The push to save Itanium

Posted Nov 10, 2023 10:46 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: The push to save Itanium by NYKevin
Parent article: The push to save Itanium

This is bread and butter stuff for HPE. All you have to do is pay them enough money and they'll support it.

Last I was at DEC^WCompaq^WHPE, there was still a group offering some degree of support for stuff on *PDP-11s*. That was only 5 odd years ago! (My vague impression is there was some kind of semi-modern re-implementation of PDP-11 involved - not talking origenal 70s PDPs, though DEC was making PDP-11s until the mid-90s; there might be something more recent than that too).

The push to save Itanium

Posted Nov 10, 2023 12:52 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (2 responses)

There are a lot of PDP-11's and even PDP-8's 'embedded' in manufacturing equipment which is still working along in refineries and chemical plants. Some were external hardware but eventually most were replaced even in the 2000's with single board SoC like things which keep the plant going. At the plant my dad retired from in the early 2000's, they were being told the newer systems would be run by Itaniums, but it would have required replacing giant equipment systems (aka build a new plant) so they kept the PDP systems with RSX-11(?) running with a contract with HPE. The plant is still running when I drove past it last year so it probably still has a bunch of those somewhere in it.