Irish Rail information technology hits new low

[dowlingm]

It seems the arrivals display in Heuston runs on Windows XP. To be fair, the jagged UI graphics and colour scheme on the arrivals display itself have the look of how RTE would show sports scores circa 1985.

The worst thing is the likelihood that IE bought the system last year and paid 100 grand a unit for it.

https://twitter.com/t0mm13b/status/665576320378789889
https://twitter.com/dermotcasey/status/665903654424215552

[Jamie2k9]

Can assure you its not a recent change, been like this for many years.

[Thomas J Stamp]

[img=http://s19.postimg.org/sdsosobzz/It_looks_like_you_re_trying_to_run_a_railway_Wou.j pg] (http://postimg.org/image/sdsosobzz/)


:cool:

[Mark Gleeson]

The equipment in Heuston is 2002 ish era so its fine. Most ATM machines are still running Windows 2000...


The backend computer mainframe is based on 1984 technology, unchanged

[James Howard]

I spotted the driver's console on a 22k rebooting a few weeks ago and it was running something pretty obsolete - either Windows 2000, or Windows XP - I can't remember which. While you can debate the wisdom of putting a desktop OS on this sort of equipment in the first place, it certainly isn't worth the cost of testing all of the various hardware drivers in order to upgrade to a new operating system. I can't imagine that getting something as basic as a serial port running on Windows 10 is terribly simple.

In terms of the aesthetics of the old design, while it may not be terribly pretty, the legibility of gnarly old white (or yellow) on blue text is far superior to more modern designs.

[Colm Moore]

Of all operating systems, Windows 2000 is likely to remain in use on a wide variety of platforms for many years as there are military users willing to pay for the software to be kept up to date.

[James Shields]

Most of these systems run special versions of the operating system for embedded systems. These are stripped of anything unnecessary for running the application and locked down. They are generally supported for many years after the desktop version has been discontinued (there is a hack for Windows XP to make it think it is the embedded version so it will continue to receive updates, however anyone using it should be warned that many components are missing from the embedded version, so won't be updated).

James

[Jamie2k9]

Is the system in Heuston operated by more than one computer as there is a few screens with error messages and others without. The screens (left) as yuo enter from the Luas are nearly always not working, for the last week or two they have not been working any day and they are one of the most useful screens if you don't have time to spare.

System in Cork is slightly different to Heuston, all blue/white.