[HN Gopher] German train company are looking for a Windows 3.11 ...
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German train company are looking for a Windows 3.11 Administrator
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 141 points
Date : 2024-01-28 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gulp.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gulp.de)
| nullindividual wrote:
| Ok, that actually sounds like it could be fun provided your hair
| is gray and/or missing.
|
| There is something to be said about archaic versions of Windows
| and comparing/contrasting with Windows 11/Server 2022.
| Significant limitations especially with automation, but all of
| the work is hands-on, no major abstractions between you and the
| OS or software.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >Ok, that actually sounds like it could be fun provided your
| hair is gray and/or missing
|
| I'm not much older than this OS and i'm seeing a few greys lol.
| mey wrote:
| Having flashbacks to CompTIA A+ certification I did in
| highschool. Even then the material was on to Windows 95 at
| the time. (Balding & graying)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| For a train and/or rail fan, the only way it could be better
| would be if it was administering Windows boxes across the
| system and they got to ride the train out to work sites. Still,
| train display panels for control systems could be fun too,
| especially for those who get into the minutia of the
| differences in train cabs.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Perhaps this is one job that shouldn't be remote... those Windows
| 3.11 boxes shouldn't be anywhere near a network.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder does anyone even know how to exploit them anymore?
| Must be more secure that more recent, but forgotten Linux.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Any reason one couldn't connect that machine to a network-
| accessible KVM switch?
|
| Assuming the KVM switch, and related infrastructure, are well-
| secured, I don't see how Windows 3.1 vulnerabilities would
| matter.
|
| (Not sure if the job requires feeding floppies and/or CD's into
| the machine, which AFAIK isn't something solved by any off-the-
| shelf KVM switch.)
| Arnt wrote:
| Few are likely to be connected to the internet, I'd say after
| perusing https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibas (German,
| translation should work).
| tauchunfall wrote:
| It seems you can actually order the hardware.
|
| >SIEMENS Sibas 32, 6FH6035-1A + 4x 6FH 9543-3BY60 + 6FH
| 9533-3BY60 + 6FH 9550-3AY60 + 3x 6FH9485-3A + 6FH9484-3A +
| 6FH9498-3A + 6FH9481-3B Antriebssteuergerat
|
| 7500 EUR, 28 kg (found after a quick search).
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Few are likely to be connected to the internet
|
| This is my point, actually.
|
| You wouldn't be directly connecting the PC to the Internet.
| You'd connect the PC to the KVM switch's PS/2 and VGA
| connectors. The KVM switch present the corresponding
| virtual desktop to an appropriate user over the Internet
| using RDP or similar.
|
| Again, I'm not sure such a product currently exists, but I
| assume it is, given the needs of data-center admins.
| Arnt wrote:
| Sibas is the kind of thing you run in a locomotive, not
| on a PC in some stationary building.
|
| The salespeople probably make jokes about high-speed
| computers.
| realusername wrote:
| I'm not sure it would work on a modern network either.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Paradoxically, I think it would be very safe because how many
| remote exploits for Windows 3.11 are out there in the wild?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I don't think Windows 3.11 had any built in networking
| anyway. It's only network support would have been via dos
| networking TSR's.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It had a variant "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" (1993-11),
| which was the second Microsoft OS with built-in networking,
| after "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" (1992-10).
|
| I have actually used "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" with
| some coaxial-cable Ethernet NE2000 cards, but I do not
| remember what network protocols were used.
|
| With all earlier MS-DOS or Windows versions third party
| networking solutions had to be used.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >Windows 3.11 had any built in networking anyway
|
| *Update:* Yes, looks like it uses the networking stuff
| provides by MS-DOS.
|
| MS-DOS has NETSTART.BAT and PROTOCOL.INI that initializes
| TCP/IP with IP address and subnet mask.
|
| When you look how a passenger information system in the
| trains boots up you can see how it shows BIOS information
| (floppy drive connected, serial and parallel port
| available, no harddisks) then it boots MS-DOS, initializes
| a XMS RAM disk, initializes parallel port, loads Crystal
| ENDS2ISA ethernet drivers, microsoft DOS TCP/IP protocol
| driver, and TCP/P MEMM driver, and calls NETBIND.COM.
| analog31 wrote:
| I suspect most early Windows 3 machines were networked via
| Novell Netware.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell
|
| Oddly enough my MS-DOS machine while in grad school was
| networked via a product made by Apple that allowed it to
| connect to a Mac network. My only use was accessing the
| department laser printer, but that was huge.
| linsomniac wrote:
| That rings true with my memory, I left the Windows world
| shortly after 3.11 for Workgroups came out, and there was
| a lot of Novell around. My job was writing a healthcare
| information system that used a ISAM database hosted on a
| Novell server, just starting to investigate SQL.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Trumpet Winsock was very slow and barely worked. The exploits
| for it just made the system crash.
| p1mrx wrote:
| A lot of those crashes are probably running executable code
| that the attacker hasn't bothered to write yet.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Cooperative multitasking means the chances of pulling
| anything off without completely crashing or hanging it is
| slim.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >Perhaps this is one job that shouldn't be remote..
|
| I guess with some luck you can work on these hardware drivers
| for Windows 3.11 at home without any access to the network or
| train. What you need are specifications and maybe some part of
| the system, maybe there is some simulation software for the
| internal system of the trains.
|
| I mean the alternative is that you have to work in the train.
|
| *Update:* Since the SIBAS 32 system is just a box someone can
| sent home to you, you can probably connect a computer with
| Windows 3.11 to it, and run some simulations on the SIBAS
| system.
| jzb wrote:
| As someone else noted, I doubt there's a lot of exploits
| lurking in hopes that they'll be able to own a Windows 3.11/MS-
| DOS 6.22 system. I'd be much more concerned about hooking up,
| say, Windows 7 than Windows 3.11.
| layer8 wrote:
| Remote doesn't necessarily imply using the internet. ;)
| petee wrote:
| Yesterdays commentary --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160956
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| It's not only a Windows 3.11 job, it's an outsourced Windows 3.11
| job! So it pays peanuts as well.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> So it pays peanuts as well._
|
| It's how software development is seen in Germany.
|
| Also, there's a labor shortage I heard. Or so the companies
| say.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Something something German car industry decline...
| tauchunfall wrote:
| That's true, but unrelated to software.
|
| When you look at the software and AI, the German car
| manufactors are ahead of say Tesla.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Chinese consumers would buy ID3, but it doesn't have
| karaoke
| konschubert wrote:
| I would consider buying a volkswagen if their software
| wasn't terrible.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| I have the feeling that's how information technology in
| general is seen in Germany.
| Arnt wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, it'll pay about 30% more than the same
| position employed directly by the company. And I, uhm, have
| worked in the same physical office as someone who had that kind
| of job at that precise company. When we met, he had taken home
| those +30% for a little over a decade.
| Arnt wrote:
| It's weird sometimes how you can get a risk premium for being
| easy to fire, but actually be very difficult to fire due to
| unique knowledge of some platform. Like being the only guy
| who can answer questions from the train repair technicians.
|
| Not going to name names, but a person like that was
| discovered when his employer looked for the oldest serving
| employee and found out that it was a contractor whose
| contract featured an hourly rate one usually gets for short-
| term contracts, like +100%. His stay had been, shall we say,
| extended a bit.
| ecalifornica wrote:
| San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) scrounges around for
| hardware to run Windows 98:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32884814
|
| > When a BART car runs into trouble, Shawn Stange steps back in
| time. He pops open a circa-2000 IBM Thinkpad running Windows 98
| and opens a portal into the train's brain -- the Automated Train
| Control system -- through the DOS computer language.
|
| > Stacks of vintage laptop carcasses are common at BART
| warehouses. The train software is so old it won't work on modern
| computers.
|
| Reminds me of the software archeology in Vernor Vinge's _A
| Deepness in the Sky_.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I wonder if the software would run on WINE. When they say "it
| won't run on modern computers" I feel like what they mean is
| that you can't buy a Windows 11 laptop from Best Buy and then
| run Windows 98 software as if it was a modern windows binary.
| But any modern computer can emulate a computer from the 1990's
| one way or another. (Yes I know WINE is not an emulator but you
| get my meaning)
| 77pt77 wrote:
| It should run on a VM though.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| Certification is a major issue here.
| dataflow wrote:
| The computer that connects to the train system needs
| certification for its OS? I can understand the onboard
| controller needing certification, but a remote machine just
| connecting to it for configuration?
| refulgentis wrote:
| We know WINE is janky enough to be unlikely,
| "certification" is hand-waving in the general direction
| of "thankfully, there's opportunities for people outside
| an impulsive individual contributor to step in front of
| that"
| cesarb wrote:
| There are some things Wine doesn't do. Last time I checked,
| it didn't fully implement DCOM, so it couldn't be used for
| OPC (OLE for Process Control) and similar. And the use case
| in the parent comment might need Windows 98 because (other
| than Windows ME which everyone pretends didn't exist) it was
| the last DOS-based version of Windows; AFAIK, Wine does have
| some MS-DOS emulation, but it's limited to what some Windows
| 3.x software might need.
| anthk wrote:
| Wine can use Windows' DLL's just fine.
| rpeden wrote:
| Unless they use the bits of DCOM where Wine's DCOM
| implementation isn't quite compatible with Microsoft's,
| which was the OP's point.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| WINE is an emulator for 16-bit binaries.
| H8crilA wrote:
| First, WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator. And it's not an
| emulator, the PE code runs directly on the host CPU. All
| you really need to implement is the OS API (on Windows the
| official API is with DLLs, such as KERNEL32.DLL, which in
| turn issue syscalls, and you're not generally supposed to
| do syscalls yourself).
|
| Second, it runs 32 bit and even 64 bit too.
| billforsternz wrote:
| Sometimes you really need the old hardware. A few years ago I
| was called in to help out a company that couldn't get 30 year
| old embedded code for an industrial PC platform running on
| modern replacement hardware. With my trusty old MS-DOS V2.11
| version of DEBUG.COM I eventually managed to break into the
| hard loop I suspected the code was stuck in, to trace and
| disassemble it. It was communications code to talk to OG PC
| Uart hardware. For reasons best known to God or at least
| someone who probably retired 20 years ago they were using a
| scratchpad register in one of the chips instead of a byte of
| RAM to hold a timing variable to implement a delay/timeout.
| The modern [ASIC/FPGA/System on a chip/I don't know what]
| that was emulating the collection of OG PC hardware chips
| didn't bother providing that scratchpad register. A little
| big of creative assembly language rework and voila, the
| system worked like a charm. I really felt like invoicing for
| $10,000 or something ridiculous instead of 4 hours at my
| usual very reasonable hourly rate :-)
| cncovyvysi wrote:
| 10? Try 50 next time.
| danans wrote:
| > San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) scrounges around
| for hardware to run Windows 98:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32884814
|
| At this point I believe all the original 50-yr old rolling
| stock has been retired and only the new cars are operating. It
| would surprise me if the news ones have the win98 dependency.
| tylerhou wrote:
| For regular service yes, but I've heard that sometimes they
| pull out the old cars for some reason.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Ah yes, the good old DOS computer language, now that was a
| great thing...
| xcv123 wrote:
| The DOS CLI has a syntax
| starik36 wrote:
| Back in the day (late 90s), the entire business of Bankers Trust
| (bought by Deutsche Bank) was on a ginormous spreadsheet macro
| written for the 16 bit Lotus 1-2-3 under Windows 3.11.
|
| The thing was around 20,000 lines of code (Lotus-script if memory
| serves). Written by a business analyst. No indentations, no
| following good coding practices, no comments, tons of variables
| called a, b, aa, bb, etc...
|
| All attempts to make it run on Windows 95 and later on Windows
| NT/2000 failed. It was unclear why. Something would always be
| wrong. At some point, IT managed to make it run in a VM on an
| early VMWare version under Windows 2000.
|
| Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
| pretext-1 wrote:
| > Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
|
| Comprehend your own business processes and rewrite legacy code?
| sebastianz wrote:
| > Comprehend your own business processes and rewrite legacy
| code?
|
| I think the parent's point is that sometimes this is
| prohobitively expensive or there is simply noone knowlegeable
| enough to do it. In those cases, rewriting is NOT what you
| gotta do.
| zerof1l wrote:
| It's both funny and sad. Sad because Germany technologically is
| years behind even other European countries like Sweden and
| Estonia.
| ajb wrote:
| Might not be as dumb as it sounds. It doesn't sound like it's
| their current product, and it's not unreasonable for a customer
| to want a guarantee that a train is going to keep working the
| same way for 30 years, and not need completely retesting from
| scratch just because Microsoft made a new release. If it's not
| networked, there's no security issue.
|
| It's a bit sad that our initial expectation, that software would
| be like mathematics, where you can keep building on previous
| results no matter if they were from last year or last millennia,
| didn't work out.
| pretext-1 wrote:
| It's a remote job offering so it must be networked somehow.
| Probably behind VPN and Remote Desktop though.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Source? Looks like it's in Erlangen, a German city.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| It's the first word in the title.
|
| >Remote: Windows 3.11 Administrator (m/f/d).
| notso411 wrote:
| What is mfd
| ahofmann wrote:
| Male, female, diverse.
|
| It's the law in Germany to advertise jobs as open for
| every sex and there is a third sex in Germany, called
| 'divers' (means: other)
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| There's a lot you could know about Erlangen...
| https://youtu.be/Z4Ic1mzzAiI
| narf33 wrote:
| Wow, thanks, really useful knowledge about the Erlanger
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Presumably, a deep knowledge of Erlang wouldn't be amiss
| when working there.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >It's a remote job offering so it must be networked somehow.
|
| Why do you assume that? The Siemens SIBAS 32 system can be
| used at home, and an old PC system with Windows 3.11 should
| be the smallest problem to use at home. The question is, if
| that's enough to simulate an environment similar to the
| train.
| stavros wrote:
| > It's a bit sad that our initial expectation, that software
| would be like mathematics, where you can keep building on
| previous results no matter if they were from last year or last
| millennia, didn't work out.
|
| If you think that, you haven't seen some of my dependencies.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Good for them, it works fine, why meddle with it? Old hardware
| can be super accurately emulated on old hardware these days. The
| only issue is that Windows is not open source, so there are
| hassles with licensing and they can't ask for official minor
| fixes. But open source didn't not really take off back in the
| day, so an understandable hurdle.
| trklausss wrote:
| I worked for a company doing this stuff, and I was always asking
| why didn't they do the jump to Linux. The answer was that they
| already have something that they could adapt from previous
| versions which was already certified. So a sunken-cost phallacy.
|
| Two years ago, the same developer was working on an even older
| system with BASIC... Which I guess they already retired.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Phallacy, the sex organ of untruth
| trklausss wrote:
| Haha good catch... It's difficult coming from a Romance
| language to do that f-oh thing... for us it's all the same
| and it goes with f -\\_(tsu)_/-.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Too bad this isn't in the states. This is one job I'd be willing
| to give up remote work for.
|
| That being said I remember very little about Windows 3.11, though
| I'm sure I could learn quick.
| pretext-1 wrote:
| Job listing says remote though I'm not sure if they mean other
| countries as well.
| konschubert wrote:
| This being Germany, I bet they don't.
| usr1106 wrote:
| An administrator is updating drivers?
|
| So maybe not a developer job at all, updating means installing
| not coding? And the Windows 3.11 on the train has not decent
| networking or remote maintenance system it needs to be done
| manually somehow?
|
| But then it's a remote position.
|
| Doesn't seem to make sense to me. But running something as
| unreliable as Windows 3.11 in a production environment does not
| seem to make sense anyway.
|
| Some say recertification of a new system would be too expensive.
| But if this system is certified, I'd say it's a certification
| theater not worth the paper it is printed on.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >But running something as unreliable as Windows 3.11 in a
| production environment does not seem to make sense anyway.
|
| They used and still use MS-DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and
| Windows NT for different systems over the years in the older
| trains starting from 1989 to estimated 2030.
| fsiefken wrote:
| I can't remember Windows 3.11 crashing so much, dos 6.22
| neither. Windows 9x and ME did crash more. Anyone know what
| happened to the Win98 presentation guy and where he works now?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeUyxjLhAxU
| usr1106 wrote:
| I remember it hanging regularly. Maybe not every day, but
| several times a month I would guess.
|
| Of course it depends on what software you are running. I
| remember running mostly Humingbird eXceed X-Windows server to
| access our Unix workstations.
|
| I don't remember any BSOD on 3.11, was that a new NT feature?
| Maybe also "backported" to W95 and/or W98.
|
| Well, it's been a while and I don't miss them...
| whalesalad wrote:
| Am I crazy to think any sort of talented Eng could re-engineer
| whatever tf this piece of software is in a few weeks or months?
| Identify the black box. Figure out the inputs and outputs.
| Reverse engineer where possible. Recreate the black box in a
| modern tool that's easier to maintain. No reason to be stuck on
| this ancient version of windows at this time. I haven't touched
| 3.11 in like 25+ years.
| stavros wrote:
| What if the inputs are twenty floats, and time-dependent?
| whalesalad wrote:
| they've had 30 years to replace this. easy peasy.
| stavros wrote:
| But does it cost "a few weeks or months", or "30 years" of
| developer time? Which is it?
| whalesalad wrote:
| Guaranteed it's a few weeks or months. Nothing is that
| complicated. Especially if it runs on windows 3.11.
| stavros wrote:
| I find it heartwarming that you've never seen software
| more complicated than a few months of work. I wonder what
| you typed that message on.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Again, what insanely sophisticated system could possibly
| be running on 3.11? Identify the inputs and outputs and
| go from there. It's probably a driver. Or something that
| operates an antique piece of hardware. Dig into the
| binary protocol. Pen test the heck out of it. Reverse
| engineering is not hard.
|
| I've done some wild shit in my day. Gotta think outside
| the box and go to first principles. If it looks like a
| duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it's a
| duck. You can replace things pretty easily when you
| identify the perimeter of a piece of software.
|
| These days we have pretty powerful decompilers too. I'd
| posit I could replace this tech for the same cost of one
| year of whoever they are hiring for this to perpetuate
| the antiquated crap.
| danbruc wrote:
| In general there is no real reason why a software running
| on Windows 3.11 could not contain 100 years of
| development time. What seems less likely is that the
| majority of that code would be highly hardware or system
| specific and would require porting to a modern platform.
| But as we do not really have any idea what kind of system
| we are talking about, it is hard to speculate.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I don't know about trains but in medical a switch to a newer
| system causes enormous effort to revalidate so it's often
| easier to keep the old OS and software.
|
| Rewriting the software is probably not much of a problem but
| the paperwork around it is.
| pard68 wrote:
| I worked for a company 4/5 years ago that had a Windows 2000
| machine connected to a dial-up modem which sent all of the
| company's payroll data to ADP four times a month. It sat on top
| of a filing cabinet in the HR office.
|
| One time I got a phone call when I worked in the NOC at about
| 11pm from the director of HR in a panic because the machine
| wasn't working and payroll was going to be sent out in 55
| minutes. Luckily he just forgot his password and had gotten
| locked out.
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