Of course they're running old and outdated hardware. When thing work, particularly in a mission critical situation, you don't touch them! Even if the IT admins knew that computer was old and on the brink of dying, how are they supposed to convince the suits and beancounters of that?

And why shouldn't the bean counters expect the old, outdated hardware to work. Quite a bit of the air traffic control system is hardware that is decades old, though it is slowly being replaced. You have to go to the bean counters and say, yes this equipment is not as old as all that other equipment that has been running for decades. But it is cheap C.. made junk, and cannot be expected to operate reliably for more than a few years.