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A comment on Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the business depends on it?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the ... by throwaway2037 on Thursday October 01, 2026 @05:56AM (#49919740)
Hat tip for the first hand details. I sound like a broken record at this point: Posts like make are the secret sauce of HN. It is the main reason why I come back time and time again.

There must be some extremely salty machinists that get bizarre part requests after breakage for some transformer from 1950. That could make a very cool YouTube video series: Following these machinists and repair people as their repair very old transformers.

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Re:Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the ... by ninalanyon on Friday October 02, 2026 @12:20PM (#49935304)
Transformers are pretty simple machines, no moving parts so there aren't all that many complicated bits except in the tap changer. But what is there has to be just right and a lot of the critical details are made of paper.

But of course many such transformers are connected to equally old generators and they are a bit more challenging as far as making replacement parts is concerned, huge turbines for instance.

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