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I was an IT tech in college, and one of our biology professors had a stack of ancient computers in a closet specifically because the electron microscope in his lab had to have a computer as a controller connected to it that ran Windows 3.1 and which had extremely specific hardware specs. He'd Frankenstein them together as parts quit, and was always on the lookout for this very specific computer on eBay. I had to get his microscope back running once by installing Windows and the controller software on the "new" computer, and it was actually really enjoyable. Brought back a ton of memories. But yeah, he is just buying time until his perfectly good microscope quits working all because he ran out of parts.
I had a similar experience but in a big aerospace company (~1500 persons on the site where I was working).
The system to create and edit work instructions was only running on old UNIX workstations. It was in 2015.
Out of curiosity which computer was this?
Compaq or Dell. Similar situation with microscopes. They required FireWire to work.
Firewire was so dope but a security nightmare. It was a great fast protocol though.
A really old Compaq, don't remember the specific model