Re:The search for the lost Cray supercomputer OS (2014)
by blt on Friday May 01, 2015 @10:09AM
(#9471344)
it's a real problem. other engineering disciplines have it too - "we don't have the prints anymore" is common in manufacturing - but you can always take apart and measure a mechanical device. reverse engineering software is much more difficult. that's one advantage of open source software, it's easy to archive. we should try to archive bug trackers and mailing lists too.
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Re:The search for the lost Cray supercomputer OS (2014)
by mark-r on Friday May 01, 2015 @11:09AM
(#9471892)
In this case it's not about reverse engineering - the actual binaries don't exist anymore either. I'm quite impressed that they've found a way of reading those old disk packs, just hope someone finds one with the right stuff.