A 30-year-old computer that has run day and night for decades is what controls the heat and air conditioning at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools.
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.”
Either ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, or, ‘why is a school in the US not using newer, more modern technology?’.
The short answer is if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…if there’s cost effectiveness through better efficiency than maybe it is worth it, but a cost analysis would have to done. Also how much is spent on maintenance / up-keep of this ancient system, if it’s not troublesome and “just works,” I’d say it may not be worth the cost of replacing.
Like this story :
http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_fix_it_…
Their reliance on a single person that understands the system is a problem.
However, spending $1.5-$2 Million on a replacement system seems ridiculous.
For $1.5 Million, you can hire somebody for 30 years at $50,000/year to go from building to building to change the Heating/AC settings manually.
Edited 2015-06-15 21:52 UTC
The upgrade is for a whole heating and cooling system, not just to replace the computer. The whole system is 30 years old.
Drumhellar,
The article seems to imply that the computer system is the main problem, but it might actually be the entire HVAC system is equally in a state of disrepair, the “1980’s computer” is just a highlight. If it were just the computer controllers then they could definitely hire a professional programmer (like me) to do it for less.
Seeing the slide at 5:41, where it says they closed 35 schools and lost 1000 teachers, and lost 6k students, I can see why they would have had difficulty funding any kind of upgrades. Unfortunately being in a toxic financial state seems par for the course for US schools. Issuing bonds to cover these repairs is the obvious “easy way out” because the administrations in the following decades will be on the hook to pay it back. They’ll finally get to paying off their new “windows 10” HVAC system while simultaneously needing to upgrade it again… go open source
At this pace, changing to “newer, more modern technology” would mean every two or three years. Oh the costs!
I don’t think people would read so much into the article if it was an IBM PC instead though.
This was all over the news on friday, but now I get to read about it on OSNews on monday.
If you’re slow, at least be original…
Edited 2015-06-15 22:15 UTC
I had a former coworker that consulted on a boat built in 2002 that was powered by an Apple IIe. Because the owner wanted a system he understood.
It works and I’m pretty sure it’s ten thousand times simpler and cheaper than any “modern” solution!!
No joking, I don’t even want to imagine how much HP, IBM or Oracle would charge to implement a similar solution… maybe more than the cost of an entire school itself.
VIVA AMIGA
Their current systems is definitely WAY simpler than any modern alternative. For these kind of systems you won’t be using HP, IBM or Oracle, though. This is outside their scope. They’d be buying components like temperature and pressure transmitter, and PLC/DCS from Allen-Bradley, Honeywell, ABB, etc. The HVAC units would mostly likely be provided by someone like Johnson Controls. And then you would need to pay an outside contractor to program that PLC.
If you think HP, IBM and Oracle milks the crap out of their customers, it’s because you never worked with any of those other guys.
Edited 2015-06-16 00:50 UTC
The Air con company I work for mostly use inotech for small buildings of less than 5 floors, which is most of our work, they give their software out for free and use common rs422 and ethernet for comms
Phase Angle,
Neat, I also do some work for an HVAC company. I’ve never seen rs422 in the field. Given that the industry has generally standardized on multipoint rs485 protocols like bacnet and modbus, what is the reason you are using rs422?
Turnkey HVAC software packages tend to be extremely expensive…for no good reason. Packages like AAM Aspect FT are not only expensive, but they are notoriously frustrating… One would think HVAC applications are a perfect fit for open source software, but I’ve seen HVAC contractors spec expensive proprietary systems because it means they can charge more for the job. It also means the end users can not re-program their own systems, which is advantageous to the contractors who install them.
It’s hard to imagine they are talking about the entire HVAC systems, we’re talking about 19 different schools.
Just another case of businesses shafting governments.
I say if it works just run the software they have on a emulator and be done with it. A few hundred or maybe thousand bucks, depending on who does the work…..Why not another school kid?
bobf0648,
I understand the “if it ain’t broke” mantra, but often the underlying reason for considering change is because the technology is broken and users are being made to tolerate it’s problems. Kochise’s excellent link should remind us that obscure systems aren’t exactly low cost, they have high maintenance/training/support/inefficiency costs. I find it hilarious that these schools have to arrange 15 minute quite radio intervals so that the HVAC system can work. Modern computers are cheap enough that each school could easily have it’s own HVAC computer. The advances in TCP/IP networking, security, databases and interfaces would not only make the system more robust and better for users, but a modern deployment could also be cheaper to maintain using commodity hardware. It should not even be necessary to roll their own solution again since these days off the shelf products are readily available.
Edited 2015-06-17 14:44 UTC
No no no, the only correct way of expressing that sentiment is “Amigaaa!!!!1!!111!!”
Assuming the $1.5M is for just the computer update…
That would make this the most valuable amiga out there
Outside of that, lots of ancient machines are currently being emulated… i.e. the accounting department at Berkley is emulating an IBM 360 for everything they need… just got a core dump of the 360 and off they went.
It is unclear if they upgraded their 360 to 370 software
So this system is 30 years old. But given that the Amiga is widely considered to have been a good 15 years ahead of its time, does that mean that this system is really only 15 years out of date?
The Amiga maybe only 15 years out of date, the hardware is still 30 years old
.
Is this not the perfect challenge for a couple of kids to use their creative talents on ?
Get them to use home grown solutions (arduino style), challenge them, then implement the winner’s solution.
DannyBackx,
Yes, I think it would be a neat project. Certainly one that motivated high school students could achieve and one that I might propose if I were teaching them.
However, in actuality it might be difficult to pin down responsibility for the student system. Real HVAC professionals are certified/insured. If anybody got wind that students were programming the system themselves, it would likely void all equipment warranties and vendor liabilities even when the student system are not at fault – “we aren’t responsible for deployments programmed by unqualified individuals”.
Back when I was in HS (in the 80s), the Vocational Electronics classes did ALL the electrical work in the school, from rewiring the PA system (a simple job), to installing new lighting in the school stadium (extremely dangerous work). Many rural school districts couldn’t (and still cannot) afford to hire outside experts, so they made (make) due with teachers and students as much as possible.
JLF65,
I guess, and don’t get me wrong I think they would be able to do it. However playing devil’s advocate: do you think vendors would honor any warranties on $1-2 million dollars worth of HVAC equipment that the unlicensed students have been tinkering with using uncertified “arduino” mods? Before answering this, consider that it’s not uncommon for companies to void device warranties simply for installing unapproved software.
Anyways, in the spirit of DIY, I very much like the idea and I’d very much enjoy reading about it on osnews if it were to happen.
Definitely a case of: if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Until they update the whole AC system, there is no point in updating the computer that maintains it. Until such a time, newer is not better, it is just more cost overrun that can be better spent educating students.