This environmental testing company has strict data-retention requirements — and they go beyond the data, reports a pilot fish on the scene.

“Per federal law, we had to keep all testing data for seven years,” says fish. “We also had to keep the equipment used to originally process the raw data for that long. This means that we had all sorts of old computer equipment in storage or on tables or shelves.

“One fine day many years ago, my assistant had to set up a new PC on a table right next to an old S-100 bus minicomputer — remember those? — that probably hadn’t been turned on in years.

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