When a piece of software does a very limited set of tasks that cannot be meaningfully improved, and when minor mistakes can equate to millions in cash or even lives lost or ruined, the name of the game is maintain, maintain, maintain. It ain’t broke, leave it the hell alone, because updating, upgrading or porting your system will inevitably lead to some sort of mistake.
You’re exactly right. And if the retrocomputing and retrogaming communities have taught us anything, it’s that good emulation can make such systems last for a very long time.
I note they recently changed the way they charge large users , to the benefit of users with uneven compute loads (after buying an IBM mainframe you must also pay IBM for the amount of processing you do on it)
When a piece of software does a very limited set of tasks that cannot be meaningfully improved, and when minor mistakes can equate to millions in cash or even lives lost or ruined, the name of the game is maintain, maintain, maintain. It ain’t broke, leave it the hell alone, because updating, upgrading or porting your system will inevitably lead to some sort of mistake.
You’re exactly right. And if the retrocomputing and retrogaming communities have taught us anything, it’s that good emulation can make such systems last for a very long time.
IBM are still making mainframes
I note they recently changed the way they charge large users , to the benefit of users with uneven compute loads (after buying an IBM mainframe you must also pay IBM for the amount of processing you do on it)