MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 still run train dashboards at German railway #VintageComputing @TomsHardware
A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy.
Silicon lover Konkretor highlighted the above vacancy on Twitter / X and explained that the hiring company was responsible for “railway display boards for almost all of Germany.” These systems obviously rely in some part on old MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 applications.
The job listing seems to have been taken down. It mentions that the appointee will maintain and update the old systems that are still pivotal to railway operations.
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