Windows 98 was released by Microsoft back in 1998 which means in 2022 today, it’s more than 20 years old and something that most have forgotten. However, a recent major announcement by the European Space Agency (ESA) has brought Windows 98 back to the spotlight once more.
The Agency says that it is upgrading the software inside its MARSIS instrument in order to enhance its performance and capabilities. Carlo Nenna, an engineer who is developing and implementing the new change says that one of challenges holding back the performance of MARSIS was its old Windows 98-based software.
Maybe that’s why aliens have been avoiding us.
Why the hell didn’t they use a real time operating system like QNX for that? Even Windows CE would be better.
I think they did.
“using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98!” sounds to me like their developers were using Embedded Visual C++ or the like. That is designed to target embedded systems, supporting a range of CPUs. Obviously it makes sense that they should upgrade their development tools (carefully.)
The misreporting of this, suggesting that an x86 GUI operating system would actually run on a rover, is really disappointing. These articles have been cropping up all over the place. It looks like each link ends up exaggerating the claim too.
Exactly. And the satellite has worked for almost 20 years so I would call that a success.
You’re right. From the official press release the author of the piece didn’t bother to read:
(emphasis added)
Probably this old embedded visual c++ version also runs on newer versions of windows as well
How does that work? I remember that Windows 98 wasn`t very stable, so… Is there a hardware that reboot system when it discover that it nags, or it`s perfectly customized, that it don`t hang like on home/business PCs?