Turtles all the way down and up: Vehicle makers sourcing plug-compatible devices which emulate floppy drives for updating tank s/w, Airlines sourcing print and terminals emulating IBM mainframe era dependencies for gate check processes.

Talking of mainframes, many core bank registry functions are emulations of prior systems long embedded into architectures now themselves superseded. Support for tech archaisms has long roots.

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RossBencina 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IBM mainframes were for a very long time built and sold on the premise of providing reliable emulation of previous generations weren't they.

	▲	phire 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Still are. The latest IBM z/Architecture mainframe (released in 2024) will natively run binaries compiled for the original IBM System/360, released 62 years ago. The original architecture has been expanded to 64 bits and can (or should) run linux with older code in virtualization. However, those mainframes are extremely high performance, high reliably, and high cost. Complete overkill for many companies, who can get away with much simpler/cheaper emulations of the System/360 from 3rd parties, or source code ports to more modern architectures.

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bitwize 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's also like one company still manufacturing CRTs, and their market is exclusively military and heavy-industrial, replacements for old fighter-jet HUDs and the like:

https://www.thomaselectronics.com/avionics/head-up-display/

I'm sure there's at least one wealthy Smash Bros. enthusiast willing to pay their asking price and hook up one of their HUDs to a Gamecube to play Melee though.

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fc417fc802 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I was under the impression that you could purchase cheap newly manufactured CRTs on alibaba. I only know this because someone published an unrelated project that repurposed the electron gun and associated internals.

	▲	Jtsummers 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I was under the impression that you could purchase cheap newly manufactured CRTs on alibaba. Good luck selling that to the DOD.