[karmelapple]

They do :)

And if the companies who produce these chips continue to make a healthy profit, why would they stop?

[rkomorn]

The scenario that comes to my mind is: these chips had a lot of potential customers 30 years ago, and now may be down to just one or two customers left buying too few units to make it worthwhile.

Presumably, they have "guaranteed" buyers but also, if so, why would Airbus have issues sourcing CPUs, for example?

[throw0101c]

> […] too few units to make it worthwhile.

Not if the price of those units are really high.

[mrweasel]

But no one is producing 286 chips anymore, that's part of the problem Boing has. The chips fail, because they are used and old. Or is someone besides Intel making them?