They're PDP-8s. There is a massive collection of PDP-8s in various states of undress at Transport House in Collins Street. Metrol used to purchase all the old PDP-8s that came on the market an they kept them for spares. There was a failed attempt to replace the old DEC based system in the early 2000s (or maybe late 1990s). Bombardier was the contractor developing the software on Windows (IIRC) on Compaq hardware. The project was canned after major cost blow-outs. A whole shed-load of hardware was purchased and installed and new workstations with what were HUGE CRT monitors at all the train control workstations. As of 2005, there was a heap of brand-new, still-in-the-plastic shrink wrap kit on the 5th floor computer room along with the PDP-8 boneyard. Sent from my iPhone On 15/10/2013, at 17:52, Julien Goodwin <luv-lists@studio442.com.au> wrote:
On 15/10/13 17:13, Lev Lafayette wrote:
On Tue, October 15, 2013 4:46 pm, Petros wrote:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/30yearold-railway-comput...
1982.. 1982? What do they use here?
I've heard constant rumours of a PDP-11 :)
I've been told they're VAXen, although if they run VMS the hardware could now be Alphas or Itanics. (RIP VMS)
A former colleague went to work for the company that does some of this kit, according to him one of the problems they had was the staff/union refusing to accept any change in UI so they needed to develop a text-based UI that was identical to the old systems, including for the visualisations. _______________________________________________ luv-talk mailing list luv-talk@lists.luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk