[KenJackson]

There's a news story today about a guy that retrieved data from a disk drive that had been on the Columbia space shuttle when it burned up on reentry in 2003.

[T]he 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives as other approaches do.

DOS!?
On the space shuttle?
Now there's some advanced technology for ya.

[techieMoe]

I work for county government and the vast majority of our criminal justice data is stored on a mainframe and retrieved using COBOL programs.

[carlosponti]

its probably not the same dos that you know of being in IBM pc's. The mainframe when i was going to school was running DOS VSE and was no where near the same thing as DOS. DOS was a common name for OS's back when QDOS and Microsofts Version of DOS came about.

[fingal]

I'm surprised, but not that surprised. I remember watching a programme on TV about a satellite (many years ago now) and they mentioned that it had an onboard computer. A 386 no less! At the time I was using a 386 at home and at work, and I knew its limitations.

I bet a lot of people on here own kit which is capable of a lot more than just home computing.

[Dapper Dan]

I've used DOS and Windows while running radio automation. Between the two, if I had to stake my life on one or the other's dependability, I'd choose DOS hands down.

[KenJackson]

OK, OK, I know no one in his right mind would use Windows on a critical system like the shuttle. (A crash might make "blue screen of death" take on a whole new meaning.) But DOS isn't the only other option. And I'm not even talking about Linux or *BSD.

There are a bunch of real-time OSes that are used in critical systems. There's Quadros RTXC, Green Hills Integrity, QNX, Wind River VxWorks, and others.

The space program is kind of a synonym or metaphor for the cutting edge of technology. So I'm surprised to have a DOS computer on a shuttle in any context. If it's not exactly the MS-DOS of the 80's, it's probably not all that different. It sounded like it was using a FAT file system.

[Geeth]

It's not to surprising for me.
From what I recall must satalites use a VERY basic version of debian, as in old as all hell.

Bank systems here in Australia are all based on systems that were setup around 1960 and everything runs from that.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-24169,00.html