I have a shop filled with CNC machinery, inspection equipment, and other hardware not supported on the new OS. XP has been rock solid for nearly 10 years running all that equipment. Now, if someone would like to give me about $400,000 for some new machinery send me a PM so I can give you my address...
“XP has been rock solid for nearly 10 years running all that equipment.”
See my post #79. You may be able to run that CNC equipment on Linux using Wine. Your specialized software won’t appear in Wine’s online catalog of software, but it may not have to. Often older programs written back in XP’s day can run just the same in Wine. You’ll never know until you try. If it installs and runs, then you’ve saved a bunch of money.
Another idea is to take all those XP machines off the internet completely. A virus can only get a system that is online. If you’re running them as dedicated CNC machines they don’t have to be. Have a Linux box for all internet stuff and the XP machines disconnected. And make sure no one can plug in an infected USB.
As long as the machines are networked to the outside world, you should be OK. However, when the computers die that control said equipment, you may be in trouble, as you may have issues getting XP to run on upcoming generations of hardware.
One thing that you might want to take the time to look at now is to see if you can run any of the software through virtual machines. If you can get that to work, you may actually be in better shape than you are now. A VM that runs under something like VMWare is really just a few large files on your disk. If you copy those files to another computer then fire up the VM, the operating system that runs in that VM will have no way to know that it is running on different hardware.
So, let's say that you've successfully installed your OS and software in a VM. Now, let's say you have an issue, and somehow the OS gets corrupted, which is not an altogether uncommon thing with windows. Instead of having to reinstall the OS and your software, you just copy the VM files from a backup, and you're good to go. 20 minute restores are bloody awesome in circumstances like that. If your CNC machines use Dongles you may well be SOL though.
If you can virtualize your control systems, you'll be much better off than you are today with hardware tied directly to a specific computer.