Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I know a company that recently upgraded a computer to Windows XP. That computer controls a building-sized machine. The computer was upgraded to XP take advantage of the latest software update for controlling that machine.

The company that makes the software says it will no longer support XP, and if the machine owners want the next version of the software, they'll have to upgrade to a new machine. A new machine, depending on options, runs $200,000-$500,000.

So in order to keep the XP machine safe and happy for many years to come, it's been airgapped from the world. Not "airgapped" as in "I turned off my laptop's WIFI." But airgapped in the sense that it's 2,000 feet from the nearest building, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and the control computer is at the top of the machine — probably 50 or 60 feet off the ground.

View on HN

I once did a project which involved migrating an ancient (early 1980s) DOS based application to FreeDOS via a VMWare host. The application controlled an oven in a soft drinks bottling factory and due to EMI, the physical disk had to be cloned every 6-9months to avoid corruption, and sourcing ancient IDE drives was problematic.

The manufacturer was happy to provide updated software, but only alongside a new oven, at a cost of £1 million.

The factory had 4 ovens.

VMWare + Windows 7 + SSDs + proper Siemens industrial PC = much cheaper hack!

Definitely a cool feeling knowing the solution might be in place another 20-30 years :-)

What kind of PC is an industrial PC? More hardened? More resistant to factory floor accidents?

I don’t work in the field, but I was curious too and found the Siemens product offerings: https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/pc-bas...

Looks like they’re hardened to run continuously, reduce potential causes for maintenance, resist vibrations, and run in ambient temperatures up to 55ºC. You can also find variants certified for use in marine shipping scenarios.

Industrial PCs are also commonly passively cooled and more or less sealed, using the case itself as a heatsink and protecting the electronics inside from airborne contaminants.

Individual components can also be industrial or automotive grade rather than commercial grade; for example, industrial-grade SSDs are usually rated for 85°C and often have much higher write endurance ratings than client/consumer SSDs, and may also be protected with a conformal coating or epoxy potting across the entire board.

Also a barebones industrial PC can be 3X more expensive than a common one.

The cost of that PC failing can easily be 1000x more than a common one, so it's worth it.

This is correct. The hardware is built and tested to be run in the most horrible conditions. Their support is often top notch too for when the equipment breaks down.

Think of them like "rugged laptops" but for PCs / servers.

They also tend to have lots of legacy IO and expansion slots. Like 8 bit ISA slots on modern hardware.

Aren’t you afraid that three years from now somebody is going to decide that getting to the computer 50 feet in the air is unnecessarily dangerous and decide to add a Wi-Fi card?

Not really. It's the sort of thing that the computer only has to be accessed every six months or so. Even then, there's an access door and a circular stairwell to the computer's location at the top.

The company offered to put in a microwave wireless link (wifi won't work because of machine interference), but that was not in budget.

This is why with a $500000 machine the size of a building you get a contract so the manufacturer guarantees support, with upgrades to a current OS, for the lifetime of the machine.

Security is not the only reason you don’t want to be running Windows XP. New computers don’t run Windows XP, when this one falls over, are they going to look at eBay for a replacement?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com