What's the oldest CPU that's still out there in service, doing something important...

What's the oldest CPU that's still out there in service, doing something important? I'm guessing the Motorola 68000 is still out there in some useful form to this day, doing something vital somewhere.

Other urls found in this thread:

washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/26/the-real-reason-america-controls-its-nukes-with-ancient-floppy-disks/
woodtv.com/2015/06/11/1980s-computer-controls-grps-heat-and-ac/
computerworld.com/article/2525935/computer-hardware/the-lost-nasa-tapes--restoring-lunar-images-after-40-years-in-the-vault.html
nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/more-processors/coldfire-plus-coldfire-mcus-mpus:PC68KCF
cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html
popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a16010/30-year-old-computer-runs-school-heat/
youtube.com/watch?v=d3_6r6_1D3M
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Carmille
youtube.com/watch?v=Css8m3gQ76w
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I wouldn't be surprised if someone still had a legacy system running on ENIAC.

Probably pentium 4 is out there in a lot of places that cant ever upgrade from xp.

>Pentium 4
>oldest still being used usefully
kek, not even close

I would be. Wouldn't there be a high maintenance requirement for something like that? Maybe in a museum somewhere but I don't think there would be one doing anything vital.

Don't underestimate the power of 'ain't broke, don't fix'

Voyager 1&2
They don't even have microprocessors.

Yeah, but are those technically CPUs? It's not really 'central' if it's a conglomeration, right? Honest question.

While this is a somewhat healthy attitude, this mostly stems from personal ignorance toward old technology.
When the last person that built a system is gone, the system could as well be a magical entity.

The US military is still using IBM series 1 computers. Some of our nukes rely on computers that are 40 years old.

washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/26/the-real-reason-america-controls-its-nukes-with-ancient-floppy-disks/

Amiga had a 68k, right?

woodtv.com/2015/06/11/1980s-computer-controls-grps-heat-and-ac/

I'm guessing they replaced it by now though.

Fucking TI calculators

>Amiga
a-user...

Yeah, it really depends if your boundary should be a single chip or a couple of boards. Even today that's kinda floating with still more stuff being integrated into a single die.

True, and a lot of home game systems used them, or variants of the 68K. So there's always that possibility, but I feel like there could be older ones out there doing something in some government building somewhere, sorting mail or processing SSN's or something legacy based.

NASA knows this first hand. They had to invest a bunch of money into doing figuring out how to recover data from some of their old systems, since everyone who worked on the stuff was dead or retired.

computerworld.com/article/2525935/computer-hardware/the-lost-nasa-tapes--restoring-lunar-images-after-40-years-in-the-vault.html

Some of the folks I work with still use 1980's HP calculators for measuring, because they just don't trust anything more complex.

OP was talking about 68k doing something useful. I think it is definitely on topic, though not very old.

You're crazy. ENIAC is in a museum.

68k's
8088/6's
Z80's


They are used in pretty basic embedded systems everywhere, even shit like traffic lights to USB printers.

Slowly being replaced by ARM, but most thing what work won't be replaced for decades

What's the most obsolete architecture that's still out there in service, doing something important?

They used 8085's and last time I checked they where microprocessors...

Do your research pleb.

There was a PC running printer server with a 8088 or maybe even older inside a wall in a IT enterprise for like 20 years without anyone knowing, did it's job fine, that was like 6 years ago, dunno about now.

>They used 8085's
speaking of doing your research...

Motorola 68000 are still commonly used in simple PLCs. I'm sure there's something simpler still in use.

x86 isn't the MOST obsolete, but it's shockingly obsolete given how successful it is.

Not that ISA matters that much.

Now imagine what the russians are using

Sorry, remember'd now, it was not 8088 it was a 68k Sun machine.

So by that measurement, the 8085 has traveled the farthest of any CPU in miles (unless you count solar rotational measurements). That's a pretty boss achievement.

women

There might also be some arcades still running somewhere with 68k's

Also, slot machines I think had some microprocessors

NASA is still using 8086's

Low compute power on average, and they overheat a lot as they get older, but they have the most complex compiler systems around.

What?

Worked with a pentium 4 for a long time and only updated it this year

Did pinball machines use CPUs of any sort before video arcade systems were commonplace?

I work in embedded. There's a drawer full of Freescale 68ks in my lab. Why use other chips when we have megabytes of assembly already written for them?

Granted, we mostly do ARM and MIPS these days, but the 68k still goes into projects.

ded

Probably do nowadays, most likely using old chips

Pinball machines were largely mechanical. Nowadays they likely have have microcontrollers handling almost everything, a lot of them have video games embedded in them.

Whatever is in the two Voyager probes.

We still stick 68ks into lots of projects.

nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/more-processors/coldfire-plus-coldfire-mcus-mpus:PC68KCF

>but they have the most complex compiler systems around.
Its a shame the debugger cant catch all the autists though

>What's the oldest CPU that's still out there in service
there are boomers who still force their entire company to utilize postwar shit.

Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself on being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. They use am IBM 402 punchcard machine because the company owner and baby boomer claims "it is a known entity. Everyone in the company knows how to use it not like those scary personal computer things".

they enter their customer's order in PUNCH CARDS. it links to a IBM 514 Reproducing Punch that is the size of a small room and then they store all their data on punch cards in cardboard boxes by the thousand. in 2016 they still do this. they have been petitioned by museums that would like to buy them a real accounting software and put it in an exhibit but the boomer owner is too afraid.

I could be wrong but I do not believe the 402 uses a CPU its so old its just a bunch of plugboards wired together.

The company is dead, the machine are pretty alive and running.

voyager I&II have 3 redundant computers. the data computer runs on a custom 4-bit CMOS microprocessor from 1977

This is the type of person who would freak out the first time a system security update installed. Incredible. Reliable, but incredible.

Edgy, glad us males are so perfect without any flavs.

*cough*Sup Forums cucks*cough*

Can't wait until Boomers die 2bh

8085

The original Intel x86 chips are still in use today in stuff like PLCs etc.

you can stop spouting this now.
cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html

my favorite part is how he states everyone knows punchcards the best

when boomers hire a millenial they arent seen as an employee more like an object of no more value than a chair or a pencil.

Probably Z80 (circa 1976, so older than Voyager!) is the oldest in any kind of practical use - and they are still being made today by their original manufacturer Zilog.

There are radiation-hardened versions from other licensed manufacturers in satellites, in particular.

The Intel 8080, a predecessor design of even that, might still be out there, too, although I'm not sure where exactly.

Apparently the US government still uses floppy disks in the ICBM systems. I imagine the government must have to old assume hardware on those systems

Some nice bullshit bro, a few years back I actually had an interview for a shite with Voyager 2 build team member who told me it's just basically a customised 8085.

Yeah, I'd like to see their source for the information. Everybody can do guesswork on some tiny bit of information.

There was an article about some middle school running dinosaur software for their HVAC. It was like a Mac 128k or some shit

Damn phone, this was for:

See

6502 is older than Z80 by a year and they're still found in some areas, usually they're used together with discrete logic chips. There's only one manufacturer left for them though and they're not used on anything new.

This is some crybaby shit lol

Thicken your skin or go back to Tumblr

popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a16010/30-year-old-computer-runs-school-heat/

I have a PII 366mhz Thinkpad 600e for DOS games, still works and can connect to the Internet

so it's your word with no source agains the entire internet's word with no source


hmmmm

>entire internet
so that one site is the entire internet?
there are plenty of pages relating 8085 to the IC used on the Voyager 2.

Do you even google pleb?

Chemical company I work for is still using two first generation Pentiums to control water treatment plant. Control software is super proprietary, needs hardlock and special ISA cards to communicate with PLCs from the same era. It is doubled, but if both systems fails (and there is no replacement), it'll be massive shitstorm

I know that some primary Schools (Elementary) still use the BBC Micro in the UK.

Grannys Garden fuck yeah.

youtube.com/watch?v=d3_6r6_1D3M

if disinformation is accurate, pdp-11 systems still run nuclear power plants

The hardware is not really the problem here, the issue seems to be mainly the software which is probably locked up being proprietary. If the software were open source it would be possible to port it anywhere which could even allow hardware upgrades later on down the line.

If the software can run on obsolete hardware like that it could probably run on a raspi if there were a way to interface with the PLCs from it.

hardware is also a problem. these PLCs are communicating via serial line and the computer need a proprietary ISA card to read another proprietary communication protocol.

let alone the PLCs themselves, they are from the nineties and also on last leg

There are people here that still use Xbox (which use, what? Pentium 3?)

There are people here that still use an NES which uses a MOS 6502

>first generation pentiums
the ones that cant divide?

There's probably a PDP-8 or two still in service, especially one of the slower than shit low cost variants like the 8/S that were good for fitting into industrial machinery as controllers. There's also the usual nuclear meme shit; PDP-11s running plants and and IBM Series/1 minis running US silos

ENIAC was a single shot design, and tube systems just aren't sustainable. There were supposedly some railroad-related installations running on custom pre-transistor computer systems until at least 2001 though

Whatever runs the nuclear programs of the worlds and the space station

I don't see any problem with this. You can't connect a punch card machine to the botnet, it doesn't get hacked or require digital security of any kind and it'll last forever as long as you take care of it.

In the NGO i help they still use a 90mhz Pentium with 16 mb ram, Win95 and some old HP laserjet 6L for the notes, Office 97 is more than enough for those tasks..

the boomer bogeyman was still in diapers when that thing was installed you whiny turbo shitter

The chip(s) in early satellites and probes?

Even the newest satellites and probes tend not to use anything newer than a 486 because of radiation hardening.

You can buy rad-hardened G3s now, most of the real high-end shit is running RAD750s.

This page has a bunch of info on chips used in spacecraft:

cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html

>it doesn't get hacked
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Carmille

He obviously referred to cracking which requires internet connectivity.

It is absolutely no surprise that if someone with malicious intent has physical access to your box then you're absolutely FUCKED, and the military is far more competent at physical security than computer security.

Also, the US needs to stop this "cybersecurity" bullshit, jesus christ.

Anything in the DSL cable infrastructure.

Flight control still uses Fortran77 and some machines related to that

MIPS rXXXX is still widely used everywhere including in space flight.

Neat read, thanks user.

Probably almost identical shit. The soviets always made perfect hardware clones of western computers.

Why the fuck are you talking about hashes now? The concept is simple as fuck:

No internet connectivity == no possible internet security breaches

That's not even a joke tripnigger

i have a 386 based pc in my office, it is used to control our sewer system, over 20 years running fine.

The machine which is creating the numbers of many credit cards is a shitty Pentium 2 or 3 running Windows 2000 in a Swiss bunker.

>My office controls sewage
So it's literally shit, right?

The IBM computers that control our nuclear silos

Can confirm the Z80 is still flying on commercial flight engines.

Here's an ancient tube system that was still running at least in 2008
youtube.com/watch?v=Css8m3gQ76w

Some Siemens/Bosch made ecu? on merc audi bmw and volvo? Some of them like made in 80/90s.

I have a Sandy Bridge that's pretty old running on my MacBook.

>'ain't broke, don't fix'

Until it does break and you have no replacement parts.

Then have replacement parts. Shit doesn't fail that often.

I remember that storytime about a guy in Ukraine who had some computer throwing errors and completely halting the countries water waste cleaners or something along those lines. So they had to call in a specialist who was like one of the last 3 people on Earth who knew about that computer, and he flew in from Mongolia and had to compare the Cyrillic system messages to his notes for hours. They later realized the system simply ran out of space, so they printed out some old data to free space up, and the system resumed.

wish I had it saved.

im pretty sure the 8085 is a microcontroller