Old tech
> Mechanics wanting to service one of the hundred or so remaining McLaren F1 supercars face a similar problem. They were reliant on ancient Compaq LTE 5280 laptops in order to service the cars.
Well I find it funny how we see the laptop as !ancient" but the car as not.
If the cars are worth so much and they wont go for the build of a new car, perhaps they should put the money into making a special box that simulates the CA card thats specifically usable only in these laptops. The you just give the box USB, which can easily be converted to rs232 or parralel if needed by the hardware simulation and it will be usable with any laptop that can run this software in a VM.
It really cant be that hard, pay some developers to build a newer interface. Or build a new car.
Actually, another thought. Why not just build a new laptop to the same specs as the old one? Someone has the original schematics, you could even just build spare parts. For the kind of money these cars pull in, surely is not too expensive to commission some custom hardware build. There is nothing wrong with using the laptop or DOS as long as you can keep it running. It still does the same job, no matter how old the bits and bytes get.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
