Seattle's University Bridge still operates on Compaq 8080 and 5.25" Floppy disks

The original article is much more interesting and informative: <a href="http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/03/seattles-university-bridge-undergoing-a-reboot/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.seattletimes.com&#x2F;today&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;seattles-univers...</a><p>It also includes a picture of the computer: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/oK0eknm.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;oK0eknm.jpg</a>

<i>&quot;you probably would have assumed there were sophisticated systems at work.&quot;</i><p>That bridge was built at the turn of the century. I&#x27;m surprised to hear there&#x27;s a computer involved at all.

Much of our infrastructure runs on old computers. That&#x27;s not necessarily bad. Assuming there&#x27;s no network connection, configs are left unchanged, and updates are not installed, neither bitrot nor vulnerabilities will bring down the system. A hardware failure could, if compatible replacements aren&#x27;t available. The latter does occur.<p>Part of the reason for keeping these old systems is the risk in upgrading. The software has been in service for years so it&#x27;s relatively battle-tested. New software comes with the risk of bugs and deployment problems. Bugs and deployment problems can mean lengthy shutdowns of critical infrastructure (if it proves impossible to bring the old system back into service as an emergency measure).<p>So there is some wisdom in letting the old systems clunk along. Up to a point, that is.

I was waiting for the U-Bridge once at about 1am, and I had another ~14 miles to ride on my bike before I got home.<p>For about 15 minutes, the bridge would open, almost close but then stop with one side about 2 feet up.<p>I was NOT looking forward to riding around to another bridge.<p>Another cyclist rode up, watched one of these cycles, and then he looked over at me and shrugged, rode up and did the ~2ft drop w&#x2F;o incident.<p>I gave it about 30 seconds, looked around for cops and then went over myself. It was one of the scariest things I have done, and I was just hyper-aware for the rest of the ride home and woke up my housemates to tell them this story.

In the early 90s I saw a control system for a destructive ammunition test center being run by a TRS-80 Color Computer I. They wanted to know if I could update the software and handed me a thick greenbar printout of assembly code. I didn&#x27;t take the gig.

&quot;If it ain&#x27;t broke, don&#x27;t fix it.&quot; - Bert Lance

You can still buy 5 1&#x2F;4&quot; disks, because I do.

The PC seems alright to me (after all, how much CPU do you need to open a bridge...), but the floppies seem a bit fragile and unreliable, they lose data pretty fast.

Does anyone know what they are going to replace it with?<p>Please tell me it&#x27;s not a desktop computer again, with rotating disks, fans and all those lovely things that, you know, fail constantly.

I got a tour of the Burnside Bridge in Portland twice when I was in probably middle school, a couple years apart. The first time, the operator had a big panel of giant switches and buttons with a relay interlock system to make sure things proceeded in the right order. The second time, the control system had been replaced by a single color LCD touchscreen with what I can only describe as the bridge opening wizard... complete with a &quot;Next &gt;&quot; button.

The long term sustainment &#x2F; archival aspects of this are really interesting. With the new replacement system, is the company just rebuilding it from scratch? Are there design documents or source code they have access to from the old system? Is the new company going to be required to escrow similar design elements?

I&#x27;m mostly surprised it&#x27;s a personal computer and not a relay network like elevators were&#x2F;are typically controlled by. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GevDdd_IOY" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5GevDdd_IOY</a>

I remember an old IEEE article on the NYC subway system. There were portions of the system that was built in the 1900&#x27;s that still controls the tracks. The MTA was afraid of removing the old system because they had no idea how it worked.

blog spam.

Better to replace it with an embedded controller with no moving parts. Buy a couple of these and flash them with the same firmware and replace the whole thing if it ever dies.

Heh, I literally just biked over the University Bridge.<p>If you think that&#x27;s old, you should see what our transportation infrastructure (stop lights, loop detectors, etc.) run on.