[Coco] Nature magazine article on "running old code"

[Johann Klasek]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 02:36:53PM -0400, Neil Cherry wrote:
> On 8/24/20 1:52 PM, John Guin wrote:
> > Mostly written from a reproducibility of legacy science experiments point of view, but
> > does go into  some hardware and software challenges of getting "old code" running on
> > modern machines.
> > 
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02462-7
> > 
> > (The image of Mac OS running Windows 3.1 in order to get some old Visual Basic code
> > running is terrific!)

Realy nice ...

> Old code is easy with an emulator. Now getting old code to run on old hardware is
> tricky. Anyone living in the embedded world can tell you horror stories (like opening
> an ST506 hard drive to un stick the head or spin up the platters). Some of the envs
> would make a coal mine look clean.

You say it. 10 years ago I was able to re-read the floppy backup (on a
PC with an FM capable floppy controller, an Adaptec 1542B ISA
controller) of my development environment (a 19" rack with Eurocard
sized cards - mostly from Gespac) connected to an terminal) for 19"
6809-based production system running under OS-9 level 1 with a software
for fax and telex communications. To run the code and emulate all this
stuff I would have to create a lot of emulation code for the self-
developed RAM-disk-cards and telex interface cards ... maybe I'll find
some time for this hopfully before my retirement. :)