News

McLaren Needs 20-Year-Old Laptop to Run its F1 Cars

Supercar maker McLaren – creator of the F1, the former fastest production car in the world – is lauded for its advanced automotive engineering, which it has applied to both its road vehicles and its Formula 1 racing cars. But an exclusive look by Jalopnik into the McLaren Special Operations (MSO) workshop in Woking, UK has revealed that the 100 existing F1 cars (106 were built, valued at up to £10 million each) are still maintained using a Compaq LTE 5280 laptop from 1996.

So, why does company dealing with such advanced automotive technology need a 20-year-old laptop to maintain its cars? The LTE 5280 runs a bespoke CA (Conditional Access) card which is key to maintaining the computerised systems on-board the F1. That CA card, at present, only works with the LTE 5280.

“The reason we need those specific Compaq laptops is that they run a bespoke CA card which is installs into them,” an MSO engineer told Jalopnik. “The CA card is an interface between the laptop software (which is DOS based) and the car.”

“We are currently working on a new interface which will be compatible with modern laptops as they old Compaqs are getting less and less reliable and harder to find,” he added.

Image courtesy of WikiMedia.

Ashley Allen

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 Possible Price Revealed

According to a new report, the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU will be very expensive. It…

1 hour ago

AMD Krackan Processor with 6 Zen 5 and Zen 5c Cores for Budget AI Laptops Leaked

A new AMD processor in the form of an engineering model has been leaked in…

1 hour ago

SK Hynix Begins Production of First 321-Layer NAND Chips

SK Hynix has claimed to be the first company to mass-produce 321-layer NAND memory chips.…

2 hours ago

Trust Gaming GXT 609 Zoxa 2.0 PC Speakers

SOUNDS GREAT – Full stereo sound (12W peak power) gives your setup a booming audio…

6 hours ago

PowerA Wired Controller for Nintendo Switch

Special Edition Yoshi design Ergonomic controller shape with Nintendo Switch button layout Detachable 10ft (3m)…

6 hours ago

Logitech G Saitek PRO Flight Rudder Pedals

Fluid Motion: These flight rudder pedals are smooth and accurate that enable precise control over…

6 hours ago