Often these old systems are slow. They could get a big boost from an SSD or a newer CPU but the owners don't want to risk any incompatibilities.

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jimnotgym 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I took a few old systems that 'only ran on XP' and upgraded them to Windows 10 and an SSD. They worked fine. I guess sometimes it is just that the manufacturer didn't want to take the risk.

	▲	M95D a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well, I can give you an example where the manufacturer didn't care about the risk: The Stago STA Compact (Max) automated coagulation analyzer. The first version of this analyzer ran MS-DOS. It worked fine, but it was a bit difficult to use - it didn't have a mouse. There were some keyboard shortcuts, but mostly I had to use keyboard arrows and Enter/Esc to operate it. Then there was an updated version (Max) which was basically the same analyzer with new brains: different computer inside, dual-core CPU, Windows XP instead of MS-DOS. It is much, much worse than MS-DOS version. The database can only hold about 4-5 days worth of results. When it gets almost full, and the sample drawer is open, the internal MCUs timeout while waiting for commands from the main CPU, which gets stuck busy displaying the samples window. And there are race conditions everywhere. If I scroll the results window while the analyzer adds/updates results into it, it gets confused and shows the new results on the wrong table rows, corresponding to other patients - yes, it's that bad. It's obvious they tried to avoid race conditions as much as possible, for example, it can't print internal control results while the analyzer is running samples, it won't open the samples drawer while running the internal control from the reactives drawer, etc. I would prefer the old MS-DOS system any time.
	▲	throwaway173738 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If the hazards aren’t there then sure. But if you’re risking a CNC throwing a tool or a ride crashing then you may need to consider new failure modes.

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kjkjadksj a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Where I’ve seen these systems most in my work is connected to scientific instruments, where the manufacturer would rather you spend another half million dollars for a marginally improved model with more recent io and os support vs shipping a patch for the machine you already paid a quarter million for 15 years ago.

The system being slow and old doesn’t matter. It is running xp and airgapped. Sometimes you access the data by usb stick or burning a cd rom. The software stack it runs mainly dumps sensor data onto a flat file so its not really necessary to be very robust. And sure the ancient optiplex desktop idling all day drinks more electricity than a modern light weight chip, but that couple dollars more a week if that in electricity costs is hardly a concern in research setting.

	▲	neuralRiot 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s not just scientific instruments, companies with the incentive to keep old things running are maybe just a handful, simply there’s no money on that, people grew accustomed to dumping things for the “new-and-improved-one” that is usually crappier than its predecessor and that it needs a subscription to run.