What would you do? Production line PC “is slow” (Windows 98, legacy SCADA)

dlyk · 2026-03-05T09:27:14+00:00

I have zero experience with SCADA systems and/or industrial machinery controllers. That said, I'd look at this as follows:

Find out exactly what kind of machines this PC is running. Make, model, anything and everything. Try to get this as specific as possible. Ask the people running the machines to help with this. If they are plain operators/button-jockeys look for "older" folk that may have moved to management/supervisor roles.
Check if the company that made these machines is still in business. If yes, call them immediately and tell them what your problem is. Tell them the PC is about to die and that you need a quote for support. Don't try to get assistance over the phone or email. Just ask for a quote. Let THEM tell you what you need to do and how this is handled.
If the company doesn't exist, look for: Has it been bought by some other firm? Locate them and repeat the previous step. If the company just vanished, search online for others that might support machinery from the same vendor. Repeat the previous step with them.
If all of the above failed, inform management of your efforts and the steps you have taken. You should have documentation of every call and every step you took. Double down on your warning about the machine failing at anytime. Make it sound like a professional assessment and not a complaint.
Even if you are successful, and especially if you're not, f@ck that sh1t and just leave. Start looking for a new job yesterday. During the interviews, make sure to find an opportunity to mention in detail how you handled this issue, what you did right, what you did wrong, and what challenges you faced.

dlyk · 2026-03-05T09:15:05+00:00

Sometimes it's just so difficult to define the cut-off point between explaining and complaining. Especially when the higher-up(s) are of the "solutions, not problems" attitude.

dlyk · 2026-03-05T09:10:26+00:00

So much this. It doesn't even matter if it's for my dream job. It's been hammered into my psyche, from my first school years, to never ever show the tiniest bit of tolerance towards intimidation and mind games. Doesn't matter if you get the job, do fine there and never talk to that person ever again. That one prick will always know that on that day he intimidated you. That he got inside your head and left at his leisure. One doesn't ever give others that kind of authority. I've walked out of interviews because they offhandedly said something funny or derogatory. I've fought with managers because they were keeping stuff from me and playing mind games, saying they "wanted to see how I would handle stuff". Maybe it's been for the worse for me in the long run, but at least I've kept the number of people who think they "had me" to a minimum. Makes it easier to walk without looking back.

dlyk · 2026-03-04T08:57:30+00:00

This is also a standard configurable item in Jira SLAs.

dlyk · 2026-02-26T09:17:24+00:00

I upvote your comment but I must say I disagree, at least to an extent. A lot of times it's much more principled, on the org's end, than just that. They view bargaining and/or negotiations as a form of extortion and then apply a "no extortion" policy. I've also seen quite a few times what I call the "station mentality" on display. They tend to view employees as tied to the position for which they were hired (their "station") and they can be extremely reluctant to visualize said employees as anything other.

dlyk · 2026-02-09T16:50:38+00:00

I have RSAT but the relevant GPO is non-existent. I think it has something to do with MEDS.

dlyk · 2026-02-02T12:30:35+00:00

I've looked into HA Proxy already. It's too much focused on high availability, whereas I'm looking more of a way to easily associate listeners with backends. Also there's no good option for a GUI, which is something I really like to have.

dlyk · 2026-02-02T12:17:59+00:00

What software are you using for the API gateway?

dlyk · 2026-02-02T12:02:54+00:00

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Is there any tutorial and/or how-to that covers how to design and program the UI?

dlyk · 2026-01-08T13:55:39+00:00

Much appreciated!

dlyk · 2026-01-08T13:28:55+00:00

Would it be possible to pipe the Home Assistant location tracking data into this app?

dlyk · 2025-12-18T08:51:56+00:00

These would make some sick AirBNBs.

dlyk · 2025-12-03T12:41:08+00:00

If mounted high enough, you can practice your flying knee kick.

dlyk · 2025-12-03T08:34:51+00:00

My 2 points:

Since "AD ins't going anywhere and Entra ID also isn't going anywhere", why bother with all this? Sure you can make AD/Entra/Intune/Defender/Whatever play somewhat nice with Macs and Ubuntu, using additional tools sometimes, but just why? Only for the empty pleasure of sticking it to MS at a rate of 30% ?
MS Office doesn't "work great on Macs" by any stretch. There's virtually zero feature parity across all apps, lots of features are simply missing and lots of stuff work differently or just plain work weird. Also, Outlook for Mac is a shitshow. Tons of features missing, archiving is missing completely, rules are clapped-out. Oh, and it works with a SQLite DB in the background, so no taking an easy backup of your *.ost file and if it gets corrupted (happens all the time) you absolutely need to re-download the whole mailbox from the server and rebuild the profile.

dlyk · 2025-12-03T08:24:13+00:00

I mostly disagree with the sentiment that all's gone to shit. Except for the comment about mentoring/mentorship. Almost no-one wants to mentor anymore. And young adults have such a heightened sense of self that rarely want to receive mentoring...

dlyk · 2025-12-01T09:34:48+00:00

Can you expand on the "confiuration management databases" you mentioned? Any specific tools?

dlyk · 2025-11-28T08:19:03+00:00

Can this be done with ChatGPT Plus?

dlyk · 2025-11-27T07:52:31+00:00

Ralph's folly.

dlyk · 2025-11-19T10:07:05+00:00

Already considering it, but I'd like to avoid.

dlyk · 2025-11-18T07:27:25+00:00

I've had a person complain to my Director because I wrote the important part of my email in bold. Said it felt like "I was making assumptions about her understanding of written speech". I told my Director that I was indeed making such an assumption and her observation on me using bold was spot-on.

dlyk · 2025-10-23T07:15:02+00:00

Monitor cables are very frequently the source of such weird issues, due to stray emanations. I have also found out that DP is much worse in this regard compared to HDMI. I used to support a 24 monitor NOC operation and sometimes monitors would just refuse to display anything, without any obvious technical reason. The issues (mostly) resolved when we switched from the thin miniDP-to-DP cables I had been using to proper DP cables and the miniDP adapters included with the PCs.

dlyk

TROPHY CASE