We used to have a borescope that saved pictures and some jet engine engineers always requested them when we checked for fuel coking. The thing was heavy, massive and ran on Windows 3.1. It would save one picture at it’s highest resolution on a single floppy but wouldn’t have enough space for another. So for each picture, we had to load in a new floppy. Then find the floppy drive with a USB.
I put a new borescope in the budget and it got knocked off for other stuff of course. As far as I know, they’re still using it because a company that profits billions per year and hundreds of millions on this project couldn’t afford a new one.
Honestly, how expensive is a borescope these days?
I picked up a cheap USB one to look at my garbage disposal’s interior a while back. I think it was something like $50.
Now, I can believe that this jet engine one is fancier, but unless it images outside the visible spectrum or has to be inserted into a recently-running, hot engine and survive hot temperatures or something, I doubt that it’s that much fancier. There’s only so much that a CCD and light on the end of a cable can do.
To view the coking, you really need a very small and long endoscope with it. You really didn’t get that with the $50 borescopes back then. Most of them at that price point wouldn’t allow change outs either. Now you can get them with changeable endoscopes, decent video and recording of course fairly cheap.
I’m sadly quite aware of it, it’s more that it’s a little shocking that VMs aren’t being rolled out in respect to it, considering how mature the technology is.
Well, the borescope is running on an old archaic motherboard with ISA slots to do everything so I just didn’t really care enough to try to do anything with it at that point mostly because the fiberscope was garbage as well. At that point I might as well have built a new one but there’s no way they would have funded it so I wasn’t going to.
A few weeks ago, I learned that we had an old server still running somewhere with Lotus Notes installed on it, and that we somehow need it for some critical system. ¯\(ツ)/¯
As often as not that’s “I don’t want to budget to upgrade that system”. I appreciate it’s expensive, and if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, it may work forever. I hope it never bites you.
Now if only I could get my employer to stop supporting obsolete platforms…
Removed by mod
Well, that was back when Windows was handcrafted by artisans in the silicon valley and packed lovingly onto organic floppy disks.
They just don’t make 'em like they used to, with excellence in every byte.
We used to have a borescope that saved pictures and some jet engine engineers always requested them when we checked for fuel coking. The thing was heavy, massive and ran on Windows 3.1. It would save one picture at it’s highest resolution on a single floppy but wouldn’t have enough space for another. So for each picture, we had to load in a new floppy. Then find the floppy drive with a USB.
I put a new borescope in the budget and it got knocked off for other stuff of course. As far as I know, they’re still using it because a company that profits billions per year and hundreds of millions on this project couldn’t afford a new one.
Honestly, how expensive is a borescope these days?
I picked up a cheap USB one to look at my garbage disposal’s interior a while back. I think it was something like $50.
Now, I can believe that this jet engine one is fancier, but unless it images outside the visible spectrum or has to be inserted into a recently-running, hot engine and survive hot temperatures or something, I doubt that it’s that much fancier. There’s only so much that a CCD and light on the end of a cable can do.
To view the coking, you really need a very small and long endoscope with it. You really didn’t get that with the $50 borescopes back then. Most of them at that price point wouldn’t allow change outs either. Now you can get them with changeable endoscopes, decent video and recording of course fairly cheap.
Why not use a Windows 3.1 VM in DOSBox and use a local directory as your C drive so you can easily add and remove files from the Win3.1 instance?
Unless the borescope has have physical hardware that can run Win3.1?
Virtual Machines have really kind of solved the “but I need old software” issue.
You’d be surprised how often the actual, physical hardware is just chugging along on “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset.
I’m sadly quite aware of it, it’s more that it’s a little shocking that VMs aren’t being rolled out in respect to it, considering how mature the technology is.
Well, the borescope is running on an old archaic motherboard with ISA slots to do everything so I just didn’t really care enough to try to do anything with it at that point mostly because the fiberscope was garbage as well. At that point I might as well have built a new one but there’s no way they would have funded it so I wasn’t going to.
A few weeks ago, I learned that we had an old server still running somewhere with Lotus Notes installed on it, and that we somehow need it for some critical system. ¯\(ツ)/¯
As often as not that’s “I don’t want to budget to upgrade that system”. I appreciate it’s expensive, and if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, it may work forever. I hope it never bites you.
Removed by mod
Compiling a personal project of mine with Windows 2000 as minimum Windows platform right now