Your life may depend on a 4004!!!

[Riviera]

Have been in contact with a company that delivers electronics components to military and airplane companies. The reason to begin was that I was searching for 4004 CPU's in surplus stocklists. This company showed a smaller stock of C4004's so i contacted them and asked for price and amount available. The price I got was $325 each and when I asked if it was possible to do anything on the price since these parts arent used anymore i got the answer that they infact are trying to find more 4004's as they sell 10pcs a month and the stock is running low. When I asked who buys the chips the answer was, they are still used in the Concord and in several flight simulators, radar, tanks, periscopes etc.
It's quite amazing to think that such old CPU's still is operational in several applications.
So if you ever get a chance to fly a Concord, your life may depend on a 4004.

[Grampa]

Oh, I didn't know about that - very interresting!
- Grampa

[vmunix]

That's not new, even the NASA uses chip of obsolete (for them, "obsolete" means "proven") technologies, look at the IC's of old ISA I/O boards those are used by NASA, processors like 8088/6, electron tubes etc. I don't need to say something about the software right?
In 1969 a computer sent a man to the moon and brought them alive again, now a superfast PC with Windoze can't handle a word processor.

[Komz]