Mi Amiga: One Michigan School District's Three-Decades-Old Hero Computer That Still Manages HVAC Today
from the salute dept
As I'm sure I've mentioned in the past, I've worked most of my professional life in the tech industry, specifically working for a managed services consultant in Chicago. One of the things we do is advise our clients on hardware rotations. Client machines, like desktops and laptops for instance, are typically recommended on a four to five year rotation. Because, let's face it, a five year old computer is either functionally worthless or is probably hanging onto a single strand of twisted copper before crapping out entirely, amirite?
Please don't send this post to my customers. Why? Well, because this is the story of the Grand Rapids Public School System in Michigan and the Commodore Amiga, originally bought during the Reagan administration, that is still running the schools' heating and air conditioning today.
The Commodore Amiga was new to GRPS in the early 1980s and it has been working tirelessly ever since. GRPS Maintenance Supervisor Tim Hopkins said that the computer was purchased with money from an energy bond in the 1980s. It replaced a computer that was “about the size of a refrigerator.” The computer is responsible for turning the heat and the air conditioners on and off for 19 school buildings.Great. My HP laptop from six years ago has the keys falling off the keyboard and I'm pretty sure the fans inside the chassis have had their fins whisked down to tiny little fan-nubs, but this beast from the cold war times is still making sure little Johnny doesn't get sweaty during his lunch period. What's insane about all of this is the intricacy with which the whole thing manages to work. The computer controls the boilers, fans and pumps, while also monitoring temperatures within the schools... and it was programmed by a local high school student in the 80's. Not only that, but because the Amiga is a thing that belongs in a museum somewhere, whenever the school district needs help with the machine they still go back to that very same "programmer" who is all grown up now and happens to still live in the area. I mean, just listen to this.
“It’s a very unique product. It operates on a 1200-bit modem,” said Hopkins. “How it runs, the software that it’s running, is unique to Commodore.”The school had received funds to address infrastructure problems from something called the "Warm Safe and Dry" bond in 2011, which seems like it was named specifically to get the schools' HVAC systems up to date. But GRPS was all, "eh, fuck it, this thing's still running like a champ, so let's put our ancient computer down the priority list." And it looks like it was the right decision. The Amiga runs day and night to this day, with only some minor inconveniences and replacement parts getting in the way of saying this thing is working flawlessly.
Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. The only problem is that the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.
“Because they share the same frequency as our maintenance communications radios and operations maintenance radios — it depends on what we’re doing — yes, they do interfere,” Hopkins said.
If that happens, “we have to clear the radio and get everyone off of it for up to 15 minutes.”
The article notes that the locals there are considering a new $175 million bond proposal that would free up money for the school system to replace the Amiga with a modern system that would cost something like $2 million or so. If it passes, Hopkins is expecting it to be a high priority, which will result in the sad day when we have to retire the old girl and put her out to pasture. In the meantime, this machine deserves some kind of Ironman award. We salute you, Commodore!
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: amiga, grand rapids, grand rapids public school system, heating system, michigan, schools
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Number 1 IT rule
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
$2 million to replace it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: $2 million to replace it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: $2 million to replace it
- Radiator control valves
- Classroom thermostats
- Damper actuators (and possibly the dampers themselves if not well maintained)
- Temperature sensors
- Duct static pressure sensors
- Packaged AC controllers
- Network JACE boxes
- variable frequency drive gateways (and maybe VFDs themselves)
- boiler controls
- boiler stack dampers
- motor start/stop controls
That adds up. Generally, schools do these upgrades for energy efficiency purposes, so there are also some other capital investments (like a new boilers). Generally, for a reasonably sized single school, a whole new HVAC control system can run between $250k (elementary) to $1M+ (high school).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Here's to you, Commodore.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If they switch to a modern PC, they will have to connect through the LAN, since virtually every computer made now cannot use a dial-up modem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What?
Why not? Virtually every computer I've seen over the past 20 years either has a modem card, modem built in, or USB capabilities which then allows for a modem. So, please, elaborate specifically.
-C
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Huh? I've yet to see a computer that can't use a modem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
What are you going to do with them? I hope you're not going to junk them!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Absolutely! There's still a lot of Amiga users around who will gladly buy them from you for a fair price.
Go to;
http://www.lemonamiga.com
Go to the forums and post them in the Supermarket forum.
If you're not interested in selling them and just want to get rid of them, offer them for the cost of postage and I guarantee you'll find someone who will gladly take them.
If it's an old, non-Intel computer, I guarantee that there are collectors who would love to add it to their collection. I'd love to take one of them, but I'm kind of short on money at the moment. Still, I'd rather see them go to other Amiga enthusiasts than for you to junk/recycle them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They don't make 'em like they used to
The more dense fabrication technologies and faster clock speeds means that parts wear faster, and break earlier. It looks like Seagate's Barracuda ES.2 Near-Line Serial ATA drive is 80% likely to survive 30 years without a failure (http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/174791en?language=en_US), but a quick search didn't yield anything immediately useful for RAM or other components.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They don't make 'em like they used to
I remember a saying from PC Magazine from around 1990, plus or minus a few years: “Hard drives used to be expensive and unreliable, but that’s changed: now they’re inexpensive and unreliable”.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: They don't make 'em like they used to
In contrast, when the department had to buy a second drive for that server (a 4 GB one, IIRC) for that same server, rather than buying a server-rated hard drive (which would have been fairly expensive) they chose to save money and buy a non-server rated model instead.
That drive failed within about twelve months, forcing the powers-that-be to go out and buy another. Again they chose to buy a non-server rated model.
It too barely lasted twelve months before suffering a hardware failure. This time they learnt their lesson and bought a server-rated drive, one which lasted until they finally retired the machine harlf a decade or more later.
Moral of the story: not all hard drives are equal. You get what you pay for.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Apple ... drive ran 24/7 without any hardware problems for over a decade.
Hard drives have a failure rate of maybe 3-6% per year. So yes, there is a better-than-50-50 chance that a drive will last for 10 years.
I had one of the first Mac II machines in 1987. That batch of drives had a known “stiction” tendency, which meant that, one day, you would turn the machine on, and the drive wouldn’t spin up. Mine failed with just a month to go on the warranty.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Apple ... drive ran 24/7 without any hardware problems for over a decade.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Apple ... drive ran 24/7 without any hardware problems for over a decade.
Yes they did, it was called a Widget. There's a reason why they don't make hard drives now. They also made their own floppy drives (called Twiggy), they didn't make those for long ether.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Apple ... drive ran 24/7 without any hardware problems for over a decade.
Also, if your hard drive is going to fail, it's overwhelmingly likely that it will happen in the first 6 to 12 months of use. If your hard drive survives that initial period, the odds are very good that it will live for decades (with the usual caveats: I'm assuming that you don't abuse it, how heavily the drive is used affects lifespan, and I'm talking about hard drives that don't have design problems).
In my 30 years or so as a developer, I've only had a single hard drive failure. Every drive I've replaced, I've done so because I needed a bigger drive. I have two drives on a server right now that I bought 20 years ago, and they're still working flawlessly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Also, if your hard drive is going to fail, it's overwhelmingly likely that it will happen in the first 6 to 12 months of use
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: n my 30 years or so as a developer, I've only had a single hard drive failure
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: n my 30 years or so as a developer, I've only had a single hard drive failure
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Apple ... drive ran 24/7 without any hardware problems for over a decade.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: non-server rated model instead.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: non-server rated model instead.
They also added a zero to the MTBF on the drives. As another person pointed out, when one failed it was usually the drive electronics, not the platters or the motors.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Maxtor guaranteed zero bad blocks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Planned Obsolescence
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
age
While disk drives and fans items wear out, Mostly i've found with pre-1990's machines that if they survive the first year, they will keep going indefinitely, caps allowing.
Mainly because they tended to be vastly over-engineered and the components weren't under nearly as much thermal stress as modern computers.
Electrolytic Caps drying out are an issue, but as long as you know about it, and change them after about 20 years or so, It will probably be giving someone joy in another 20 years.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I wonder what the impact would have been if the machine failed? Say a pipe bursts and destroys the machine and everything on it? Whether you replaced with a new system, or found an old Amiga and had the programmer replicate the original system you are looking at weeks. From the context I suspect that this is a cooling rather than a heating issue, but what if it happened mid-winter? I don’t know what Michigan winter weather is like, but over here in the UK, that would see the school closed until it was sorted. It would end someones career.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Example: years ago during the winter break a high school in a neighboring city had the gas utility inspect all their gas powered equipment. The hot water boiler for the cafeteria got 'red tagged', which means they can't use it again; it has to be replaced. The district had to go through and postpone enough projects to free up the money to buy and have installed a new boiler. This was one thing they couldn't wait on: the health department would not allow cafeteria operation without hot water.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Does this story give you some reason they should have expected it to fail?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not all that surprising
The airwing controls on the Space Shuttles are controlled by a Tandy Color Computer 3 motherboard, running OS-9. Yeah, the $400 CoCo3 game machine from 1986 or so is what brought those Shuttles in to land safely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not all that surprising
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
virtulize it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: virtulize it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There were mainframe systems built in the '60s 1999 whose only problem was that they had to undergo Y2K remediation.
The cost of replacing the software just to keep up with the hardware would be incredible, would stall progress where needed, and would stultify programmer analysts. It is far more cost efficient to write emulators so the old software will run.
This is true for a lot of fields as well as computing. My father told me that many locomotive lathes that had been built during the civil war were still running. These things were so big that a man could had to stand in the lathe pan to adjust the machine.
Why replace something that is working well when that capital can be spent on something worth improving. And yes, there are Amiga OS emulators so that even if the hardware can't be directly replaced, an Amiga environment can be substituted to run the old software.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
But yes, they all run Linux. Maybe that is the secret to immortality!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And in the mid-90s, I ran all the records of my fathers business on a dragon32 (what the TRS-80 coco was based on) which I used right up til i moved to the states in 03 - had a 7 year uptime at one point, and the warranty stickers are STILL on all the case screws.
I think you're overestimating the fragility of older computers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Apple eMacs popped capacitors.
Old LCD iMacs would suffer display malfunctions.
Optiplex 260-280 also had capacitor problems.
Optiplex 620. Power supply failures.
The one thing about all of these computers, is if it survived the about a year after peak failure, it probably wasn't going to fail.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
10 year old software on a 10 year old system, no problem. 1 year old software on a 10 year old system, problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I think you're overestimating the fragility of older computers
I think you're overestimating the importance of anecdotal evidence.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Really?
2million to replace something that is not broken is a lot of money. 2 million on a heating and cooling system, That's worse then the email scams that are out there, ( 1 million on parts and 1 million on labor.). 2 million should build a new school. Anywho,,,,
Mark my words. within the first year of the new "high tech" system, it will have failed 12 times, and had to be upgraded 52 times. I will say "I told you so" now, as when this actually happens, the story will be buried so far into the internet, I probably wont see it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Really?
They do indeed make them, and they remain a common and popular toy with kids. At with least the kids that I know.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Really?
I agree with you on the failure thing though. Any new system has it's problems that need to be ironed out. I'd bet the Amiga system had it's problems too until they all got fixed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Srsly, my 9yo lappy is still going strong. It's not my primary anymore because MS Xp, but I keep some old programs on it and it's still a champ.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Think about this...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Um... No. ExxonMobile still has NT machines in the testing labs because the cost to replace the software is astronomical and they still perform their intended function just fine.
There are plenty of legacy systems running out there doing just fine. And so what if you have to buy an i486DX2 or two off of ebay to keep your client from having to spend thousands.
I have seen POS systems with win 95 in smaller businesses with no plans of upgrading. One client was still running DOS 6.22. but it served his needs.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]