Thread

1. kev009 · 1790704996 · focus · HN ↗

   You can find random PDP, VAX, even X86 systems that have lifespans 20+ years. As for a single boot probably a much smaller corpus, maybe some forgotten Sun SPARC in a telco on -48V DC power bus.

   A VAXCluster or Sysplex(S/390) would I guess be more analogous but those can be a bit Ship of Theseus since you can change the hardware out over time.

   1. mveety · 1790706461 · focus · HN ↗

      For VMSClusters 8 to 10 years seems to be a pretty common uptime for long lived clusters. I worked a gig a few years ago that had a VMSCluster that was up for 19 years at that point. Started on alpha, migrated to itanium, then I helped migrate it to x86. It was the oldest I've personally seen, though I have heard legends of much older.

      My current contract has a PDP-11/70 running RSX-11 that's been up since 1992. It's uptime is longer than mine! Poor thing is getting retired next year though.

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