Feb. 15--GULFPORT -- The Harrison County Adult Detention Center has reverted to old computer technology for inmate records because of frustration over a $19 million project the sheriff said has failed to deliver the services promised.

The Sheriff's Department, a key advocate of the Mississippi Automated System Project under the prior sheriff's administration, has given up on the federally funded venture. The jail's return to DOS-based technology -- a disk-operated system -- means inmate booking information is entered into a mainframe computer system that uses programming language developed in the 1950s and '60s and a program written for the jail in the 1980s.

Jail personnel call the old system "the green screen" because of the color on the monitor.

"It's antiquated, but it works," Sheriff Melvin Brisolara said. "It's fast and it shows us what we need to know."

MASP, launched in 2002, makes use of modern technology, but those who use the inmate-records program say it's slow and tedious.

"The computer screen freezes up for minutes at a time and the program doesn't let us call up all we want to know," Brisolara said. "When this idea first came up, it sounded like the answer to everything. But seven years and $19 million later, we can't wait until 2010 for the problems to be fixed."

The year 2010 is when MASP officials expect the software bugs to be worked out. The problems with the system have varied, such as calling up old "booking mugs" of returning inmates instead of their latest photographs. The software wouldn't provide a jail population count. And on at least one occasion, it dumped one inmate's information under another inmate's name.

The switch to "the green screen" is why the jail docket was offline on the sheriff's Web site last week. MASP, which is changing its name to Magnolia Data Share, took the jail docket off its Internet server Tuesday as the sheriff's information-technology staff prepared to change servers. Meanwhile, Magnolia has consolidated its two data centers, moving one from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg to a data bank in Biloxi. Magnolia has a Biloxi office where programmers continue to develop the software and provide technical support.

MASP began as a pilot project to provide access to data-sharing services for law enforcement agencies in Harrison, Jackson and Hancock counties. On the heels of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, MASP was touted as a significant public-safety project for rural areas that could become a national model for homeland defense purposes.