[time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors (was Capacitor Failures)

[jimlux]

Heathkid wrote:
> Backup images are fine... but has anyone considered or tried to contact 
> the original programmers to get the actual code used?  I'm sure there 
> wouldn't be any reason someone would still consider 30+ year old code a 
> "trade secret" and if one had the original code... could reasonably 
> replicate an old programmed chip with a newer one.  Just a thought.
> 
>
more likely, nobody still working there knows what the original code is, 
and they threw it away 10 years ago.

I work in the spacecraft electronics business, and we're positively 
compulsive about documentation, but there's plenty of stuff that just 
gets lost.  "Oh yeah, we were cleaning out Dave's office after he died, 
and we just pitched all those printouts and databooks with the notes on 
the pages. Everything is online now, right?"

Or, it's somewhere in the archives, in one of several hundred boxes 
labeled "miscellaneous documentation from 1981-1985" and it would cost 
literally hundreds of dollars to retrieve the boxes and have someone 
hunt through it for something that might or might not be there.

Or, in a cost cutting thing "We have all these boxes of stuff from 1980 
that we're paying for storage on.  Do you have a charge number for the 
storage fees?  No? Ok, into the trash it goes"