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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

Well, the copious amounts of waste heat from the old PBX can be put to good use.

If its really from the 60's its likely electromechanical, and uses almost no power at idle - like less than 1a at 48v

So it's cooler, more reliable, AND bigger than modern computers? We need to go back.

Not really more reliable - they required regular servicing, Electromechanical phone switches did - contacts being cleaned, that sort of thing - Modern digital or IP stuff is largely turn it on and stuff it in a closet

Except for security updates, software bug fixes, etc.

Miniaturization and flexibility come at a cost. Today's iPhone is more powerful than the computers used for the Apollo mission.

A TI-89+ is more powerful than the computers used in the Apollo mission.

> Miniaturization and flexibility come at a cost.

Companies have little to no incentive to update software for older products unless there are lucrative support contracts. This has been the case for decades.

If the system was found to have a security flaw, that would be even harder to fix in vintage hardware.

Except that no sane person would hook this thing up directly to the internet anyway.

So it basically comes down to security flaws exposed to whatever interfaces it really is connected to.

I’m confused about the topic. How would one connect a 60s PBX to the internet? The suggestion was ‘we need to go back’ to this style of architecture, I think, not that we should use vintage 60s phone hardware.

It switches analog phone lines, so it could (and I'm sure did) act as a control plane for modem links. (Over which it was possible to send TCP/IP, etc.)

People actually do this with SIP gateways.

Can confirm, was quiet and sat in an open room with other workstations around with no extra fans, cooling, etc. But, it's administered with a CLI computer hooked up, so not sure it is truly 'electromechanical'.

That's from the 80s or 90s then

...Or a retrofit from that period?

No, you don't go from 60s era tech to 90s era in phones without s forklift. Moving from electromechanical to stores program control is a sea change.

It's like going from Hollerith card based tabulators to a System/360

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