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50 Year Old Computer Still Going

Posted by chrisd on from the not-a-laptop dept.

The Angry Mick writes "Geek.com is running a blurb on a 50 year old CSIRAC computer that is apparently still functional, if lurking in an Australian museum. Sporting a whopping 2K of RAM and screaming along at a blistering 300 khz(!) it proves the adage that they really don't make 'em like they used to . . ." Yes, because if they did, they'd be really, really slow.

5 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. built to last by nath_o_brien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and linking that to yesterday's discussion about the lack of quality these days, i bet we won't have any/many of today's computers around in another 50 years time... or 50 days for some of them...

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    - Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
  2. Re:That has more ram than my present CPU has by ottffssent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    *laugh*

    I don't even notice unless an app is using over 100M (technically, 100,000KB, but who's counting?)

    But it sure would be nice if Windows would notice I have gobs of RAM lying around and start using it for something productive like caching the disk subsystem, rather than the other way around. There is no excuse for a system with >512M of free RAM paging to disk! What ass-backwards VM got stuck into Windows, anyway?

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    High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
  3. I have used this machine! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting


    god I feel old...

    Years ago, when I worked at the CSIRO I worked on this machine for a while. I'm amazed it didn't die long ago. It used RPN for calculations, which takes getting used to, but is far better then algerbraic.

    It's processor (not CPU - it consisted of multiple chips) is a hardware FORTH type. The jokes about FORTH programmers are true!

  4. how do you replace vacuum tubes? by peter303 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would have thought many of them would no longer be manufactured. (Computers went solid state- discrete transistors- in the late 1950s and integrated circuits in the early 1970s.)

  5. Had that thing been running... by Muad'Dave · · Score: 3, Interesting
    continuously for the past 50 years, it would've performed 4.734e14 instructions. Your newfangled 3.3GHz processor performs that many instructions in 39.85 HOURS.

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    Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.