.
You think the existing system is documented?
It’s going to be a mess of things written in 6 different languages, magic numbers all over the place. Unit tests? Predates all that. Even if you tried, the first you’ll know about an error is when you turn the news on and there’s two trains upside down and on fire.
It is definitely the exact opposite of this. Even though I understand why you would think this.
The thing with systems like these is they are mission critical, which is usually defined as failure = loss of life or significant monetary loss (like, tens of millions of dollars).
Mission critical software is not unit tested at all. It is proven. What you do is you take the code line by line, and you prove what each line does, how it does it, and you document each possible outcome.
Mission critical software is ridiculously expensive to develop for this exact reason. And upgrading to deploy on different systems means you’ll be running things in a new environment, which introduces a ton of unknown factors. What happens, on a line by line basis, when you run this code on a faster processor? Does this chip process the commands in a slightly different order because they use a slightly different algorithm? You don’t know until you take the new hardware, the new software, and the code, then go through the lengthy process of proving it again, until you can document that you’ve proven that this will not result in any unusual train behavior.
We should just re-implement DOS in Rust and call it RS-DOS.
DROS (DISC and Rust based Operating System)
C:>WIN
