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What's the Oldest Hardware You are Still Using?
ScottBob asks: "Seeing the recent post about the vintage computer festival got me thinking about old hardware I'm still using in my 'modern' computer. I have a 1 ghz Celeryonion machine, but when I bought the mobo I specifically looked for one with an ISA slot so I could still use my old Zoltrix modem I bought in '97 when V.90 was adopted (when it probably would have been cheaper to buy an ISA-less mobo and a PCI modem). I've also moved a '93 model floppy drive from machine to machine, and it still works. Usually, monitors and power supplies survive the ravage Moore's law has on hardware, but what other things does everybody else save when they cruft together a new machine? Anybody ever do things like disguise a 4 GHz P4 in an ancient 8086 machine box? While on the subject, is anybody still running old DOS programs in a DOS box on a Windows machine (e.g. a database) because your company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with any free alternatives?"
Oldest hardware I have is my video card. Damn not having money...
Power Cord, leftover from 8086. Least valuable part then, most valuable part now. Still using it too.
For those vintage games, my personal favorite being Darklands by Microprose, and the occasional bout of A-Train my Maxis. Still can't beat a 486 with DOS 5.0 for some stuff :-) actually our voicemail system at work is DOS 6.2 as well.
...in bed
Hey - I use 1991 keyboard with my dual Opteron database server :)
the x86 I wired-wrapped by hand for a senior project...ran at a whopping 2Mhz.
My boyfriend!
I still use a Tyan Tomcat IV with a p120 as a firewall/dns/mail server.
The motherboard isn't 100% Y2K compliant but it runs like a champ.
Oderint dum metuant
Vintage 1984 with a solid steel backplate the thing weighs almost 5lbs. The buckling spring keys give excellent tactile and audible feedback. I need to get a new PC but the keyboard is staying
Free cell phone tracking
the company I work for sync's in to their headquarter database on a 486, Windows 95 and a external Zoom 19.2 modem. It has so many red/green lights, it's like a tiny xmas tree!
The only computer I own at the moment is an old laptop.
Toshiba Satellite Pro 490XCDT
PII - 266Mhz
64MB SDRAM (Max of 96 supported)
4 GB HDD
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
Is the oldest one i use on a regular basis..
Its got a 20mb harddrive.. 2 network cards and a internal modem..
Stuck on FreeSco and it works just fine as a router/emergency dial-backup machine for customers in trouble....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One day I went upstairs to my parents house and hooked up my old Commodre Vic 20!!! I got it when I was 4 from my parents! I had to fight for time on it playing omega race, radar Rat race with my father! I loved the tape player/storage device!
When ever I Go home I fire it up just to remember. PEEK and POKE were the best!
I have a K6-2 300 that I pulled out of retirement this spring for a linux box. That isn't very old (ok, maybe 6 yrs is old), but the ISA Sound Blaster 16 that I slapped in it for sound is old than me (I think).
I run Commander Keen
My oldest computer is an XT box, but that doesn't work anymore.
My oldest working computer is a 1995 Acer Acros P75 with 48 megs of ram and a 1.2 gigabyte hard drive.
The oldest piece of hardware in my gaming machine (this one) is my Sound Blaster Live Platinum (1999), but that will be replaced shortly.
More than enough BS
My current computer has at least one part from all those that came before it (Which currently is two computers). It's got the floppy drive from a c.1995 IBM Aptiva and a DVD drive from a 2000 Aptiva. It's also got the hard drive from the same 2000 Aptiva. That hard drive was shit on by countless mice, and was taken outside in the rain, and yet still works. I had thought it was dead, so I kicked it around a bit, then I figured I'd see if I could recover anything off it, and lo and behold, it worked perfectly. I don't store anything important on it, though.
I'm using MS Xenix (actually SCO) on 5.25 Floppies and I also have an old DOS 3.2 with GW Basic (forshadowing GW Bush maybe?). Nothing beats playing with an old system to help you realize what you've got.
boot:
Ok, not for me, but...
My roomate is still using a Pentium 1 233 MHz. It chugs along, and he threatens to shoot it on a regular basis, as it's either that, or no computer, well...
My sister is actually using the same processor in her computer. That thing's gone through three hard drives so far in it's lifespan, but that chip is still rock stable. The only problems that ever come up are simple incompatibilities with new software.
Me personally though? Oldest thing in my current setup is my Pentium III 800 MHz. Most of the rest of the setup is under two years old.
Just my Sound Blaster 16 ISA card.
is my Sound Blaster 16 ISA card that was from my 486 DX2/66 machine (DOOM was fast!!). It is currently in my little server/backup workstation Linux box (Red Hat Linux 7.1 with Kernel 2.4.20). It works. I will eventually have to dump that card when I upgrade that little box because newer motherboards don't support ISA cards anymore. I have had that card since December 1993. Great card unlike today's SB cards!
I did have a 3.5" disk drive since then, but it died a few months ago. SB Live is the last thing alive right now.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
We have a client that has remote site data collection units that are dialed into periodically to pick up reports. The modem on the units (which have been running flawlessly since '91) are old 1200 baud modems. Since its not broken, there was no need to replace the units...
--
Time is on my side
I happen to have an AS400 from 1989 in my basement (running), along with a few i486SX cpu's for teaching unix classes, and my desktop I actually use has a hard drive from 1992 or so in it just to store my music.
I'm taking COBOL which is on an IBM s390 running zOS and MVS. I know that the s390 is relatively new, but the damned thing is still relatively old and a pain to use :-)
I've also got a 486 DX2 running at 66mhz running as a router here, it's not really doing much, besides routing all the houses packets, but it's around 11 - 12 years old. And every now and then I fire up the apple IIe for just plain old fun, I think that thing is getting in the ballpark of 18 - 19 years old.
But as far as "running" or "using" you really can't get by running anything older than 5 years old for a workstation, I don't care how big of a mac fan you are :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Excuse me, sir, but I think you misspoke. See, it's "Linux" not "Lunix." I think you accidently swapped the "i" and the "u", lol! Don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make, and it's not easy being new. Well, welcome to Slashdot!
A fellow tech had a service call at a client that had been around so long that their info wasn't even in our "new" dispatching system (dating back to the early 90's). They had a remote office that was having some problems communicating back with the main office mainframe complex. Said tech goes out to client site and finds out that the way they communicate back to the mainframe is a custom app running on an origional IBM PC XT and the reason it's not working is that the HDD has wonked out. Well he does the old rap the drive on the countertop trick to get it spun up and tells them that he will look for a replacement drive but he states very ademantly that he makes no promises. Well after having a good laugh with the parts dispatcher he finds the FRU number in an old manual and does a search, low and behold one of our third party parts distributer has 15 of them IN STOCK! He orders one and then finds an ancient copy of ghost that can deal with the old system. He attaches the new drive and copies the partition over, viola, a system that will probably run for another 15+ years.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The only part original to the lot is my keyboard... it was original with a 386 (AMD brand, I believe) computer, with a whopping 8MB of RAM. The keyboard is mighty unusual, also -- it's the only one I've ever seen with diagonal arrow keys [barely functional], an on-keyboard "turbo" button for changing keyboard repeat rate.
Other features include an asterisk between the right control and alt keys, an unlabeled key (that seems to be a backslash) between left control and alt keys, and a giant L-shape enter key [with full-length backspace above it].
No date on the keyboard itself, although identification on the bottom says "Focus Electronic Co, Ltd." with "Made in Taiwan."
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
Atari 2600 Video Computer System.
I'm using a 5.25" floppy on my 1.5GHz P4. It works surprisingly well. Windows 2000 and my Intel mobo both support it fine, except I have the 850GB mobo, which only supports one removable drive at a time. So whenever I want to go back to my 3.5", it means I have to remove the cover and physically swap the cables.
Until yesterday I was running a dual ppro 200mhz. It was running RH 7.3, and up for 2ish weeks shy of a year. :)
Matt
I've got a Macintosh IIx (16 Mhz, 80 MB SCSI hd, 8 MB ram) setted up with OpenBSD running my printserver for my Laserjet 4 MV from HP and my very very old Apple StyleWriter II that still prints illustrations and such beautifully.
Other than that... I've also got a Mac SE/30 with NetBSD that isn't in use... I'm thinking of remaking on old PC-1 from IBM (7 mhz) I got in the basement to something fun though.
I have a GRiDPad 1910. It's an XT-class machine, I forget if it's 10 or 20MHz, but it's somewhere in there. It has a 20MB IDE laptop hard drive and a backlit 640x400 CGA monochrome screen. If you put PalmCONNECT software which was sold for the Tandy/Casio/Grid Zoomer/ZPDA-7000/GridPad 2390, you can even get handwriting recognition... really really slow handwriting recognition. Of course, I just monkey around with it mostly, but I'm valiantly trying to get the data off my GRiDPad 2390 on to my 1910 so I can get the 20 language translator and so on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Still works great and boots RT-11.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
is a 486DX100. It's also my wireless access point running hostap on a linksys PCI card (yes some 486es came with PCI buses). Oh, and it also does ipsec for any hosts behind it.
The sick thing is that it's mostly idle.
at work we have sites that use old Btrieve databases on NCR 7450s using good ole dos. They are Texas instuments based 486's, they are used every day and still work.. for the most part. fine.
There's also my C64, Atari 2600, NES and SNES. I'm thinking a Dreamcast may be my next console.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
My ultrastore 14f SCSI card still is the I/O card for my CD burner. GO Ultrastore!
At one place which I assist with IT in, we still run the same UNIX-based billing/accounting system as we did in 1986.
As I am comparitively new, compared to most of this hardware, I wasn't around to see it installed. About 8 years ago, the original Bell Labs Unix server was replaced with an x86 SCO box.
Many of the Terminals remaining are original. The printers both lasted until about a year ago when they simultaneously died.
Our software vendor stopped supplying updates about 3 years ago when they switched to windows. Last month, they completely pulled the plug, and in order to stay legal, we must now move to windows, which will be expensive initially and in the long-run.
I don't pay attention to the SCO system. It just works. It has worked for 17 years. Over those 17 years, we had to purchase one server, a few terminals, and a printer. With windows, we will need to maintain a 3 year upgrade cycle.
And the sad part about all of this is that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the unix hardware. Last week, I sadly removed the terminals, and installed terminal emulation software on the new windows PCs. Sure, I could have attempted telnet, but the server predates TCP/IP, and I feared corrupting the otherwise flawless system in place.
I know we have plenty of reasons to bash SCO, but I must testify that anything that can last 17 years with little or no maintence is worth keeping. I've already had calls about the windows hardware not working as expected. Ugh.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
That has been setting under the counter since 1991. The only time it quit working was when the original hard drive died in 1995. It now has a WD 1.2G in it but can see only 512 MBs of it. It runs dos 5.0 and a Point of sale program for my store.
The oldest hardware I am currently using is my Body and Brain.
I am "still" waiting for an upgrade
Anyway the oldest machine I have working right now that I actually use is called an Adam and it was made by Coleco Vision. What is it used for you ask? An ashtray. An overgrown ashtray/beerstand nothing more. But I used it in elementary school so I won't part with it no matter how many burns it has... Besides one day it'll be a collectors item which I will sell for billions! NO! MILLIONS!
Brings tears to my eyes coming here... http://www.old-computers.com/
MoFscker
My monitor, purchased new in fall 1995, still looks great. Today, if I needed to replace it, I can buy a 17" or maybe a 19" LCD for less than I originally paid for this monitor.
I picked up a Tandy Model 102 at an auction about two months ago.
With a serial connection, full size keyboard, and huge screen, it's the ultimate college note-taking machine.
It has a whopping 32k of memory, and the last software old Billy Gates ever wrote, a damn interesting piece of computing history.
Mostly because it's still functional and useful today.
I find that there are certain things that are reusable forever. My current floppy drive, one of my CD/DVD drives, and one of my hard drives have been through all three or four computers that I have built. As long as they keep putting IDE and the legacy floppy connector on motherboards they will keep being reused.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The company I work for uses an old DOS based database system for inventory, running on Windows 98. We can't upgrade to 2000 or XP because they don't emulate DOS well enough.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I have a old Zenith data systems z-note. 25 Mhz 486, 8 meg ram, 500 meg hard disk, built-in ethernet.
The thing is so old it doesn't even have PCMCIA slots.
It has had an old version of slackware, but runs windows 95 now.
Works pretty good for something so pathetic.
This isn't any ordinary darkness. It's advanced darkness.
Until fairly recently, I was using an old K6-133 box as a router (in conjunction with Coyote Linux). It worked great, but was rather bulky.
I have an AT keyboard (pre-PS/2 model, with an adaptor so it'll plug into a PS/2 connector) stuck behind the machines. Once in a while I'll need to pull it out when USB quits working for some reason.
vintage IBM keyboard...still cant beat the feel
as for old apps...I work with a hospital still using a DOS scheduling app...When XP is finally forced on eveyone it was gonna die...instead they are looking at VMWare with DOS to continue using the damn thing.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
I still use slide rules.
I have two. The newest is from the late 60s. The oldest was given to me by my father. I think he got it when he was in college in the early 40s.
In the early 90s, I returned to college for another degree. I routinely used the slide rules for homework. The graders couldn't figure out why I only gave 3 digits of accuracy and the third was sometimes wrong.
On another occasion, I pulled it out to do a quick calculation during a test. The prof had never seen one and made a bee-line to my seat (on the aisle) and spent about 5 minutes looking it over.
A 420MB drive from 1994. Originally used to run OS/2, and then Windows 95... Now it's works great as a porn drive.
I recently retired my 486DX2 (later OV83) system with 64MB of ram, that I built in 1992.
Fight Spammers!
Well, at work we still use Norton pcANYWHERE/Remote Version 4.5. I have a dedicated workstation just for that application because it slows down our systems so much...
Too cheap to upgrade to the Windows version... But not too cheap to give us a second dedicated workstation for it...
--Chris ^_^
Yep, one of those XT clones. I really don't use it, just turn it on from time to time to see Dos 3.23 and GWBasic and play jumpman...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I have an old 1922 Friden calculator, but I do not use it as frequently as my Friden 130 1963 electronic calculator.
until a month ago i was using a compaq p75 w.32 meg ram, 400 meg drive for a firewall/router running SuSE 6.0, worked great until the hardware gave up the ghost...hard drive died, mobo would not recognize any thing i had to replace it....
And they are STILL the best - real clicky keys. Uses a AT plug, which goes into a PS/2 adapter, soon to go into a USB adaptor.
Now, the one thing that rocks about those old computers is that they taught me the ins and outs of how computers work. I like the days when you had to manually move jumpers and fumble around with configuration files and memory managers to get the most basic things to work. Kids these days have it too easy...
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
I work for a certain university's certain electrical engineering department doing IT. You would be amazed at how vehement our department's faculty are in defending their 8-bit and 16-bit applications. There is no way to make these frickin things go away, and they are a PITA to integrate in an environment where 95% of my faculty members and end-users want screaming edge software and updates and operating systems. :)
I run DOS games on my 233 dual booting Win98 because XP has little to no backward compatibility. But the 233 owns for running Epic Pinball anyway ;^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Why? Who the hell knows?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Oh, I see you've been to my office, haven't you?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
The oldest piece of hardware I still use regularly is my IBM Portable Personal Computer 5155. It was manufactured in 1983 and was the first computer my family ever owned. I use it for dialin terminal sessions and the like, as it's compact, cool-looking, and equipped with a modem.
Move 'sig'. For great justice!
Regardless of how old you think your hardware is, you haven't seen old hardware until you visit an active physics research lab.
;)
The one I was working in recently is still using an Apple ][ to scan the dye laser that forms the frequency reference in the world's first and only solid-state quantum computer.
It just goes to show you that the really clever guys simply won't upgrade until either something breaks or the old system won't do what's needed. Otherwise, keep the Apple.
BTW the Apple is sitting near a superconducting magnet, and still works. Its first failure that I know of was a few weeks ago when the power supply died. It's now got an AT power supply hanging off it
Yup. $600 new. Now worth about $25. I still have a huge selection of custom sounds that I use when I write music to give it all that nice 80's feel.
I also have a HP LaserJet IIIP from '91 that still works and is cheaper per page than all those crappy inkjet printers.
...but I have a C64 which, as soon as I get some time, Ill try to interface it with my PC to finish some *work in progress*. In golden days I tried to make my own assembler, and I was working with pen, pencil, BASIC (as a loader) and my cassette recorder.
:-)
Yes, I could use an emulator, but its not the same
Armando
SCO Sucks T-shirt. Shirts donate to the Open Source Now Fund.
The oldest machine I own that's actually in business use is my Sinclair QL from 1984, upon which my accounts are based (along with some of my writings, posted to the internet where appropriate via a serial link to my PC). Apart from that, I've got programs I wrote on my Amiga 600 (1992) which are still used as part of my degree (it's fractal aggregation code written in AMOS), and I still hack about on my Spectrum (1982, hence the name ZX82) and Dragon 32 (also 1982). I've also got some Sun Ultras (~1996) and a SPARCStation (~god knows, probably around 1993).
At work, the oldest production computer is a NeXT cube which weighs in at 1988. There are some VT100s and other terminals, though; these *may* be older but I don't have info to hand on that.
Pentium 120Mhz. 50MB Ram 1.6gig HD (and a 2gig that I stole from my dead P200MMX) 6x CD-ROM It has ethernet too, nice bonus. Currently running FreeBSD 4.9, and the PC is dying, not the OS. :p
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Digital Audio Labs Card D plus with the extra ISA card to give it spdif I/O. It's 16 bits but it's a really good 16 bits. I use a korg oasys for my main music making computer but the DAL is great for playing back mp3's on in the older computer with a huge hard drive it lives in.
I also have a digidesign sample cell II isa card that i use to make music with since it's a handy 8 output sampler on a card, great for getting audio out of my computer and into external processing equipment and more conveinant than a stand alone sampler. when i got the mobo for the pIII that i use at home i specifically got one with an ISA slot to put it into.
not pc stuff but i also still have my atari (though haven't gotten it moved to where i live currently, but i plan to) that I used for midi processing. It normally lives right over my keyboard so i can keep an eye on it while i play and it's within reach if i need to fiddle with stuff.
Last week one of my senior managers asked me if it would be possible to recover word processing files off a 5.25" floppy disk formatted for Atari DOS. Believe it or not a coworker had an Atari in his garage with a floppy and modem. We had to scrounge up a bootable terminal program so that we could dial the modem.
Remember ATS0=1 everybody?
I had to scrounge up a modem to answer and that could talk at 300 baud. I tried 3 modems (USRobotics, Hayes, and Multitech). The Multitech is the only modem that would work with at 300 baud with the Atari modem.
An hour later, I had transferred most of the files using XMODEM! Blech! One file at a painful time. There was much rejoicing with the recovery of the data, but what a pain.
If anyone out there can pull data off of Commodore 64 5.25" floppies and would be willing to recover a single file, please let me know. The first program I ever sold was written for the Commodore 64 and I'd like to move it to a Commodore Emulator and see it again! (I gave all my C64, C128, and SX64 hardware away) If you can help, reply and I will send you my info. I wish I would have kept that SX64, but I guess you can't save everything.
I've got a teal colored SGI Indigo2 with Irix 6.5 that I use for an X terminal. The monitor is 20", so it does nicely. I also have an Amiga 2000 that I use quite often, and a 486 DX266 that functions as my NAT router and firewall.
I still have the thinnet I used for my household backbone in 1986 in daily use ....
I have a Vaxstation 3 that works great as a combination space heater / end table.
Well, my mother is still using her Pentium 133 with, I believe, 32 megs of ram. She's a little low on disk space because my brother installed Linux on the same drive in another partition way back when he was still living at home, I wonder what version of the kernel is on there. She uses it almost daily for email and web with no real problems.
I personally have (I may not be using at the moment) a Matrox Millenium Circa 1996ish with the memory expansion daughterboard, our original case for the first computer we bought for our ISP back in 1993 (I think it would withstand a nuclear holocaust, they built em well back then), a multitude of old external GVC 28.8's and one 9600 external GVC circa I dunno when, maybe 1989 - 1990 ish from running my old BBS.
Found a box of old "double sided" Apple ][ disks a few weeks ago, you know, the ones you used a hole punch on to make them double sided, before the move, but I trashed those. Those were circa 1983-84 or so.
Heh, fun times.
Jib
Hang on a sec...did you say you're taking COBOL? As in, taking a class on it? Learning it???
RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!!!!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
My IBM PS/2 keyboard is the oldest piece of hardware I use - it's survived THREE computers for a total of eleven years now, and it's as good as ever.
I also have a Pro-Audio Spectrum 16 soundcard stored away on its box, waiting for an oportunity to be used again (it was a great card back in 1993!). I'd actually give it away to whoever promised me would use it...
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
My oldest box is an ss5. Runs gentoo quite happily. I did a stage1, xfree and kde from source (only took about three months to compile in total). I use fluxbox on it for real work though...
Ugh...Paradox database. Lousy in-house apps coded around it, original developers dead/missing/downsized/laughing from afar...but us IT schmucks still get to support it.
Well, OK, actually it runs just fine and rarely gives us trouble. Can't say the same for our MS-SQL servers...
Up until I recently killed (don't ask) my wife's computer, it still had Crystal Caves 1, 2, and 3 on it. Go Milo!
philcrissman.com.
A Clone Case. Same mounting holes too!... Of course, I needed to use an angle grinder and a MIG welder to fit the ATM motherboard, And it has an ATX PSU now. But it's still the same case since pre-1990. And I use the Reset Button to supply power !
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I run the x86 port of contiki on my 1000rl. I am waiting for the Apple II port of contiki for my Apple IIe.
Its my dedicated IRC shell machine, running Redhat 5.2
I know it needs to be updated, but I don't care.
Old Gateway 486 system with a 100MHz Overdrive processor, 32MB of memory, and an old Conner 500MB HD. Used to be my firewall server...can still compile a Slackware 2.4 kernel in a whopping 72 minutes!
I'm sure most people have something much older, but... I use this every day for the past 2000 or so days.
Pentium 90 on a PC Chips Socket 5 board.
64M 60ns EDO RAM (four 16MB DIMMs)
1.6GB Western Digital disk
540MB Conner peripherals disk
8x Acer CD-ROM
two 10/100 Linksys LNE100 TX nics.
Diamond Stealth video (S3 ViRGE chipset)
Yes. That old. What does it do? Mostly serves as a firewall, though does a few other menial tasks. Used to host my website and vhost for friends. Used to give shell accounts so friends could polish their C/C++ and Pascal. Used to be a MAngband server. Used to run a heavily modified CircleMUD on it. Memories...
Runs Linux 2.0.x. I just keep it patched. Been running for about 6 years now doing just that. Crashed never. Uptime is lost only to kernel rebuilds, which haven't happened since the last hole in 2.0.x.
When it dies, I'll replace it with a firewall appliance. Until it does... meh. Let it run.
----- ----- -----
ColecoVision!
evil adrian
have an Athlon XP 1600 or some such, occupying an stainless steel case from a 286, with several modifications (aka pieces of metal cut out of it) to accommodate the newer placement of ports and such in the back. This machine still has a 5.25" floppy drive in it, and although it hasn't been used in at least 5 years, they still have a large box full of old 5.25" disks lying around somewhere (mostly lame shareware games & apps back when those shareware mail order catalogs were all the rage).
#include <sig.h>
I still have an old Compaq P75 running Windows NT4 as a BDC for a small office. It works. What more can I ask for?
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
I still use my Celeron 466 on a day to day basis. It's still great for websurfing and can run games that I use in conjunction with my 1.5 ghz computer...so there. I just threw away my old IBM aptiva which i think was somewhere around the 90 MHz range.
it would have to be my pdp 11/23. I haven't actually used it recently, but it still worked after moving it last and I wouldn't doubt if I went into the garage and plugged it in that it would still work.
I think that you mean mid 1995... However, they may have come out about an year earlier... My memory is failling me right now..
At my company we have a 386 running at 40mhz with 8 megs of RAM, running Procomm Plus which I use to interface with our PBX system. We also have a 486 Novell print server. They both work splendidly. Anything else would be overkill.
I hate sigs.
-h-
At work the Dbase program that tracks the locksets and keys runs in DOS on a 386.
At home the oldest piece I use is a 266 AMD K6 for Freesco. But I do still have a few sub-100mhz pentiums around here somewhere.
R-
Hard loop..... huh?
Dynamic Designs
IBM Model M keboard, dammit. The PS2 I took it from is a dumb terminal in the dining room.
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Cowboyneal is definately the oldest piece of hardware in my setup.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I had it up and running until living arrangements forced me to put it in storage. As soon as I move, it's back out for DTP, mail, and my CD database.
--murph
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
My dad has an IBM-AT Serial No 5 he got in 1982, running something like PC-DOS 3.2 and Quicken for DOS I think 5? It has a green monochrome monitor.
(I'm confident about the serial # not about the year).
The funny thing he is left it running during the Y2K rollover and had ZERO problems, with the PC, DOS, or Quicken. THAT's how far off base the millenium fears were.
I've got a Tandy TX 1000 running Dos 6.22, I don't really use it for much other than to play some old games. The oldest hardware that I actualy use is the CD-ROM that I took from an old Compaq Persario that had a Pentium 133.
Everwoner if you'd look the same if you saw yourself from the other side of the miror?
HP-41C circa 1980, and HP 16C circa 1982. :)
Still work perfectly. HP calculators rule.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I occasionally use an old 80 MB (not gig) Maxtor hard drive from around 1990 for flashing the BIOS on motherboards. I can't boot into pure DOS with Windows with my regular setup, so this 80MB HD with DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.0 works great. The amazing thing is that I can put it into any machine, have the mouse work perfectly, and boot into DOS and windows without a single error message.
I use the hard drive because it's more reliable than the floppy drives that seem to quit on me after a mere 6 months ('new' ones too). Maybe it's because I try to use 15 year old floppy disks.
Floppy and floppy cable from my 386 (dual 3.5 and 5.25 drive), and my Northgate Omni keyboard from the same 386 on my new (3 month old) system.
I also use a Toshiba 486sx33 laptop with 12mb ram - it runs Slackware 8.1 fine for everything console.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I still use an old Sinclair ZX Spectrum for a couple of old games. Yeah, I know I could emulate them, but it's not the same, is it? ;)
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Does Windows 98 count as a DOS program?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I just updated my server which was an AMD 133 with somewhere around 56Mb. This past weekend I did an updgrade to a 400Mhz box. The AMD133 ran RH 7.3 as a windows file share on a different port. I used it to get around the block port and it ran ok. Good enoungh for one user. I still have a few 266s laying around, but they arent currently running. O, my fastest box is a PII450.
I've still got a P!!! 450 that I'm getting ready to turn into a BSD or Slackware server. I've also got a few old PI class CPUs, as well as an old Cyrix PR200+ (great CPU for its time), but I've got no working S7 mobo for it so it's down for now. In the server, I'll be installing a Voodoo 3 or an ancient ATI card. I've had an excellent DiamondMM Supra Express ISA modem from 1997 that was recently retired since I got a cable modem connection. After that, it went into my girlfriend's PC until we moved in together. Oh... Yeah... An Ensoniq (real one) AudioPCI will be going into the server as well. I don't think I'll need it, but I'll have it in there anyway.
Most of these parts are in use, or will be in use again soon.
My ultrasparc 10 (tatung clone, not SUN original) machine is probably my oldest piece of kit I still use, though some of my CD drives might be older (I never upgrade those things, because I can't really tell the difference between 24x and 48x). Anything much older than a couple of years generally gets passed on to someone in my family who just broke the last machine I gave them.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Up until a couple of weeks ago when it committed suicide. Read my journal for the ugly details.
-- Will program for bandwidth
... from November 1991! It's one of those really heavy, sturdy ones that they stopped making only about a year later. I replaced its power supply about four years ago and still use it to run Win98 natively every once in a while (whenever VMware or Win4Lin don't do the trick).
At this moment I'm staring at a CTX 1765GM CRT from 1996 and until recently was using a CTX 1785GM from 1994.
Other than that, I still regularly use a US Robotics Courier modem from 1997 for dial-in purposes.
A sun Ultra-1 is our primary Solaris 8 development box, you insensitive clod!
I do not even know what is the oldest think in that box which still runs today as my server. The case itself or the creative sb 16 sound card which still has a nice and "amplified" sound. Or is the source which needed 2 new fans already. And this still runs freeBSD in the net. test it
don't really use it much anymore, but it's here and works and i show it off sometimes. it's a Toshiba T100 computer running CP\M off a seperate dual 5.25 floppy bay (as big as a VCR, but taller)and a line-numbered BASIC compiler on ROM. wordstar, datastar, ladder, 1200bps modem w/ ATCOM term prog. had a good time programming dumb BASIC games and BBSing with this bad boy up until '95, when i graduated to an 8088.
My keyboard... It just celebrated its 12th birthday. It's a lot heavier and more robust (and a lot dirtier) than newer keyboards. Also the cords is twice as thick. My cat took only a week to eat through a new keyboard cord. Had to take the old one back out retirement...
My university still uses IBM Personal Computer 300GLs and PLs. They run XP quite well and work very well for your basic e-mail/internet/word processing machine. With the obsession in the IT industry to have the "bleeding edge" hardware, workhorse machines that serve their purpose often get over looked. Yes, we do have Pentium 4 machines, however, they're used for engineering and lab purposes.
I use a Harmon Kardon vacuum tube power amp from circa 1965 regularily (between tube/valve fires).
40watts class B push-pull design. Transformer coupled output stage.
I had a Citation II also but I had to leave it behind when I moved.
Until about a year ago my huge school system, which I will decline to name, had its most critical data running over an ancient serial terminal setup. Way before my time (working with computers, at least)... but I'd guess late '70's vintage. The 20 or so terminals (= monitor + keyboard) in the building all wired directly into a funky box in the main office, which then had some kind of connection downtown. I forget the name on the units, unfortunately. Pretty scary, though - if that box in the office had gone down, finding a replacement probably would've been a nightmare. I'd like to think that some thoughtful person downtown had a stockpile of replacements, but somehow I suspect that's wishful thinking.
I have a Creative SoundBlaster 16, ISA card which is pretty old, along with an old floppy drive from '94. I'm also still using a Voodoo 3 PCI graphics card but I should be getting my hands on a GeForce4 MX for just GBP20 soon :)
My school district is running entirely on an AS/400 machine. Payroll, student database, scheduling, everything. Punch card access and all.
a 2002, a 1998, and 1994
;-)
the 2002 is 1.5GHz
the 1998 is 333MHz
and the 1994 is a 100MHz, with 5.25" drive bay, in perfect working condition and upgraded from salavaged hulks of discarded motherboards found on the streets of manhattan to a whopping 32M of RAM!
upgraded also to that awesome juggernaut of software engineering you of course know as "Windows 98"
whenever i have the hankering to see a BSOD or play doom ii, i fire it up
but it mostly exists as a connection point for some legacy hardware whose firmware was not upgraded past windows 98... also as a homebrew SAN: i put a bunch of big hard disks on it (big, again, being relative to the mid to late 90s... for example, i'm talking about an iomega 1 gig jaz drive... remember those monstrosities and their clicks of death?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What is this DOS you speak of? CP/M all the way. :-)
Yes, in general running old hardware is a matter of geekiness (unless your employer has a mainframe that they need to keep running or something like that).
However, I find it more and more appealing to play old DOS games. Newer games seem to be all about higher FPS and texture quality, and come only in a few genres (1st person FPS, MMORPG, a few more). That seems to get old fast, and I find myself longing fo rthe old good titles.
Not only some games date back to mid-90s if not earlier (Golden Axe, Prince of Persia, and even ZX Spectrum's emulated Elite), but the hardware they sometimes require to run is pretty antiquated. I mostly keep old hardware around just to be able to play those games once in a while. How many of you still have an adlib sound card lying around just for that purpose?
For the record, the oldest part of hardware I have are a few old ISA soundcards that I keep around for salvaging components off them (heatsinks, capacitors, etc) and a floppy drive - all of them are circa 1993. The oldest hardware I regularly use is my Yamaha 2x CD writer. I've had a faster CD-ROM and 2 DVD drives (both cool slot-loading pioneer drives - is that bad luck or what?) die since then, but that one keeps on working.
The oldest software I have is probably Elite for ZX spectrum, while the oldest title I still often use is Total Annihilation.
Jobs? Which jobs?
Old M type IBM keyboards rock.
I still have the original one that was on my 486 when I started with my company 6+ years ago, couldn't tell you how many machines it got passed up though previous to me getting there. Probably take that one when I leave.
Even scrounged up an M type for my newer Dual Athalon.
And suprisingly some of the older (long term) staff members like them as well. Must remind them of the old green screen 3477's that we had hooked to the AS/400.
I think the oldest hardware I'm running is my Zoom 28.8 modem I bought back in '93 ... I got a great deal on it too only $100. I mainly use it to connect into my network now vs out but it is still in use.
And now that I think of it, I've also got my old Sound Blaster Pro that I bought at the same time.
We don't need no stinking sig!
Sparc LX, somewhere pre1990 I think. Everyone should have one. 50mhz of power and you can get one for less than 50 bucks. Mine runs openbsd.
I'm a fan of old Roland synths, so I have an ISA MPU-IPC (with the external box) and an MT-32, from about 1987 or so. Unfortunately, it's about my only choice if I want 100% MPU-401 compatibility (i.e., intelligent mode)... though there are some other ISA devices, there aren't any PCI MIDI ports that support that mode, and I need it for some MIDI software. :/
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
At work I maintain (loathingly) a couple of massive inhouse database apps written in Clipper that talk over IPX ONLY. Recently we cut out all IPX/SPX traffic on our network, but could not convince the PHB's to ditch these archaic apps. I am now running them in a Citrix Metaframe sandbox on 2 NT4 servers and a Netware box. This system could very easily be replaced by PHP + MySQL and cost less (due to citrix licensing) but the PHB's wont let us for fear that retraining the clerical pleabs will cost a fortune. bummer.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
I've got 5.25" drives, 300 baud & 2400 baud modems, etc, but I'm not using them. I just can't bear to throw them out :)
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
I am currently using a Signetics 2650 processor (circa 1977) on a hand wired perfboard with 8K of RAM and a cassette for loading the machine language program for monitoring all the doors and windows for intrusion detection. Anyone remember the 2650 ? Best TG
I have a 120 pound AS/400 (9402 D02 minus the platters) sitting in my living room that I'm trying out figure out what to do with. Half of me says to just get rid of the beast. The other half of me is thinking of shoving the guts of my windows box and my linux box in it and wiring the front controls to things like a KVM and single power switch while trying to keep it looking original and quiet.
Of course, so far I've only thought about it. Right now, I could stick a piece of glass and a lamp on top of it and it would make a helluva end table.my schlong. But now I guess it gets classified as software. Zing!
I still use a NeXTcube regularly, as well as a circa-'94 Toshiba Portege 3600-T for wardriving. I mustn't also forget my Mac SE/30, which is happily powered by NetBSD.
But I suppose my Apple IIe is really the oldest. It makes a quaint serial terminal, and plays a bitchin' game of Donkey Kong.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
I don't anymore but I used to use an old 286 to dial into my universities dial-pool (14kbps) and start a telnet session into a Linux machine, where I did all my homework. The machine itself was one of those old IBM "portable" computers with a built in mono-orange screen. By portable, I mean 50lbs portable, in that it sat on my lap and kept me warm at night. They've shut down the direct telnet on dialup so I can't do that anymore, and since then the minimum modem speed is higher, but it was fun while it lasted. What fun it was on IRC channels when they'd ask "what'r you on?" and I'd say "a 286".
I have an Apple IIgs at work with SCSI and the GUI OS running off of an old Syquest drive. It runs Synthlab and a load of old games for my 6th graders to knock around with.
Not enough RAM for Wolfenstein, tho...
Used to run a Pentium Pro as a daily desktop at work..Gave that away to someone who needed it more than me.
Scott
When I retired my 466dx2 66 (which I still have in storage, compled with a 1x CD ROM), I needed a few screws for my (then) spangly new box.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Acting as my server. Most of the parts (CPU, RAM, MOBO) date from '97. The case, CD Drive, and PSU have stickers from '94, and the HDD dates form '95, i think. I have no idea how old the graphics card is, but it's a least 6 yrs old. The keyboard came from an IBM AT(I think, may have been from the XT). The NIC is brand new at a mere 5 years old.
It's running FreeBSD 4.6 with Apache2, mySQL 3, PHP4, ftp, and ssh with no problems.
Cool,
Handheld from 1985. Full qwerty keyboard, 2k ram, basic interpreter, color printer (little miniature pens ran out of ink a long time ago), 80 character one-line LCD display.
Not much for being a real computer, but for it's day it was one of the bestest calculators on the face of the earth.
Sure a HP-41CV could run circles around it in terms of expandability, etc. but nothin could beat this little beauty for it's ability to allow you to edit equations, store values into variables and then use them in equations, etc.
To this day I haven't had the need for another calculator. I'm sure todays calculators are vastly superior, but for 1985ish this thing was awesome....
Caution: Contents under pressure
When you say that you make me realize who I'm talking to. Someone who has bought the marketing hype lock, stock, and barrel. Has nothing useful to do with his computer, so he really wouldn't know what's truly "obsolete'.
I have two 1 Ghz celeron machines, one for each kid. In little shuttle FV-25 mainboards with Radeon 9200s for video. As far as gaming goes - they play everything. As far as anything else, well, they do that too. The tualatin core doubled the cache for the P3s, so a tualitan celeron has as much cache as a coppermine P3 did, but runs faster.
I have a P2 266 I use as a gateway/proxy. I have a 633mhz celeron I use as a samba PDC. I have a 386 laptop I use as a dumb terminal, and sit it next to me displaying man pages and howtos as I code or tinker. I have a pentium 90 based laptop (an old toughbook) I take on site with me.
Oh well, someone has to buy the shit expensive for me to be able to get it second hand cheap. Kudo's to all who've ordered a P4 Xtreme 3.2ghz to replace their "obsolete" 2.8 ghz machine, and to all those who threw their Ti4600 in the trash to get a (slightly faster) Radeon 9700. This means that 6 months down the road, I get the stuff dirt cheap.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
IBM 4019/E laser printer from 1989.
It's built like a tank and weighs about as much...Gets around 10,000 pages/toner cartridge, costing $150/cartridge, that's $0.015 / page. INSANELY EFFICIENT!
Works perfect on Windows 2003 Enterprise Server as a shared printer...been used on an old IBM Microchannel PS/2, a 386 PC, a Pentium 100, an AMD 450, an AMD 750, and now, an Intel 2.5GHz as my server. I 3 it.
It's called "Windows XP".
(The boot screen says "(C)1985-2001"...that makes it 18 years old, right?)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
To add to the hundreds of posts that no one will read:
My first computer was a Laser (Apple ][e clone). I learned how to program basic on that using the sample programs in 321 Contact magazine. It is still running. I used it up through 1998 because I prefered Apple Works to Microsoft Works, and my dad still uses it for his grades and fundraising inventory - hasn't found any reason to switch to another program.
Our second computer was a hand-me-down AMD 486 66Mhz machine. I am still using it as a firewall.
I also have one of those cute Mac SE machines that looked lonely at a used computer store. I use it as my diary. It's minimalistic, yet sufficient capabilities minimize distractions and annoyances, making it perfect for that use.
I love keeping old machines running, my Mac LC III (cira 1993, 25Mhz '030) running Linux, Apache & PHP is proof that old machines still have value long after most people send theirs to the curb.
www.brownsauce.org
Yup, the oldest machine I run with is a Commodore VIC-20. Now, this is not my central machine, nor even my primary machine, but it is on the LAN, and I do some basic stuff with it, primarily term into my server to do config, IRC, even text-only web browsing.
After that is an Amiga 1000, still in heavy use, then my Duron-650, then my Pegasos.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
My parents still have a Texas Instruments TI 99-4a (c. '79 - '82) set up in the custom desk that my dad built for it. It even still has the cassette tape drive (recorder) and a bunch of game cartridges.
Whenever I'm home I play several games of Parsec and Munchman!
I taught myself to program on that thing in the 5th grade and actually learned some useful stuff! The graphics code used hex digits to control pixels on the screen. In 5th grade I had no idea what hexadecimal was, but when I got to college and the professor in Programming 101 started explaining it, I could instantly picture the little chart that gave the pattern for which pixels out of each set of 4 would be turned on or off based on the digits 0 through 9 and the letters A through F. Hex to binary conversions came easy for me. As did many other programming concepts. I think the early start had a lot to do with that.
I've got a piece of the cross. 2000 year old hardware. Can anyone beat that?
Originated on MS-DOS, but has long ago been shifted to PC-DOS -- we have our DOS based accounting package written in a form of BASIC no less. Pure number cruncher.
It easily handles payroll in the 48 states we do business (handled in house). Take into consideration that it handles direct deposit, child support, federal taxes, all the state taxes, not to mention any local taxes. Keeping track of the Union deductions & fringes for dues across dozens of Unions used nationally is trivial. 1099's & W2's printed on a good 'ol fashioned dot-matrix to this day.
Let's not even talk about tying it all together with thousands of vendors on tens of thousands of PO's tied into millions in payables. Keeping track of hundreds (in our case) of customers for a 20 million dollar company and tying it all together in a Job-Costing function and all the bases are getting covered.
Cash management, inventory, and General Ledger producing the financial documents needed does tie it altogether very nicely keeping it all in house and instantly available. Why change?
We recently had the accounting company in, during annual audits, and it was point blank asked by the board if the DOS based accounting system (also available originally on Xenix with a Linux version coming) was faster than the Windows based version only in production for the last three years now. Hands down and without question we were told the DOS based version is faster in producing reports, keying in data, and generally trying to get anything done. Pure keyboard data entry.
In the mean time it's the Connectix version of VirtualPC running PC-DOS to run accounting for us... The next version may be OS X something DOS based (not VirtualPC), or Linux [DOS] based, or pretty much anything but Microsoft for obvious reasons. Windows isn't allowed on our networks anymore...
"I'm still using my good old Micron mouse pad from 1986, the year I was born."
ugh. Moderation: -1 for making the rest of us feel like desiccated corpses.
Still playing Castle Wolfenstein, Archon and various Infocom games on my old Apple ][. I even have the case that you could get to haul the keyboard/diskdrive part around in, predating laptops. Actually, fwiw, its rather amusing using the old apple ][ c case for carrying modern laptops in... it has such an 80s look to it.
I work for various theatre companies doing websites or general tech support. For each of their ticket offices, they are using DOS-based software to conduct ticketing. They are running Windows 2000 machines, but the software is still stuck in DOS.
The first time I asked why the software was in DOS, the Audience Services director told me the company they outsourced to provide the ticketing solution requires that software. The company not only sells the software, but everything from the ticket paper to the ticket machine to the on-line ordering solution.
The downside is the software causes a lot of problems when it comes to (seemingly) simple things like printing and internet connectivity. But, it's a niche market; There are very few solutions out there. It's not just the ticketing software, but they provide the total package.
However, when the software does go wrong, they have been quick to blame the ticket office, even when they reproduced the error in-house. I would understand not moving away from DOS in the mid-90s, but at this point it's just sad.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
ok the age difference wasnt to great but i had a k5 133 running in a comodore 486 sx case. The case was quite retro looking, big and square, and had a comodore ( C= ) badge on it, so it was kinda cool.
I think a have an obsession with kick arse computer hardware, and old cases. My favorite mini itx case mod was one that was inside a snes here I quite like this one as the cdrom comes out where the cartridge went in.
We have a sun sparc station 10 at work, i am dying to replace the insides with something x86 + linux. Of course i would never hurt any still functioning hardware, to much of a hoarder for that....
I have an Atari 800 that I haven't used in a few years but expect to pull out again - Arkanoids. I'm using a wonderful Amdek monitor (RCA:) from an Apple][ as the monitor for hte PS1 that is my CD player.
My father still very occasionally mails Apple][s around the country (][e w/ the max memory expansion, 1 MB I think) for some project that was written in assembly for it.
A friend of mine's work bought something like a P2/200 or so with a single 16! MB DIMM, running DOS only, for backwards compatibility with something. It was named xxxxx386 I think indicating what it directly replaced.
My main laptop is a 233 Mhz Thinkpad. My primary desktop still has a full length ISA SB16 card - '94 it says. My fileserver/AIM box/secondary linux has one of those too - it's a PPro 200 and also has a '94 2 MB ATI video card. The guest workstation here is a PPro 180 (HP Vectra) with similar stuff. I was using a 1 MB video card as late as last year in one machine.
I'm using a Powermac 9500/120 as my primary SCSI machine (mainly, it runs my scanner) although it's been upped to a G3/300 (and it desperately needs more RAM, so if anybody has 95/96/85/86/72/7500 RAM they don't need, of any size...) I think they keyboard is probably from ~ '91.
I still use a Powerbook 3400 fairly regularly, and a Powerbook 170 very rarely. I'm also using a P100 as a firewall.
Soon I'll again be using an SGI Personal Iris (486) - as a table.
I just sold (!) a Mac Plus because someone wanted to use it, and wouldn't take it for free - along with an Imagewriter II.
My primary printer is an Apple Laserwriter Pro/630, which I think is '93ish (and really an HP)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I had four of them back in the day, wish they were still around. They were cheap and abundant at one time (right about when everyone sold their c64s and bought their PCs). Like 20 bucks and you have a great display to plug your vcr or NES into.
They all died on me prematurely though. I'm surprised yours still works. I have a 20 year old TV that still works like new, I dunno what the deal with those monitors was.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I keep transferring my floppy from a Pacard Bell 486sx as it has never failed.Currently it's in my firewall box along with a 233mmx MB. LOL. I was checking what brand MB with a flashlight and noticed the CPU fan was not turning. Try THAT with a 1.8 Ghz Tbird :)
I have tons of old games that I still enjoy firing up on it!
I still fire up Reflex in a DOS windows once in a while to access some old flight log data (~14 years old)
My firewall/dns/mail/local dev box is a p75, with 40 megs of ram and a whopping 1GB HD. It's one of the original IBM "Aptiva" models, and could barely run Win95 (it came with 3.11). Now it runs FreeBSD and couldn't be better suited to its purpose, though I have to admit I don't compile anything on it, everything - kernel included - gets compiled elsewhere and installed over NFS.
FreeBSD isn't dying, but it does run on geriatric hardware!
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
While we're on the topic, the oldest game I still play quite regularly is Stars!. Quite the classic. I keep being afraid Microsoft will destroy my ability to play this classic Windows 3.1 game with some random patch. Not sure when exactly it was created, but I'm willing to bet it's got the largest fanbase of any old game.
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
Tandy 1000 with a 40 mb HD with DOS 6.1. (paid $400 for the HD) is the oldest here.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
...is a circa 90 something US Robotics Courier V.Everything External Modem. I'm still on dial-up at home, but this modem keeps a pretty good connection & ~200ms pings to my UT2003 server at work. I picked it up because one of the managers at work said it was broken & was just going to get inventoried out. Well I took it home in 1999, tried it out, & ended up ditching my PCI internal modem because this one was much more reliable. Anyone know how much this thing was new?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I still have -- but don't use -- an Otrona Attache CP/M machine, a TRS-80, and my very first computer, a Poly-88.
Okay, so I'm a packrat. 'Got a problem with that?
Two friends gave me their old 486-based PCs, and I had an older "M-Tech" Socket 7 board.
At the end I had one usable PC:
- soundblaster (ISA) card, circa 1992.
- Sony proprietary CD-ROM drive, 1992
- AT-style case, circa 1989
- M-Tech Socket7 motherboard, circa 1997
- Gateway keyboard, very old, AT-style
- Circa-1990 floppy
- 1 GB HDD (maybe from 1993-4?)
- 128 MB of RAM
- 300 mhz Cyrix MII cpu!
- a new 802.11b PCI card
- Win98 (I hate it too, but it fits!)
- Some cheap old PCI VGA card, (4 MB VRAM I think)
So... for $40 (for the 802.11b), one of my less fortunate neighbors has a usable PC for email, surfing, wordprocessing, etc!
Sure, some parts were over 10 years old. But it is a surprisingly usable machine. I only wish that I put a 2 GB drive in there at the time.
1 GB is quite limiting these days.
I have an old Pentium 90 I'm using as a firewall right now (Mandrake Single Network Firewall - works pretty well).
Since the topic of at-work came up I can get a LOT older. One department at work finally phased out a PDP-11, although I'm sure there are more floating around. My own group just installed a new VAX-based application a few years ago (before I came on-baord). Suffice it to say we're about to retire it. (Talk about wasted development dollars. The fact that it was about a decade in the making explains why the design decision was made to put it on a VAX.)
We have a server room at work which is quite the junk collection. I'm sure half of the servers are drawing power without being used at all... When everyone started complaining about space I gently suggested that investing in a rack might not be a bad idea - alas those cost money. I may not have an MBA, but to me it seems to me that if we started replacing all our servers with rack-mounted units we could fit them all in a closet instead of two rooms, and I'm sure the company could find lots of more productive uses for the rest of the space...
Don't know the year on the IPC I would guess 1992.
IBM 11" color vga monitor, found in hallway, 1991 I think. Hangs off FreeBSD 4.7 server.
Jeweller's screwdrivers, bought 1983. Not computer hardware, but always close:-)
My first computer was and *is* a TRS-80 clone. It is turned on sometimes for "old times sake". My first PC (circa 1987) was and *is* an 8086 in a bullet-proof bent-metal case. I use some '93-4 servers (486-50). How's an early IBM PC running OS/2 and fitted with an excellent Token Ring card, plus some cables and TR patch-boards? I have several early '90s servers with 486, 386 and even one with a 286 processor if anyone wants some.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Serial Mouse. The right click doesn't always work, but I can't find a replacement for the old computer it is attached to. Anyone selling optical serial mouses these days?
SAILING MISHAP
Since my USB scanner went tits up, I've set up my Quadra 650 with my old HP Scanjet 3 scsi scanner. I can't get any OSX drivers for it so out came the Quadra. It has 64MB RAM, 512k VRAM, 10MB ethernet-built in, 1GB HD (SCSI), NuBus video card and dual monitors and an external 512MB LaCie Joule Drive (love the hot swappable tower). It's running OS 7.6.1 as 8 was kinda' flakey on it. It has Photoshop 2.5, Quark 3.11, and Illustrator 5.5. This setup is extremely stable, if a little slow for heavy Photoshop or Illustrator work. Yes, I could have pulled out a beige G3, but I knew this box had the software installed and would be able to scan within minutes of startup. In the last 6 months, it hasn't had a glitch, though I only power it up a couple times a month. It did cost me $2300 new and has received about another grand in upgrades (RAM was expensive back then) but I'd say I've got my money out of it. It was my primary Mac up until my beige G3 is 98 or 99.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Yep, I still use a full 33MHz 80486 system. All it does is sit in my closet so I can type in my journal in peace, and nobody else knows its back there... that, and it's running Win95 GUI, NAV, and a few other resource hogs of my choice on 4MB of RAM, so the bootup time is seriously 8+ minutes... people think it locked up and they turn it off :).
As for seriously using in an open, everyday manner, my dad's workstation has one of the old Personal System/2 monitors, the ones that can only do 640x480x60Hz refresh, gray monitors in a gray shell. It's over fifteen years old now, by the "built-on" date... got it with a 286 from a garage sale. It had a sticker on it: "Property of School Board of such and such", but it's also very old, so I don't know whether to be suspicious or not.
As for my main system: nothing's old in that system. The oldest part is the CD-burner, an old 4x4x24 HP from about Y2K, but other than that, even my network card is less than six months old. My RAM is going on eight, and I think I may have to replace it... my video card I got last Christmas, and its already so beat up its not funny: GPU fan not working, two blades popped off said fan, dusty as hell; I have an 80mm fan blowing on it to keep it from dying any sooner than it will already. The only reason nothing is old in my main system is because parts don't live long enough to be called old!
My son still has a power mac 6100 in his room, runs some games and stuff on it. It functions, you just have to boot it twice for the monitor to get a signal for some reason.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Got a HP 1000 mini sittin in my lounge, does run, but I haven't figured out anything to do with it yet. Also have a 300 baud modem that I do use to talk to PLCs.
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
On the software side, there's a great set of programs for radio hams called Hamcalc. Useful for things like winding inductors (toroid and air-core), designing antennas, working out resistances in parallel, and all sorts of cool stuff.
Unfortunately it only runs in DOS (and only with GWBasic). I've considered converting some of them to Perl, but the guy makes extensive use of absolute screen positioning, which would make it a bit tricky (yeah yeah I know, I could do it with Perl's ncurses interface).
Still, it's worth keeping around on my laptop's DOS partition. I wonder whether it'd work in dosemu . . .
Someone you trust is one of us.
mate, those 3c509 cards are true trojans, we had them at my last work from 486 days and I believe they're still in the new p4 computers that are running at the moment...
The next oldest piece of hardware is the Sun IPX that is my mail server. That's what, early '90s?
That's about it really, I used to have a rotary telephone, but I upgraded to a cordless and they don't come in a rotary version (it does have a rotary emulation switch though).
Oh, wait, there's this neat serial line diagnostic tool made by Hard Engineering out of Huntsville, AL. It's called a ByteBug 645. It's basically a little serial terminal that works inline. It does a lot of other stuff, but that's about all I know how to use it for. I figure it's probably circa mid-80s. Anybody know of these things?
The processor is a 4.77 MHz 8088 (with a separate 8087 co-processor). It has 256K on the motherboard and another 256K in an XT add-on board. It still has DOS 3.? on it, but I don't think I have the installation floppies any longer.
At one time, I had a complete 386 motherboard with its own memory in an XT slot. It used the rest of the PC for I/O and keyboard/monitor. When I replaced the computer with a 486/33, I sold the 386 motherboard and retired the original system to the closet.
deletethisbuelldozer_fu@yahoo.com Email me.
Pretty common little box, still runs like a champ (relatively speaking):
/proc/cpuinfo
discore@oasis:~$ cat
cpu : Fujitsu or Weitek Power-UP
fpu : Fujitsu or Weitek on-chip FPU
promlib : Version 2 Revision 2
prom : 2.3
type : sun4c
ncpus probed : 1
ncpus active : 1
BogoMips : 39.83
Its not particullarly old , it is a 386 . Still works , although the batery is dead.
The accounting program used by the firm I work for is DOS based. The accountants threatened to leave if they changed it. So we have a pentium 166 running just this one stupid app.
It's sad.
I am using my Tandy 1000 RL (circa 1989?) as a monitor stand. Oh! Better yet, I'm using an Apple Power Macintosh 6100/66 as a monitor stand at work. It's from mid 1985.
//c, with 128kb of RAM and an internal 5.25" floppy drive, while my uncle (an engineer) was running a brand-new, super-expensive, super-powerful Macintosh -- no adjectives, since the Macintosh came out only the year before. How I wanted one of those!!
//c and some of the software for it, and it still works. The expensive RGB monitor that I got with it is still pretty nice, although tiny.
A little off on the Mac date. The Power Mac 6100/66 was introduced in 1995, not 1985. In 1985, I was running my beloved, brand-new Apple
I still have my
BTW, you're right, the Tandy 1000RL was in the late 80s/early 90s.
Oldest machine on my network that's in everyday use is a Quadra 700 from 1991. It's a 25mhz machine, 1gb scsi hd, and 68mb of ram (4 mb on the motherboard). It acts as a secondary dns server, and I run sshd on it to access my home network remotely. Currently it has a 90 day or so uptime; it would be longer but it's not attached to a UPS.
Mine is about 20 years old. Works great. It is my main keyboard.
Get a free ipod.
Hard to believe, but I still use my ZDS SuperSport "laptop" that I got from a bulk PC purchase.
it's an old 8088 with a 20mb hard disk and a 720k floppy. runs msdos 6.22 and windows 3.0. I pretty much use it for typing papers using WP5.1 and the like. I have used it to check E-mail with a 300 baud external modem that I have for it, but I dont recommend it unless you have a ton of paitience.
I have another one of these that I use for parts to keep the other one running.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Oh, and this sucker draws a LOT of power; I've got to down an extra Dew every day just to produce the glucose it needs for normal operation. In stealth relay-node mode it takes three! They don't make 'em like that anymore!
</end bad attempt at fiction>
--
Power to the Peaceful
Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
Michael: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
Terry: You're right there Obediah.
Eric: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
Michael: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
Graham: A cup ' COLD tea.
Eric: Without milk or sugar.
Terry: OR tea!
Michael: In a filthy, cracked cup.
Eric: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
Graham: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
Terry: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
Michael: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
Eric: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
Graham: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
Terry: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
Michael: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
Eric: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US
. Graham: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
Terry: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
Michael: Cardboard box?
Terry: Aye.
Michael: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Graham: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Terry: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Eric: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
Michael: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope.
*Still* negative function...
I got a Pentium 133 system with 65M RAM running as my firewall at my house.
The company I work for uses an old dos accounting program called NewViews.
My Atari 1040ST, 1MB, 8MHz, is running just fine.
I do have to get the old Atari 800XL (64K, 2MHz) back out of storage and running though. Some cool old games on there that are just so much more fun in the original instead of emulation.
At work, we have a Sun IPX running Solaris 2 that we use for cross-platform development. We're just now thinking about replacing it with a Sun Ultra 60 because our budget allows it, but we've really had no problems with the IPX at all.
At home, we have a 133MHz 5x86 (a pin-compatible version of the 80486 from AMD) with 32MB of RAM running NetBSD that is functioning quite well as a DHCP, DNS, NT PDC. The only problem I've run into it is trying to get it to be a tape backup server, but I think that's too much to ask of a 486, so I'll move the tape drive over to faster machine. Here's a picture of it.
SPARCBook 3XP
DEC Multia. Not sure what to do with this thing as yet. It gets FAR too hot to keep running for too long.
P2 233. Fileserver as of the weekend.
Computone 8-port serial card, circa 1988 (not using it, but I'd like to, somehow...)
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
This question was made for me! My main box is a Pentium Pro 200 from 1996.
I have just finished upgrading my Dell Dimension XPS Pentium Pro200n to RedHat 9. Why did it take me so long? Well...my floppy drive was a bit wonky, so I couldn't use a boot floppy and I wanted to boot off CD. But ISOLINUX was having trouble booting off my CD, because the BIOS was so old that I couldn't run El Torito correctly. Turns out (googling revealed someone else from March of 2003 with the same computer and same problem) that a BIOS flash would work -- except of course my floppy drive didn't work, so I couldn't use the Dell-supplied program to make a boot disk (as my floppy drive didn't work -- though it took me a box of 10 new floppies before I decided that it was the drive and not just declining standards in floppies). Eventually I went in to school, made a boot disk, then used 'dd' to extract the image, burned a bootable CD (see, bootable CDs that only used the 1.44 MB area booted okay, but ISOLINUX ones weren't), flashed the BIOS, installed RedHat 9, and I'm ready for another few years!
In retrospect I realize that I could probably have created a fake floppy drive under FreeDos (just create a filesystem-in-a-file and told it to mount as A:) to get the BIOS flash program without ever using a floppy drive. I now no longer have a floppy drive, or even a /mnt/floppy!
Also, I do plan to get a new computer within the year, but keep this old one (beatrice -- I name my boxen after characters from Dante) around as a file server and off-site backup.
The computer runs fine with GNOME, though no nautilus (mostly to save on memory). Mozilla/FireBird runs a bit slow, but that's my only complaint. It's really the Franken-system: only the motherboard, case, and power supply (and a few cards) are original. The hard drive has been replaced (twice), the CD-ROM became a CD-RW, I replaced the case fan, upgraded the memory, and I've even just replaced the monitor (old one has been getting a bit shaky/bouncy). However, 2MB of video memory doesn't go far on a new 19" monitor, so I've had to upgrade the video card too! (that and the S3 ViRGE (Number 9 Reality 332) has snow problems in XFree 4.3).
It's getting to sound like grandpa's hammer, where the head has been replaced 3 times and the handle twice, but it's still grandpa's hammer.
Running DOS programs in a DOS window in Windows? Feh, my job uses old 286, 386, and 486 computers (with some low-clock pentiums, but they're rare) running DOS to do our product testing. Running DOS-only applications, fighting the memory limit, etc (They won't let me tweak it to run in protected mode for more memory).
There are even test sets using technology (and some components) older then I am!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I yanked the memory out of my old Packard Bell Pentium 100, and stuffed it into my Gateway P120 - for a whopping 73 megabytes of ram. The hard drive that was also in the Packard Bell is still running in the Gateway as well (1.4 Gig drive). That system is running Redhat 8 - and serves files from another 20 Gb drive partition as well as running Seti@home 24/7.
I may actually resurrect the Packard Bell case and motherboard as a firewall - we shall see (I have a tentative offer of a free AMD 400 mhz motherboard, with CPU and 128 meg of ram that I will jam into another case I have - at which point the P120 will take over as the firewall, at which point the Packard Bell may be left to die - or I might just turn it into a test box for testing assembly language applications - thinking of doing some OS and filesystem hacking - and/or as a controller for some other hardware I have lying around). While I would love to have really fast machines for all kinds of activities, money limits what I can do - and so I make do with lesser machines as needed.
The really old stuff I have had is long on the scrap heap -a PC XT, a 286, a 486, a TI 99a, and an Atari 800XL are all gone along with their peripheral devices (20 Mb hard drive, cassette recorder, EISA 6 Mb Memory module, various 5 1/4" floppy drives etc...)
The neatest old machine I ever had was a Toshiba laptop XT clone, that had 1mb of ram, and had DOS in a ROM chip - so it would boot up to DOS without having to insert a floppy disk. The disk drive was a, then new, 3 1/2" DD floppy drive - there was no hard drive. It also had the first back-lit supertwist LCD monitor and was very easy on the eyes - 4 shade monochrome CGA. You could also set up a semi-non-volatile ramdisk - which would stay active as long as you had battery power to the machine - regardless of if it was off or on - a nice touch so you could keep handy tools, like Norton Commander at your fingertips. I traded the thing in for my 286.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
My case 'brand' label sticker is an original "IBM Personal Computer" label which I pried off a real one sitting by a dumpster, then superglued it on to my generic case. The labels were the same square size back then as they are now. It amused me.
(I did grab the PC too, but it was pretty much gutted, so I put it back at the dumpster.)
I still have one client with a company wide Q&A (Symantec) database that was started in 1983. Fortunately it was written well and has survived even on current XP boxes. I have offered to upgrade them to a Windows based application, but they don't like the costs that will be incurred. They are not the only ones. I guess I should be happy they liked my system, but 20 years seems a bit long of tooth.
And yes, I still do modifications on it from time to time.
Sig under construction since 1998.
If you buy a 1541 or 1571, you can hook it up to your PC with a parallel cable. The cables are easily made, and there's freely available software for DOS, Linux, and Windows.
Unfortunately, Commodore disks aren't readable by PC 5.25" drives, as the 1541 uses GCR, an incompatible encoding scheme. PC floppy drives use MFM.
You can pick up a 1541 off ebay for $1 - $10 + shipping, or probably find one at a local secondhand shop or swapmeet. You might want to avoid the '41 in favor of a '71, as they are less prone to misalignment.
This setup works both ways, so if you have Commodore hardware (like my venerable 128D), you can use all the elite CBM warez on it.
I have a Single Sided Double Density full height 5.25 inch floppy drive installed in my PC. I use it to move files from the PC to my Kaypro II. I also have a Double Sided High Density half height drive that I use to copy files to my 20 year old PDP-11.
The 80 meg drive I'd been using as a root drive since first installing Linux (Slackware) 1.0 way back in '94 died about a month ago, so I can't count it I guess.
That takes care of the 'new' stuff. For old stuff, I've got a working PDP-8/E (30+ years old), a PDP-11/24 (25 or so years old), a PDP-11/73 (20 something), a PDP-11/83 ( 20 something), a Tandy M100, a Tandy PC-2, and a Commodore 64.
slightly modified to 2MB RAM and a SCSI card hooked up to a 20 MB HD running System 7.0.
I run an OLD copy of Word on it. Apart from that, it's on its own LAN (it doesn't do 10BaseT or TCP/IP so I bridge it through another Mac,) and its basically useless, but it IS ancient and people were asking.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
A 10 year-old HP LaserJet 4M Plus is the oldest computer item I have in regular (daily) use. There's been no particular reason to replace it since the resolution (600 dpi) is mostly high enough for text work and the construction quality and durability is SO much higher than the current junk...
I have an Atari 2600 hooked up. I still play combat occasionally.
-Dave
3MB RAM, Win3.1 I use it as a serial terminal for debugging of embedded systems.
Oh well, what the hell...
... I've got 100 million-year-old DNA coding for my basic body shape. I think that probably would count as firmware.
At least as much as your cross counts as "hardware," anyway.
(On-topic: P200 running [intermittently] as a GPS-based NTP server. Bits and pieces of it date to 1994 or earlier. Most of the really old stuff I have long since retired in favor of newer, smaller, faster or lower-powered hardware.)
Long live monitors with physical knobs for contrast, brightness, vsize, hsize, etc!!
We have a Pentium I/200 and a Cyrix/233 with 64M RAM each of which make very nice LTSP terminals. The Pentium I is early 90s vintage. It is descended through a line of upgrades from a 256K IBM XT serial number 00100 with 10Meg disk running SCO Xenix. The old XT supported two users just fine, one on an ASCII terminal (which gave up the ghost just this year) and one on the console with the IBM MDA (text only) video adapter. I could never figure what people saw in DOS.
Finally, we have a ThinkNiC LTSP terminal from just a year or so ago.
The server is a $400 Dell 500SC with 384M ECC RAM and we have a Linksys 100BT switch. I bought RedHat 7.2 boxed retail set at MicroCenter and bought the Ximian Gnome CD (and keep both upgraded via cable modem).
We support 5 users for less money and better performance on word processing and web browsing than a single user Windoze machine. Caveats: The LTSP terminals can play "breakout" just fine on the 100BT network (except for the 486), but more intensive arcades require the console. Also, I suspect the reason our neighbors Windoze setups are so slow has more to do with Virii/Spyware/Adware than with Windows efficiency.
Yes, all terminals are in use quite often as our 4 daughters, my wife, and myself all try to work/play at the same time (we are still one short!)
While the neighbors are impressed, the line of 4 terminals on a long table (the fifth is in another room) makes them think it is some sort of special computer lab setup. They simply will not believe this is an ordinary consumer setup (or more likely they lose interest when they find out it won't run Windows games).
Oldest still in-service piece of computer equipment in the house. Hooked up to the Video and Audio out of the VCR in the exercise room. Still has better picture than most modern TV's . . .
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Now it has 20 MB RAM and 1.5 GB disk. It runs Word 5, Canvas. The thing is, it's faster than 'modern' machines, due to bloatware. My Athlon 1800+ with 512 MB RAM is ostensibly 1000x (or so) faster - but the Mac starts things up quicker. Disks are only a little faster now. IDE hasn't hardly caught up with SCSI (before II). Abiword claims tables now - maybe I'll switch soon.
It made the leap to the internet in 1995 at age 8. I'm stuck at Netscape 2, however.
It was just a year ago, or so, that I finally moved my email to a new machine.
-- Stephen.
The PowerMac 6100 came out in 1994.
I just pulled 20 of them from a lab last month as we replaced them with new Dells. They were running OS 9.0.4, 40 MB RAM, 2GB HD, 233GHz G3 upgrade processor. They were used by the Math department (Mathematica 4, various stat software), Fine Arts (Photoshop 6, Illustrator 8), and Biology departments (genotyping software). The biggest trouble we had with the Macs were the hard drives and monitors failing. The room was poorly ventilated and would heat up with 20 monitors going. Can't imagine what it's like now with all the PIVs in there. Not my problem as I'm the Mac Guy.
As for the PPCs, a bio professor purchased 8 of them to run his genotyping software. It was cheaper than finding or getting a PC version of the software. I gave him a bunch of extra hard drives, processors and monitors and said they're his responsibility. As for the rest, they'll be stripped of parts and eBay'd soon.
I drank what? -- Socrates
You know, the old "wake the parents" model with the really clicky keys. I actually picked up 5 more at a computer show (for $10, total), and have given them to the kids, my parents, etc. There is a wonderful "clicking cacophony" when everyone gets going at the same time.
The voicemail computer is a 486DX100.
Most of the workstations are Compaq P100 with 32 megs of RAM.
My personal workstation is a P120 with a whopping 64 megs of RAM.
The web server is a P120 running RH Linux 6.2.
Actually I just got rid of my old floppy drive today, doing a bit of internal dusting and thought "I don't need that!" ...and now that I see it mentioned, my power cord is also from the same six year old system the floppy came from. I also removed a SCSI card that I had to use, it was for my gigantic HP 4c colour flatbed scanner($1,700 new!) It's for sale btw.
:-P ...maybe someday.
Hmm maybe I should have put my old floppies onto a DVD with my new DVD burner...then again they were supposed to go onto CD-ROMs when I got that
My dad is an attorney a few years ago he finally upgraded his office computers from 386's to p3s, I being the intrepid geek inhereited them (10 386's) I've stuck some ISA nics in them (He had a coax network) and have them running in a little cluster, they're my little toy.
I just replaced a 386 with 2MB of RAM and a 4GB SCSI hard disk with a 3.2GHz P4/256MB/40GB (it's what I had handy. Sue me.) to run a DOS 6 Clipper-based point-of-sale application that probably originated on an XT. The motherboard or CPU didn't survive a power failure.
... and I'm in regular contact with a customer who has a Netware 3 server with nearly 4000 days of uptime.
The oldest hardware I still use is a Honeywell Footed Mouse.
It's probably 12 or 13 years old.
I also have a couple 20MB Seagate SCSI drives that still work.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
It is not the most portable (as far as doorstops go). But boy does it work.
George II -- Spreading Freedom and American values, one bomb at a time.
http://www.ahleman.com/ElectriClerk.html
I use the radiator from an old 57 chevy as a heat sink.
www.olin.edu
Classic for home automation, 1400 for weather monitor.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Let's hear it for the classic SGI boxen!!!
I've recently gotten a Personal Iris 4d/35 - 36Mhz baby. It's a monster though, 96mb ram and the upgraded sound/video. IRIX 5.3 runs great with netscape and all, AUI transciever to get it onto the wired. Weighs 70lbs and the monitor's about the same. The monitor sent me over laughing from having a huge (and very loud) fan. The monitor's louder than the machine.
I'm still using a now 12-year-old old ADB keyboard from a
68040 Quadra 660 AV on a six-year-old B&W G3 that's
sitting in the corner running as a fileserver.
The old ADB keyboards still let you reboot and issue some
rudimentary commands from the keyboard after a machine
locked up, something the newer USB boards don't do.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
It was originally a high end 386 sx/33 system!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Up until very very recently, I was still using an HP DeskJet PLUS from circa 1989. It cost about $1000 when I got it new, and I had upgraded it with a TimesRoman and a Helvetica font cartridge.
It was first connected to my PCJr running IBM DisplayWrite 4.
Then, it was connected to my PS/2 Model 80 (80386 16Mhz) running WordPerfect 5.2 under DOS and OS/2 Warp.
Then, it was connected to my Pentium 100Mhz running Windows for Workgroups.
Then, to a Pentium II, 500Mhz, Windows95.
Then, to an Athlon 700Mhz, running RedHat Linux 6.2.
Then, very briefly, to a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz and Red Hat 8.0.
Now its been replaced by a Canon photo printer, but the HP still looks better than the Canon for Black and White letter style output. Ink Cartidges are still available, and still outrageously expensive. (They've remained at a fairly constant $24.95 ever since 1989.)
and more often than you'd expect.
at job[-3], the packet routing between $ENGINEERING_LAN and $CLUSTER was done with... a lowly dual-NIC-upgraded IPX, circa 1991. this was in early 2000. the same place had *just* decommisioned a sun sparc 20 (circa '95) as their web and mail server.
at job[-1] (left those bastards last fall), they still had a ss20 in active service as a secondary dns server, and monitering service server (the "ping the other services" service).
it's commonly said that Sun hardware has a ten-year operational lifespan, and given what I've seen, i wouldn't doubt that. it's simply manufactured to a higher standard than x86 gear usually is [nb: i haven't had to herd anything mroe recent than an ultra60 so I don't know what their more modern servers and workstations are like].
i'll definitely echo what another poster said about looking in research labs for the really old computers. during my experiences at the U of Texas chemistry dept, I saw 286s driving all sorts of instrumentation, and the student labs' instruments were running on things like Mac SE/30s to drive the even more ancient instrumentation. it wasn't uncommon to be conducting experiements on instruments that was predated you by a decade or more...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
primarily an experiment to see if it would work.
It did. The machine has 16 MB RAM, and 170 MB
disk. I ran Peanut Linux on it. I stripped the
kernel down a bit (I recompiled the kernel on
a faster machine for speed - but I used to
recompile kernels, etc., on my 486sx/25 laptop
that also had 170 MB disk. That machine died,
however). Running the SETI unit did cause the
machine to swap a little. SETI's working set
is something like 13 MB. Anyway, it took 26 days
to run - but the results were accepted!
Yes, SETI@Home can run in 16 MB RAM.
The effort was worth a few geek points.
-- Stephen.
I have a C64 SID chip installed in my PC (1982?). My mother uses MS Fortran v2.
I collect and restore old Apple equipment for fun.
My web/mail/file server is a beige Power Mac G3 minitower from 1997, running Mac OS X 10.2.8. It hasn't been down for more than a total of a half hour over the past two years, only for reboots after OS patches.
I've set up a Mac Color Classic (1993), a Mac IIfx (1990), and a Mac IIci (1989) with Ethernet cards and the current version of the iCab 68k web browser. They can all surf the web -- extremely slowly, and the Color Classic's 512x384 display makes this an exercise in tedium, but it *can* be done.
I use an Apple IIGS (1986) as a television set. The CPU isn't powered; I just have a tuner (a VCR) hooked up to the computer's original composite color display, which still looks crisp and sharp.
I'm still running a BP6 with dual 500's, i have an arc logic 2000 videocard, you know, "the first EVER pci video card" or its at least that old :).
It's running the big ol' - super - clickity IBM keyboard for an 8086 and a 14' regular VGA from a ps/2 286 machine.
Also have a mac6100,7100,8200 running various OS's from OS 7.5.5.1 to linux.
the tandy trs80 is in the garage "compiling dust" (get it?)
oh wait! i got it, the oldest peice of hardware I still have plugged in is......MY F*NG FLOPPY DRIVE, DIE FLOPPY DIE!
An Epson Stylus Color 400. Old, has a Centronics connector on it, but it bloody works.
Just for sheer novelty value, I still have a working Intellec 8, with the 8080 UPGRADE card (from an 8008!) installed. It's connected to an ASR-33 teletype printer with perf-tape punch and reader (for those backups), and a pair of iCOM Frugal Floppy 8" drives in a case with power supply.
18 slot machine, 16 Kb of RAM, 16 Kb of ROM. Dozens of red LEDs, monitoring the state of every signal line. Rocker switches to load in every address and data bit, and a momentary rocker to single-step the processor.
Wheeee!
I have an AT&T Globalyst 630 that has been running at my house for years. Its a SCSI based P100/64MB ram. It's current duties are Squid and my SSH server that I can get into from the outside world. I also have Apache and Squirrelmail on it but don't use them often.
some of dmesg:
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 99.996 MHz processor.
Calibrating delay loop... 199.47 BogoMIPS
Intel Pentium with F0 0F bug - workaround enabled.
top:
10:32pm up 24 days, 1:11, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.00, 0.00
48 processes: 47 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.7% user, 1.3% system, 0.0% nice, 97.8% idle
Mem: 61868K av, 61092K used, 776K free, 0K shrd, 1928K buff
Swap: 118760K av, 22376K used, 96384K free 28096K cached
It has been up for 200+ days many times in the past but that current uptime corresponds to when my power was restored after hurricane Isabel passed though. It is headless and KB less. I telnet/ssh in and update as required.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The company I work for support DOS still. The windows is more powerful, since you've got the memory to play with, (and it's getting the attention). But we still support DOS.
I know of many companies that live on early 90's databases where the vendor is out of buisness, and their are not any suitable alternitives. I know of cases where the upgrades from 486-100Mhz/DOS network Database to P4/XP/Windows version is so much slower that it literally doubled the time it takes front office workers to take each call.
I guess my point is that many of those useing old systems do so for a good reason, and not because they are too cheep to do so.
My machine at home is an Athlon XP 2000+ with a GeForce4 Ti4200. However I still use the some of the same hardware I had when it was a Celeron 300A. I use the same 15" Adi ProVista monitor (has bad moire problems, and it's only a matter of time before i smash it with a sledge); my Creative-Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard (a $22 value); and my Zoltrix ZX-75 speakers (the right one just died the other day, so it's time to get new ones...hopefully with a new soundcard). Other than that, i still have the original case, keyboard, and scroll mouse. I just gave the original 6.4 GB hard disk away to my roommate too, in exchange for about $10.
Beyond that, I've done numerous "System-ectomies" where I pulled out the old 286/386/486 that lived in the case, and replaced it with BX-chipset based AT motherboard, and a Celeron CPU. (Easy upgrade actually). Did the same with my Dad's system: From a Pentium 100 to P3-550.
I worked at an ISP this summer, and I got a chance to install Irix 6.5 from scratch on a R4000 based Indigo workstation (I think those are circa 1991). Weirdest install I've ever done, but then again, I've only ever installed DOS/Windows and Mac OS software.
Hardware fun......
I can't spell ripburger
*lol*
Hey, shoot me an email if you want some quick $ for those old drives. I take the magnets out of them and make cloak clasps for my friends at the Renaissance Festival.
Although, since he was an AC, I wonder if he'll check back in on this thread.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
http://www.atarinews.org/8bit/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a 1950s model tube oscilloscope I dumpster dived from the University of Virginia and it is usually hooked up to the right audio channel of my PC (some sort of year-old Athlon with 700+ megs of RAM). It makes nice visuals without using any CPU power, although things tend to drift around the green circular screen as it gets warm. The fumes from the tubes also makes my laboratory smell like a 1950s recording studio, minus the cigarettes.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
I got this used a few years ago, and run OpenBSD on it now. Specs:
CPU: Pentium i486 DX4 100 (overclocked)
Memory: 32MB RAM
HD: 500mb (BIOS won't detect higher)
CDROM: 2x
NIC: NE2000 Compatable Combo Card (10BaseT and Cat5)
Video: Cirrus Logic 1mb
Soundcard: Original SB 16 ISA
Then there's my HD3000 Dumb Terminal (1989?) and an Atari ST 1040 (1986?). I used to have an old DEC clone DT/80 dumb terminal until 1997, when I loaned it out and the person burnt out the tube from leaving it on too long (I don't know how old it was, but there was a repair ticket on it that showed it was last serviced in 1976).
I just rebuilt my girlfriends computer, I was going for least amount of money spent possible (came in at under $100). I still need to replace the HD, so for now the OS is running on a 2gb Western Digital that has been in constant use for the last six years. The computer is/has been only turned off when moving. That's the oldest thing in use, I also have a working 8086 ibm portable that has no hd, but two 5.25" floppy drives. Just the thing to run DM Assistant on.
Definitely the best "old" part of my current computer. It's one of those black allsop ones - with the matching mousepad. Nice and squishy, and it doesn't slide around (or fall off -- curse those "built-in" plastic annoyances we have at school)
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
Sparc Classic 50Mhz, 48MB RAM, OpenBSD. Early 90's I believe. I still own older computers but that one is on pretty much 24x7x365.
I have a 1979 Fender Strat. I was amused to see this model listed on the 'net for sale as a vintage instrument.
Old Motorola two-way radios can only be programmed by propriatary software that must be run on nothing faster than a 386 or 486SX25 machine. Motorola hasn't released newer versions since the radios themselves are officially obsolete. Tell that to countless Police, Fire and EMT agencies still using them.
To that end, I'm still looking for a decent laptop of that vintage with a good battery and serial ports.
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT
I have a circa 1993 Sparc IPX workstation with various accessories including a 19" color monitor. I bought the whole thing for $20 when my company was clearing out the old junk back in '99. Its currently running Red Hat 6.2, but I suppose it could use an update. :)
- Necron69
Um, yeah, and not shelling out $20K to re-create somthing that still works.
I have, and still occasionally use, a Radio Shack Model 100. That's the laptop with the 40x8 screen.
Sure, it's only got 64KB of memory, but it will run forever on 4xAA batteries. And the keyboard is great.
Other than some floppy drives that are still floating around here, the oldest computer I'm still using is a 7043-140 43P RS/6000 from about 2000. The design is from 1998-2000, so it was produced at the end of the run. It's a PowerPC 332Mhz 32bit RS6k. It runs great as a lightweight firewall/squid server, that combined with it's integral 24 gigabyte tape drive really makes it a bargain. Check ebay. I bought mine new-in-the-box for about 250 bucks.
My daughter still uses a Leading Edge Model D for word processing. She's completely proficient with LEWP (Leading Edge Word Processing). The unit is an 8088 running at 8 mhz I believe, with Hercules graphics and an amber monitor. 640 K memory and a 30 meg hard drive....and it still has it's original 1200 baud modem! Its printer is an IBM 9 pin graphics printer. MS-DOS 3.1 is the operating system. Fill it out with a 5 1/4" floppy (low density) and you've got one HELL of a computer (for 1985 that is....) Of course, she does have an IBM laptop with a PIII-800 in it..but many of her earlier poems are still on the Leading Edge.
One runs slackware Linux. The other runs OS/2 Warp 3. Both have 16Megs or RAM, 1G HD, QIC40 tape drives. 3.5 and 5.25" floppy drives and 4x CDROMs. I built these in early 1993 for about $1000 each. For several years, I ran OS/2 and developed applications using Smalltalk V for OS/2. I seldom use these today but last time I checked, about a month ago, the both worked OK.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Nintendo NES with 5 carts
Five Commodore 64 and 1541 disk drive
Commodore 128 and 1571 disk drive
A shoebox filled with C= floppies
Apple ][ clone with floppies and monitor
Atari 2600 second gen, 6 carts
Sinclar ZX-81 with 16KB and printer
And most importantly, transfer cables to move data between C= and A][ to the x86 PCs via LPT
I'm still using my 12 Mhz 286 computer that I bought in 1989.
Of course, I've replaced the motherboard and CPU five times, the case and power supply twice. It's had three keyboards, five modems, five mice, two network cards, and it's on the third sound card and sixth video card. The floppy drive was replaced once, and the hard drive has been replaced 6 times. But it's a hell of a 286, let me tell you.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
My oldest working computer is a DECmate III. It is one of the slim-line late models, and includes the 1200 baud modem and Z-80 CP/M card upgrades. Wonderful machine. Even have the LP-50 printer to go with it. However, I do not use it often. For that, you would need the TI-99 4/A. Parsec, Munch Man, and Tunnels of Doom! Oh, yes, baby! I've also got a Sparc Station 20 that my company at the time purchased for me new. It is now configured as an X server for remote client software, but will become my web server when I get a new system.
munch man is the best!!!
Funny, your wife told me the same thing...
I have a 1993-1994 vintage DuoDock Mac PowerBook model 230 that still works beautifully. It's got a grayscale display, 16 megabytes of RAM (a powerhouse!) and a 40 megabyte hard drive. I experienced moments of panic and desolation when its docking station failed, but someone from a local university sold me a mini-dock for it that's even better than its original equipment. The 14.4 modem still works fine, but even from NCSA's archive we can't get a browser that will cruise today's Internet adequately. I've often pondered setting it up on the network, and if I'm ever drunk and with time on my hands, I might try to do that. It runs Nisus' word-processor quite adequately, and I still use it for non-technical writing.
This little machine weighs 4 1/2 pounds and has been all over the world with me, traveling happily in whatever backpack or briefcase I felt inclined to put it. I've written a lot of words on it, and it's been powered-on in bars, at campfires, on boats and picnic tables. It's made several canoe trips without mishap.
I like to think that what will happen to it eventually is that one morning many years hence, someone will say, "Aha. Granny's finally checked out," and somebody else will say, "Yeah. Guess what. The DuoDock checked out, too."
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
I'm typing this on an SGI Indigo 2 that I bought at auction a few weekends ago. I finally got IRIX installed on it last week and it's a hell of a fine machine. The big tower case (it's the earlier one in teal) is from 1993. It and the 20" SGI/Sony Monitor were only $25.00.
But I have relics like an IBM PC Convertable here somewhere, and that's a far older machine. And a Synertek SYM-1, but I don't really use it much anymore.
A Good Intro to NetBS
To this day I'm still using the original 540M Maxtor hard drive in my original Aptiva (486dx2/66) with a 3c509 NIC, the original floppy and 2x CDROM -- all from 1994. It's running RH 5.1 and is a mysql server. That machine also has my sister's old 180M Maxtor dating back to 1992 or so. I also have a Sparc2 with a 480M SCSI drive in it running RH 6.2 for DNS and a mud I've fiddled around with. Another box of mine has an Adaptec 1540 SCSI card (ISA) hooked up to a couple 1G 5.25", full-height drives (sounds like a jet engine when it winds up). At work it's mostly new hardware, though I did recently overclock an old 233mmx to 290MHz so it could run our custom DOS POS and inventory application better. This DOS applications is around 14 years old, uses btrieve, and we're running it under 2k and XP. That program in itself is kind of funky running under a modern OS, but I'm not payed enough to rewrite it :)
- Jonathan
Why the assumption that a company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with free alternatives? Believe it or not, there is still some software for which free alternatives do not exist. And probably will never exist, because it is so specialized.
At one bio lab where I worked, I had to support a bunch of DOS machines connected to lab equipment, because the controller programs only worked in DOS, due to the age of the equipment. Replacing the device would cost more than your average waterfront condo, so it's not exactly as if the company was being "cheap". Besides, the old device worked fine - if it ain't broke... etc.
Another place I worked at used a proprietary database for storing patient records. The server was a 386SX/25 and was accessed from dumb terminals connected to a multiport serial board. Replacing/upgrading this woudl require spending a huge amount of money to obtain a new system, or a huge number of man-hours developing a new open-source system and getting it certified. (Such systems need to be certified what with privacy laws and the like.)
So, there are plenty of reasons why a company might keep old hardware arround - almost anything which has custom boards or software written for it is likely to be running on older hardware, simply because there's no reason to upgrade.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I have an 8500/180 that's still going strong, purchased in late 1996. It's been upgraded to a 500MHz G3 proc, but still runs MacOS 8.6. It's recently been demoted from being my main machine, as I've acquired a hand me down iBook which I'm enjoying, but I don't plan on getting rid of the 8500 any time soon.
My MIDI interface and sequencer software all runs great on the 8500 and won't on newer systems. I'm just a hobbyist with that stuff, so I feel no need to spend more money I don't have going current with hardware and software for that stuff. At least not now.
I have other hardware even older, but I've more or less retired that stuff. They've been powered down since I rarely use them. A dual proc Pentium Pro 180 running NT Server, a DEC AlphaServer 1000, a Quadra 800, Mac IISi, PowerBook 540c and a Pentium 200 all collect dust now.
I use a couple DEC Alpha PC164 boxes. They're no univac, but still my oldest, and favorite by the way. I'm running Debian on them and couldn't be happier. One day I'll cough up $99 for a license of TRUE64, but....
I love my ALPHAs.
greg
aka
Meatplow
as a stand for my new PC. My PC was too low down on the floor so its sitting ontop this old machine. Box only has mobo and ram (8x1Mb chips) in there, everything else has been stripped. I am still using it... just not for its intended purpose :D
My oldest machine in service is a AMD 400Mhz machine which is my BSD box. The firewall/gateway machine my mate runs at our place is a Pentium 133Mhz box and is the oldest box in service in the room.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
Errr.... Oh you mean computer hardware...
Aren't they doing computation with DNA these days?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Wouldn't it be "you get high on today's Tom Sawyer"?
That's the *newest* video card I have!
Asshole.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
"My uncle has had the same axe for 30 years. He's changed the head twice, the handle six times, but dammit, it's the same axe!"
That's the way I feel about my original computer. Purchased in Sept. 1992, it was a 486-33, 4MB ram, 120MB HD, 5.25 & 3.5 floppies. It's still running. Well, sort of. Over the years I bought a sound card, modem, SCSI card, scanner, CD-ROM, then proceeded to replace everything original out of the box with newer replacements. Even the case is gone (power supply gone, couldn't find a replacement the right size).
There is ONE part left from the original: the 3.5 floppy. It's really yellow now, but the thing refuses to die.
Only then, I guess, will I be able to say that I have my own axe.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Starting with the oldest, (all but #1 are homebrews)
1. REAL IBM PC-XT 5160 with CGA and IBM Color display. 10mb "Plus Hardcard" 2/FDD. Perfect condition, still play games on it.. (IBM DOS 3.3, 640k)
2. 90mhz Pentium 1 w/500mb HDD running Smoothwall as household firewall.
3. Toshiba Tecra 500CDT P120 (YUK!) w/128m ram and 20g HDD. DB Winblows 98/2k for work only!
4. 200Mhz Pentium 1 w/Gentoo, 128m ram, 20g. In kitchen to listen to music while cooking.
5. 233mhz Pentium 1 w/Damn Small Linux, 256m ram, D.S.L. installed on 200mb HDD, use in garage to listen to music streamed from house.
6. 350mhz (OC@400mhz) with 256m ram, 44gigs running Mandrake 9.1 and KDE 3.1.4 Use for Private FTP for friends, also streams audio to household lan and I browse from it sometimes when main machine is busy..
7. The Beast. (Well, it was when I built it..) P4-2ghz, 512m ram, 200gigs, DVD, 52x24x52 CDRW, Nvidia GF4-Ti4200 VIVO, TWO 17" Trinitron displays for TwinView, HP 4p scanjet, LaserJet IIP, Mandrake 9.1, KDE 3.1.4 (soon to be 9.2)
I don't buy factory built machines, I buy components and build them myself the way *I* want them built..
I have numerous other old machines, dozens of them just sitting around that I don't use because, well, why should I?? I have more than enough now, anymore would run my electric bill up too much. Yeah, I collect clunkers. I get a personal thrill loading Linux onto a box that I rescued from a trash pile, I just can't pass one up. People throw away perfectly good machines ALL THE TIME and I get them totally for free, I only have to load them in the car and clean them up. It's scary how many (good) machines I have...
Although I am eagerly awaiting Doom3. I still like playing Pitfall & Adventure.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Perhaps the oldest piece of hardware I currently utilize in my main dual proc system is my original Hercules Monochrome ISA graphics card. I purchased it with my first XT (1984?) and I have it connected to a 8 inch monochrome screen that is absolutely beautiful for running console programs using mdacon.
Sure I have two other graphics cards in the machine, but for a dedicated console running top or some other console utility like a long compile, its great.
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
If the title wasn't enough to indicate to you that we have some old equipment, just recently the money got approved to remove an old Lantastic network! I have worked for this company for over 2 years and didn't even realize it was there until it came up as needing to be replaced! It operates in some graphics printing area.
;)
I think my boss told me we have a 9600baud analog point-to-point circuit for some app up until 6 years ago...
Half of our network is still on Token-ring...
Mmmm lets see what else.... One of our CAD areas is still running 8 386 16mhz PC's with a DOS application and some massive 21 inch monitors.
There is much more and much worse but that is all I can remember right now
If you guys like them so much, I know I like mine. They're still available at pckeyboard.com
My father has an old Atari that hasn't been turned on in years. He used it to write his "memoirs", which wouldn't be interesting to anyone but his kids. The point is, the floppies that he used seem to be FAT compatible, so I was able to move the files directly to a PC, then whipped up a quick Perl program to strip out the text from the formatting codes. This allowed me to avoid the use of a serial connection to transfer the data by wire.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Gateway 4DX/33V (VL bus) originally purchased in 1993
Upgrades:
- AMD 5x86 133MHz overdrive CPU
- 40MB of memory (was 8MB)
- new IDE controller (onboard controller failed)
- Additional 600MB hard drive (original 325MB still going strong)
- new case (ditched the original steel desktop case for a much lighter mid tower case)
- 10baseT NIC (came with none)
Downgrades:
- pulled the 5.25" floppy, sound blaster, modem, and Sony proprietary CDROM drive when troubleshooting and never bothered putting them back
Currently running FreeBSD 4.8/Apache 1.3.27 and serving up my personal web site over residential DSL.
I have a Jameco JE2019 tower case/power supply that I've had since 1988 or so. It's been through at least three different motherboards and currently has a Pentium II MB. Also a Northgate Omnikey 102 keyboard that I got at the same time and still works great. I have a couple of old Apple external 1X SCSI CD-ROM drives that I use regularly on a FreeBSD system.
Things that I still have, but don't use regularly include various computer items dating back to 1981.
with Adobe Postscript cartridge. It just keeps on chuggin'.
Also still have a Northgate keyboard...top quality...
OK, I've replaced the CPU a few times (Intel Inboard/386, 486DX2, Pentium/150), replaced the 20MB MFM hard drive (with 64MB RLL, 200MB IDE, now 1.2GB), and just about every other component a few times over as well. Along the way, the OS has gone from DOS 3.3 to Win3.0 to Win95 to Red Hat Linux 6.1-7.1. But the case, the power supply, and the 84-key keyboard are all the original kit.
(I also have a TRS-80 model 100 laptop I use occasionally, but I just picked that up second-hand a few years back, rather than owning it all along.)
2) one of the first computers i used at my old job was a quadra 700, upgraded with a genisis accelerator card for a blistering 50 mhz... when i left, they allowed me to take my quadra, still works, currently using it as a netbsd box
3) bought a compaq III portable, 2 meg RAM, DOS3.11, 10 meg HDD, thinking about a mini-itx conversion...
4) compaq reliant server, quad xeon 500mhz, currently utilized as an NT server/print spooler with some proprientary software...
5) cabletron smartswitch router 2000... great networking hardware
6) currently in storage, but they do get rotated into use are older harddrives(old wren full height drives, 500mg.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
...that I picked up late '88 or early '89 as I recall that still works perfectly and gets a fair amount of use. I have a //e as well but I can't say I really use it, just turn it on occasionally.
ER
I have three SS10, 1 SS5, 1 SS20, a SGI Indy 100mz, a dual P166 and a Dual P233. Bunches of old 2 and 4 gig SCSI hard drives as well as a 400 meg.
One of the Sparc 10s has 4 cpus. 50mz I think. One has 3 50s and one 2 90s.
I also have newer hardware and laptops, a 233 p2 and a 700 celeron. A dual 550 celeron and a 1.2ghz Duron.
I run Solaris, FreeBSD, Redhat and WinXP.
Can't forget my Zaurus.....
Love 'em all. Love my dualies the mostest.
Somewhat off-topic, but cogent to the above post: We had an employee at our office who used a 3270 emulator in a DOS window (maximized to full screen) to access all the functionality of his up-to-date Windows/Intel computer.
Additionally, we had a receptionist who thought that because we were an IBM business partner it would be okay if instead of using our word processing and document management software (an IBM product) it would be okay if she just brought in her old IBM typewriter. She didn't last long, as we're a paperless office/document/content management consultant group.
I am developing my current web app with (python/webware/postgresql/apache) on a sparc 4 70mhz, with 2gigs of space. it was the closest hardware around when i started development, it's a pain in the ass, but my fastest hardware is 400mhz anyway, so it doesn't matter.
another is my p60mhz gateway/firewall machine running openbsd.
my current laptop is a p90mhz toshiba 410CDT. slow as heck, just got it a wireless tmobile GSM card, now i have wonder wireless 20kbits/s link.
i have some sparc IPX and sparc 3/80s that I use for test machines, when I need to build an experimental network and such...
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Every piece of my computer is new as of a year ago (almost to the day) except for the keyboard that I've had since it came with the 8088 my dad brought home from his office. Maybe it was over-engineered or something, but this keyboard has been used continuously on an 8088-10, 286-16, 386-33, 486-133, Cyrix-183 (PR 233), K6-350, K6-500, and now Athlon-1667 (2000+). It gives me exactly the tactile feedback I want, and it doesn't have any of those @$#^ windows keys on it. I've got an AT->PS/2 convertor on it now (it has a built-in XT/AT switch), and I'll keep putting convertors on it as long as I need to. Most of the letters are still there too!
Compared to that, the 635 MB hard drive in the DSL router I built for my parents is state-of-the-art.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Even though you'd have to be pretty open about "the still in use" bit. It's the only box I've got (for whatever reason) that is happy with my old device programmer, and that's all it's used for.
I don't use that thing much anymore, it's been a long time since I burned PROMs or PALs. These days it seems like everything is in-circuit programmable. So the 486 just sits there, next to the PROM burner.
Other than that (older wise) it's a couple of 75 MHz Pentium laptop brains (used as embedded targets, running Linux) and a few pentium SBCs.
Let's see, I've got a 200 MHz Pentium Pro industrial box playing proxy d00d, and a couple of 400~500 MHz development boxes. Hmm, and a 300 MHz Pentium II industrial box as a data acquisition system. It's fun having a built in 19" rack!
Probably the oldest processor based gear running in my office/lab are some 8051 development boards.
Now if I could just get paid to do embedded systems again, it'd be great. That's what I get for moving to a technological backwards state.
Just so my 8 year old son could say "Come on Dad! Did they really use disks like that?"
You still live in your parents' basement then?
Up until a year ago, i had a Pentium 180Mhz in active duty as my firewall (Running LRP)
:) )
it died of RAM failure.
Now my router is a Pentium II 266Mhz acer aspire with an old fujitsu 2GB drive (the 4GB seagate it came with died), running RedHat8 and Shorewall, runs like a champ, and with it's new power supply and cpu fans (the originals crapped out within a week of each other, had been in continuous use since 1997), it's quiet and uptime would be in months except for the ups's unreliability...
The 2 oldest components still in use:
Packard Hell 13" monitor VGA, dated 12/1993
used on a much newer PII 350 running win2k, serves torrents, sharereactor and other goodies on demand.
2nd oldest and most useful:
Sound Blaster 16 Pro ISA
dated 1995.
Huge card when compared to the audigy, gives it a good run fore it's money when playing MP3's (installed in the above mentioned 350, my alarm clock
my friend, and resident uber geek, has a trio of working Cromemco systems (google = friend)
one of them is still in production, running a local furniture shop (with linux frontends on 486+ boxes to boot)
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
I still have a Digital 386SX laptop running Windows 3.1. It includes such state-of-the-art items as an 80 MB HDD, a 14.4Kbps fax/modem, a monochrome screen, and a nifty little Logitech trackball that clips to the side of the keyboard.
Hell, I didn't even think of power cords, but I do have a half dozen or so of the old IBM power cables that I 'rescued' from a college computer lab that they were gutting of 386s in the summer of 1995.
... there have to be some other pack-rat geeks out there]
[I know I'm not the only one who keeps a box of misc. power cables -- 12Ga, 16 footers, 14Ga extenders, the old IBM ones, 'Y' cables, converters to turn 'em back to a socket, etc
However, even older than those, and the three IBM Model M keyboards that I have (which I got in trade for doing work for someone.... and amazingly came from another university that auctioned off their stuff in the summer of 1999)
But the power cords reminded me of something else that I have -- a surge supressor that I picked up at a computer store that was cleaning out their old inventory in...um....I'd say about 1991 ? 1992. It's a 4-plug, but has a surpressor for 'ArcLAN', whatever that is.
Other than that, a pair of Bose 101 speakers that I picked up in 1991, I believe [the stereo's changed out a few times, but the speakers have stayed].
Oldest computer is a P100 [needed the ISA slot], oldest computer part is a pair of WaveLAN cards [2mbps, ISA], or maybe some old 9" VGA 4-grey monitors. Looking at non-computer stuff, my mom's hand-me down 11cup Cuisinart. Oldest computer that's not in use is a Vic-20, and oldest hardware that's not in use in an Intellivision... or maybe
a top-loading VCR....
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
My oldest computers are an Apple ][+, an Apple ///, and an original Macintosh. All of them are still fully functional. Of the three of them, I use my original Mac the most, usually to fool around in MacPaint. You can see them (and all my other macs) at My online Apple Museum.
--Z
I just used a 10 mhz 286 last week for analysis in a lab experiment. I go to a small state school in Denver and we get shit for funding because it's not a research school. (they only grant Bachelor's degrees, hence no grad students, hence no free slave labor for professors, hence no research)
So, last week's experiment in physical chemistry was a measurement of the change in temperature in the adiabatic compression of various gasses. The PC hooked up to the compression chamber is an archaic 10 mhz 286 with a whopping 8MB of ram running MS-DOS 6.1. They continue to use this machine because an upgrade in hardware would require a software (Vernier MPLI) update as well, and the software costs about $1000 per machine.
My TI-83 has more horsepower than this PC does.
We share a campus with a larger, better funded school. (CU Denver) The equipment in their labs, PCs and analytic equipment alike, is replaced with brand new stuff every few years. They have gear we can only dream about. (ICP, GC/MS, IR, and NMR that were made within the last 20 years, TEM and SEM...spoiled bastages)
Bitter? Naw, not me.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
For controlling my shortwave radio, I have an IBM PS/2 Model 30, 4.77MHz OKI 8086, 640K RAM, 720K floppy, 10MB HD. Spits out some weird IBM error at boot, but everything works fine, even though the case is actually beginning to rust. Is that a VGA connector on the back? No kids, its called MCGA. Lets move on.
A SparcStation IPC (40MHz I think, 24MB RAM, 2.1GB HD) is my nifty X terminal at home (big sun monitors are cheap) and my Sun 3/80 (25MHz 68030 with 68112) still plugs along but I have no use for it.
However, when I need to be portable, I have my trusty Panasonic Sr. Partner (4.77MHz 8086, 512K RAM, 1.2MB floppy, 20MB HD) with builtin thermal printer; or if I need to be portable and have communications abilities I will turn to the Compaq Portable III (Intel 80286 12MHz, 1MB RAM, 1.2MB floppy, 40MB HD, orange plasma screen, 2400bps modem, Windows 3.0)
Call me nostalgic, call me nuts, call me what you will, but the hardware doesn't fail. And, if it ever does, it might be fixable...that model 30 286 has some stuff wirewrapped to it. On the other hand, my dual AthlonMP has had its motherboard replaced three times and has had a cpu fail. I should bring a 386 down to school and use it as my main machine for a while just to see what ResNet will do to me.
i believe most airplane cockpits are required to carry a fashion of slide rule in case the electronics all fail (and so does the batteries in your fuel calculator) and you need to make various calculations.
you would never face the sudden dread of a fading calculator screen during a midterm...
-
1024x768 32 million colors
The guy who sold it to me said you don't need that resolution unless you are using CAD. I told him to shut up and just sell me the monitor.
God spoke to me
Built in 1982. Still hasn't been improved on.
I have a working KayPro 64. It runs an OS called CP/M. I don't use it for anything practical, just when I feel nostalgic for the click of the old Teletype keyboards.
do those count? they're .... kind of computers.. ;)
could go as far as atari 2600 in that case.... probably the oldes i have that is still hooked up and kicking...
p r m t h s
P.S. I still use Quattro Pro 4.0 for DOS (copyright 1992) on my Windows box to handle my budget. I built a very nice macro-automated, multi-sheet, tiled-windows system for tracking my finances back in the late 1980's (complete with graphs displaying history and projecting my bank balance over the next few years), and I have yet to find a reason to convert it to something else.
I have an old PowerBook 540c in mint condition. From the specs:
- introduced 1994.05.16 at $4,840; discontinued 1995.08.26
- requires System 7.1.1 or later; highest version supported without a PPC upgrade is Mac OS 8.1.
- CPU: 33 MHz 68LC040
- FPU: none
I bought it in 1998 for $20. I even ran rc5 on it for a while, and it would take about 3 days to finish the smallest block (with the rc5-64 challenge). It was a real POS, but it was small and portable.
My first machine was a 486-33 (really 25mhz, but overclocked)with 4 megs of ram running win3.1. I used it all through 1994-1996 until i could afford a pentium 200, which i still have collecting dust.
The oldest i am still using is a generic k6-400. Hey, it runs win98 just fine for web browsing and e-mail checking.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Recently I blogged about my ancient 8086 laptop.
Here's the full text, along with some pics.
It still works, and after having written that I even boot it from time to time, just to play some Lemmings. Oh, the memories...
My oldest box that I actually still use (unlike my IIgs which sits IN it's own special box in the garage) is my PowerMac 7500. Granted it's been souped up a bit, with a whopping 180MHz 604e and 164MB RAM, plus a fast/wide ultra scsi card and matching 9 gig drive, plus my old fast SCSI-2 4 gig Seagate Barracuda (damn that drive gets hot). For networking it's got a 3C905. I made a token effort to get my Voodoo Banshee working under X (I think it's possible) but I gave up when I realized I'd have to switch the connector back to the built-in video anytime I wasn't in X.
For software, when I first pulled it out of the mothballs I ran NetBSD for a while. Then I got sick of it's poor hardware support (well it IS a rare machine these days) and switched over to Yellow Dog Linux. I still fool with MacOS 9 under hot Mac-On-Linux action!
Actually, the question was "Oldest hardware", not necessarily oldest computer. While it's less to brag about, I think my LaserJet III is my oldest piece of hardware that still sees regular service.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
A CPA friend of mine uses an accounting program called BPI. I think he acquired it some time in the mid 80s. It's obviously not Y2K compatible, but did that stop him? NOOOOOOO.... He simply emters checks with the calendar year 1999, regardless of what the real year is. He is still using it in 2003, almost 20 years later.
The place where you are likely to find the oldest PC's is in instrumentation control. Often, a manufacturer will introduce a new product and abandon software upgrades to the old one. But labs that have a $10-20K system that is working fine are not likely to want to replace it. I've got one instrument running off a Leading Edge 486. It's software is not compatible with anything later than Windows 3. We run it with the clock set back, because it is not Y2K compliant. I've got another custom-built instument running on a Mac 7100 (upgraded from a IIci, which we keep as backup)--that's the most recent Mac that will accept its NuBus-based A/D and D/A cards. We've put together a newer system, but the old one still works fine, so we continue to use it.
Pencil and paper.
I use my old Powerbook 170 all the time; it's still an amazingly solid laptop. Great for word processing and old Mac games. I'm glad I got it used a few years ago though, apparently they went for $4000 USD new.
iMac/233 running debian. ssh://rockway.gotdns.org/
My other car is first.
It's running a custom installed Linux and acting as a firewall. It rocks.
Un-news
I have a Philips Focalpoint '386 running DOS that I use for some control projects at home. Tried loading Linux on it, but it only recognizes 1M memory no matter how much I install. There doesn't seem to be any way to get into the BIOS to poke around and change that... then again I haven't tried too hard.
But it's a sweet machine. Built like a tank!! I haven't seen sheet metal this thick even on the old IBM 5150s. It was designed for use as a Point Of Sale terminal and cost $30 surplus a few years ago.
... to buy very high end when I buy every few years but some parts just seem to slide along with the pc (there isn't enough difference between the old and the new to make a difference...)
:)
My flat out oldest part is my keyboard. It's an old PS/2 style keyboard off an ibm 8088 that *I* got in 89, but it was already used and pretty old at that point... So lets see... its between 14 and 23 years old.
My next oldest part is my Teac floppy drive coming in at 9 years.
Second oldest would be my 21" monitor, coming in at 7 years.
After that all the rest of the parts in my main machine are fairly new (2 years).
My other machines stretch all the way back to a 266 p2 and a SparcStation. God knows whats in them, i've not opened them in 5-6 years
Shadus
I bought a 17" Nokia 447X Monitor for about $1000.00 back in 1995. Still using it this very second.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
As frightening as this may be, my employer (which will remain nameless) is still using a 486 SX 25MHz cash register that runs Windows 95 and has a 400MB hard disk. This is the machine that records all of the product sales and time cards for the business.
Even more frightening is that it has fully crashed three times (to the point of format+reinstall) and everyone has to exercise caution when using it -- don't bump it the wrong way, lest it dies and loses all of the employees' hours. But my boss insists that we keep using it.
I really hope we're the only ones who are in this shape.
-a
HISSSSSS!!!! BAD MEDICINE!!!
When I worked in IT, we had to make regular trips to reset all the keys that the lusers had accidentaly reprogrammed.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
My first computer; A Commodore PC-10 III IBM PC XT compatible. 8088 CPU running at 3 speeds (standard @ 1.5Khz, double @ 3.0Khz, and turbo @ 4.0Khz). Dual 5.25" 360K floppy drives, 640KB RAM, MDA/CGA/Hercules/Plantronics ColorPlus onboard display and a 14" Datatrain CGA monitor. Came with MS-DOS 3.2 and GW Basic.
Souped it up several years back just for kicks with an old internal 8-bit ISA 19200 ATI modem and a 20MB XT IDE hard drive loaded with MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 installed. It's currently connected to my LAN via a PLIP link to my Linux box, although I obviously don't turn it on much anymore. It's really only good for playing classic games like Shit Digger and Paratrooper.
100mhz shell server on bsdi with 256 megs of ram. I asked why don't you upgrade and they said 'no need this works fine'. Even if it averages a load of 3 it runs smooth. usually 20 users logged in, primary MX for over 300 domain names, and running smtp and pop for users. Proof old hardware is still worth using. Oh and that bsd is better then linux. Prepare for the flame wars...
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
Don't say that SCO requires 'no maintenance'. It might not get any, but, trust me, it requires some. The sad truth is that most companies are accustommed to having their computers crash and not work right. It's *accepted*.
I just got done working in a very similar situation to that which you describe. The Openserver box required maintenance. It just didn't get any. Processes had to be killed every few days. They were used to rebooting the system once every few months. *No* patches had been applied since the OS was installed (not even Y2K stuff, lol). As for serial terminals, everyone prayed to the lightning gods during spring and fall thunderstorms; hoping that their terminal wouldn't be the next one fried. The server even caught fire once, or so I was told.
They were supposed to run database integrity checks every few months, but those were never done. They just wondered why errors cropped-up in their reports and stock files and usually attributted it to 'those darn computers' that never work right.
This company was in the same position WRT their supplier switching everything to Windows. It's just an excuse to sell more licenses and overpriced consulting. Their consultants will probably be switching those same systems to Linux in about five years, with another round of hardware and software upgrades.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
When I first submitted this story, I was tearing up my house looking for the driver CD for my old Sound Blaster Live card. For whatever reason, Creative didn't have Windows 98 drivers/software for the original version (the one I have, not the 5.1 version) available for download.
Anyway, on the subject of companies still using legacy hardware, nuke plants have to be the king of dinosaur computer users. No new nuke plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island accident in the late 70's, and all the hardware they use (everything from pump motors to computers) have to go through so much regulatory red tape that it is cost prohibitive to upgrade, hence, the computers running the control systems are all geriatric 70's era mainframes that constantly have to be maintained. Most nukes were never meant to go over 50-75% of their rated generating capacity, but in today's energy hungry world, utilities try to squeeze out every bit of energy they can from them, pushing them to 105% rated capacity and beyond. And the NRC is okay with this given the age of their control systems??
By contrast, I recently visited a coal burning power plant that uses various Windows 2000 machines and Sun hardware running Solaris, all networked together with fiber and using modern off-the-shelf control system software. So much for the "modern" miracle of nuclear power.
OK, and the oldest no-replacement-parts PC I still use is a Compaq Prolinea 3/25s, which (with hard drive removed, and a pair of old NE2000 clones) runs Coyote Linux as my firewall/router.
My main server at home is a P90, which has been running nearly continuously for almost 8 years. IBM hardware can be remarkably reliable, especially considering that this machine was from a fire sale. (I've added two hard drives, some memory, and a network card, but everything that was in there originally, with the exception of an undocumented piece of plastic, is still there; it has a CD-ROM that's actually older, but I don't use it any more).
Overview SystemUnit Open CDROM Another Shot of CDROM in Action
I have a 21 inch monitor that is 9 years old and still works great. It refreshes at 75hz at 1200X1600. I only bought this thing a year ago, I wonder how much the original owner paid for it back in '94? It's a Viewsonic PT813.
The definition of a liberal: I may disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight for your right to say it
The oldest bit of computing gear I make use of is an old mechanical calculator that dates from the early 1920s.
I still have a Mac IIci, an Apple IIe, a couple of IIgs's, a Commodore64, a Vic20, a Timex Sinclair, an Atari 400, and a Digital Group Z80-based "micro" from 1976, all of which STILL BOOT!!! WOOT!!! (Ah, that whopping _8K_ of main memory in the Digital Group. Is it any wonder I learned TinyBASIC and TinyPascal first?) Not to mention a string of parts spanning 1981 to present. I wonder sometimes what ever happened to my friend's IMSAI 8080.... I suppose I should include the Atari 2600, the pong game (4 Games In 1!!), and all of the old Nintendo and Sega gear. Yeah, I'm old too.
I figure I can get the rate up to one frame a day of ASCII output on my line printer if I can just flip the dip switches a little faster!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I have three IBM (1391401) keyboards which I am banging away on a daily basis.
Yeah, that would be the PS/2 click-key super-mega-tactile keyboard. They were supposed to feel like Selectrics, but they're not as precise. Got a couple of those, too.
My favorite two keyboards are the Compaq Deskpro/286 and the Compaq OEM keyboards, 1997 or so vintage. The Deskpro/286 keyboard is a thing of sheer beauty - looks and feels a lot like a DEC VT-100 keyboard, but somehow looks even older. Smooth and soft on your hands, but with a nice tactile feel that the VT-100 never had.
I still have a big pile of my old flip-top desktop cases. They're great - desktop cases fit easier onto racks, and with a flip-top, maintenance is a breeze.
One in particular is a 1983 vintage Toronto Datacomm Turbo XT which serves as a database server. Under the hood is a (cheap) AT-profile Pentium II motherboard. The original power supply, conservatively rated for 100W or so, happily runs the PII, a pair of 3.5" hard disk drives and a network card.
Of course, I had to add a Seagate ST-225 with the full-height bezel to make the look complete...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The reason he has to boot it twice sometimes is that the PRAM battery is dead; he needs to get a new one. The fact that it sometimes works probably means that the battery's voltage is right around the cutoff for working; he should really replace it if he intends to use the computer. The hardware of the 6100 has a weird quirk that causes boot failures if the PRAM battery is dead.
I'm using a Mac Classic as a clock. I put a screensaver on it, set the time, and unplugged the keyboard. I mannaged to pick up several for $5 each, and I've been giving them away as Mac Clocks for a year now. They make great birthday gifts. I also have a Macintosh SE that'll make a nice fishtank eventually.
The RIAA fined my dog for barking too much like the Back Street Boys. They later came back and shot my dog for looking
8 megs of static RAM, 16x32 BW video to TV, 300 baud cassette interface.
OSI's own OS, w/ Microsoft 8K BASIC in ROM. All ROMs copywritten in 1977. I think I bought the system in 1980 or 81.
Yes, it worked last time I tried it...now it hides under the bed so my 2 year old son doesn't get his hands on my first and best loved PC...
Nope, I purchased a 100RL from Tandy in `91 and it was a discontinued item then. BTW, I still have it.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Dell 600cx, Celeron 600. Got it new for $576 (opted out of the monitor and modem to keep the price down). That littl tower is already 3 years old and has seen WinME, Win2000 Pro, WinXP Pro and Suse 8. And it still runs fine. Only mods it has is the ethernet card and was upgraded to 256MB ram.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
40 year old 27 digit japanese soraban. I can add, subtract, and multiply ok, but usually screw up doing division.
I've volunteered in some local elementary schools to keep their libraries running. Some of them are using 286s with barcode wands as a START to computerize their libraries. With budget cuts and deficits, libraries are often the first thing to lose funding, so donate whatever old hardware you got to a good cause.
I have 2 Sun 3/80s, 20MHz, 12mb Ram, serving DNS for several domains I host. They're running NetBSD-1.6.1, djbdns, and daemontools. Honestly, there's no need for anything more, they do the job just fine. Take a peek at my MRTG stats if you don't believe me!
My mousepad bought in 1990 is the oldest "hardware" that I use daily.
One of the servers I have around here is from 1997. With K6-2 450 CPU, 128 MB of EDO RAM, and a whopping 4 GB of hard drive space.
My good old Amiga 500 circa 1988. For games mostly that don't respond well to emulation on an Athlon 2800 due to the fact that they rely on the clock timing of the machine for their pacing.
Ever try to play Firepower on a modern computer? A full tank of fuel that used to last 1/2 an hour to 45 mins on an old computer, runs out now in about 1/8th of a second.
This is not a sig.
When I still worked at UCF (about a year and a half ago) I had to put all the programs on the lab machines for the psychology department. They had several programs written in BASIC, that they used for college level courses. I was too lazy/involved with other things to port them to a normal language.
Personally, I'd say a floppy drive. I also have a 1993 Sportster 14.4 that I still use because it's my only fax machine. My desktop doesnt' have a modem in it, and getting a fax to work properly on an Alpha Linux machine is more pain than I'm willing to put up with. External Serial 14.4 is easy to hook up to my desktop win2k machine and unplug when I'm not using it (most of the time, like when I'm not sending out resumes).
I don't know how old the floppy drive is, but since all floppy drives nowadays have the same featureset (1.44 MB high density) you could say I've had the same piece of equipment since my first x86 computer that had a HD floppy drive, around 1989 or so.
Before that, my only computer was a C64, which I still have (gutted, I am going to mount a P2 in the casing). I didn't learn very much on the c64, so I don't have all the cool old equipment for it. Just the base unit and some games and joysticks.
I just remembered the oldest thing I had! I took an unused IBM XT case (what is that? Like 82 or 83?) and put an AMD Athlon in it. So the case is 20 years old, and as far as electronics go, I'm using the original 5.25 drive faceplates with LED's on the new machine. So the LED's are the oldest ELECTRONIC thing. The PSU fan says it was made in early 1983, so 20+ years ago.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
...is a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 on the ISA bus. Always used it, works great, never had a reason to upgrade it (except for the fact that it's damn hard to find mobos with ISA slots these days)
The oldest hardware I've got running is my Macintosh Classic running System 7.2 . Eventually its going to get gutted and (hopefully) I'll cram a G4 in its shell
As for on the job, at work we have a Point Of Sale system (Micros 1700's) that talks to our back end NT4 system (P-100) via an old DOS CONNECT application. The hole system is slated to be replaced because it never really worked well.
<gir voice> I love this sig... </gir voice>
Not THAT old, a Pentium 150 Fujitsu Lifebook laptop, but it's my primary system right now. Boots to RedHat 9, and then connects to my dual P3/450 Red Hat server with SSH. All of the apps run on the server and display locally on the laptop. Coming from a Windows world, I find this to be insanely cool. This laptop would be useless running Windows, but it does just fine to run the latest apps under Red Hat.
it's clear i would lose any DSW on this one, but for completeness...
"Apple Extended Keyboard II"
1990
the SIIG keyboard i got just for quake broke in about three months. but the apple keyboard just keeps on going.
close second: SuperMac monitor, 1992
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
I have my Apple IIgs that I bought in June of 1990 (I still have the receipt, thank you!). I also have a Mac LC that I use as a go-between (since I can't get my Shiva box to work with the IIgs and IP). Although the LC is also circa 1990, I didn't get it until about 1999.
I still use the IIgs to play games, play around with 6502 (yeah, it's a 65C816 system, but the assembly books i have are 6502-based), and stuff like that...
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
Recovered stock machine from a dumpster, then souped it up:
386SX-16MHz
8MB RAM (maxed out)
3com MCA ethernet card (10BaseT)
Adaptec MCA SCSI-1 Card (5MByte/sec max)
Quantum Fireball 1.08GB SCSI HD (the largest the machine will boot from)
1.44MB Floppy Drive
OS: Slackware 9.0rc1, MCA Kernel
It only took two hours to generate my RSA/DSA keys for SSH!
ELiTeUI
As far as I know, my grandmother is still using a PDP-11 to balance her checkbook, but last time I asked her about it was a year or two ago. She nicknamed it Deeno, which I thought was for Dinosaur, but was actually for Dean Martin. No, I am not kidding. She bought it back in the day for her tax services, programmed it in Dibol, and she owned the second PDP-11 in New Mexico, second only to a university in New Mexico, not sure which university though.
Please, don't mod this funny, I am serious!First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Some time I power up my dads old PDP-8 for old times sake
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
I have a homebrew router/firewall made of a 486/SX with an old version of Coyote Linux. The funny thing is that it used to be the family computer back in the 90s.
My buddy has an IBM 8088 complete with original monitor and 10kg keyboard. 10MB HDD, 640K RAM...w00t! (I had the same model, but threw it out because it was too heavy to lug around.) He also has a 5&1/4" FDD in his new box.
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
I am stuck out in the woods with no hope for DSL, with cable-modem connectivity 1-2 months out. :-(
I am currently using my _OLD_ 486 DX50 as my dial-on-demand (thank you pppd) firewall box for my local network at home. It is running a semi-old kernel - v2.4.18, a semi-recent iptables and a very new openssh.
It runs 100% of the time all the time. Hard to believe that this little box is still going!
If I hadn't recently taken it offline for testing of what I thought was a bad serial card, (turned out to be a bad EXTERNAL modem ), it would still be running from Sun Jul 28 19:39:08 EDT 2002 when the kernel was last updated.
It still remember when I was running OS/2 on it! LOL
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
I still use Dos and AutoCAD R_12. In all actuallity shortcutting commands to 2 character aliases and typing with one hand while pointing with the other is still the most efficient way that I have come up with to draw.
Don't you mean 486 DX 50? The DX/2 50 had one of those lame multipliers that made the CPU run 50MHz internally, but the FSB was still only 25MHz. Now, if it were one of those original 486 DX 50's, those things were incredibly fast for the time since it's FSB was 50MHz. But the real fun started with VESA Local Bus cards at such a high bus speed.
Right now it's the Powerbook 190 that I'm using as a console for my SGI Challenge S. That will be the winnner until I get my mitts on a set of NeXTSTEP 3.3 install media for my Monostation.
Oldest Hardware I ow that works? That would be a tossup between the Rev A Macintosh II (Circa 1987), complete with dual Toby cards and a Nubus Ethernet card(Surf the web, in dual-monitor glory, on a 16MHz '020), and the Epson Equity II+ (286) that I haven't thrown out since it was my first PC. The Mac II, with it's 128MB RAM ceiling and multiple monitor capability wins the award for the coolest 80's hardware I own. 90's hardware is a tossup between the SGI box and te NeXT, although if the SGI was an Indy instead of a Challenge S, it would win that for sure.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Are you over clocking that 486? I have an AMD 486DX4-120 in the basement that I thought was the fastest massproduced chip... Admitidably I didn't research this and I bought the pc for $10 a GoodWill but I am currious.
I've got an abacus. From Ancient China.
Ok, maybe not that last part.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Long ago, in a distant land, I, Aku, the shapeshifting---
Wait, no.
Long ago, some folks who may or may not have pre-dated the original IBM PC came up with the standard power cable. That power cable works with any new AT or ATX motherboard, any laser printer I've seen, or any CRT I've seen. (Most flat-panels use a DC adapter which takes---you got it---the standard power cable.) Apples take the standard power cable, even.
Or, at least, they did.
Recently, Apple, in what can only be described as an effort to reduce their karma dramatically, have introduced a new, nonstandard power cable. It does exactly the same thing, but the iMac (or the G5, for that matter) cannot use the standard power cable which has been a standard for, oh, at least twenty-some odd years.
Do I seem bitter? Must be the big box of standard power cables in my basement which are soon to become obsolete.
*ahem* So, the answer is: they were all the same until Apple fucked it up.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Got to be the oldest thing still around! One day we will be free!
I was just glad I was able to find the ribbon cable with the correct connector (cuz it's different from the standard IDE n-pin connector used now). I was surprised Windows XP recognized it too. And it just looks better than an empty slot in the tower.
my DEKA-BOOTING (FreeBSD, Win2K, MS-DOS 6.2,Win3.11, SuSE 8.2 Personal, RH 9.0, Mandrake 8, Debian 3.0, Gentoo, and Knoppix) primary box tell me, don't you feel that that's just *slightly* ott? ;)
But really, do you use all of them? What for?
The server box under my desk at work is an old Gateway G6-200 box. Of course I gutted it last summer and replaced the inside with a dual Xeon setup with SATA and RAID-0. The outside is still stock, except for the two "Intel Inside: Xeon" stickers prominently displayed beneath the Gateway logo. I love seeing people do a double take when they see those...
An 8088 laptop with CGA screen that runs a parallel port relay system. Fear my expanded memory of 384kb!!!
Someday it's going to die and seeing the prices on current relay boards and systems I'll probably have to give up on using it for a central household timer.
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
I have an Ampro "Little Board 64K" system still running a data gathering app written long ago. The terminal has long since pooped out but with a nice serial connection i check on it once a week. Kinda reminds me of an ol PDP someone forgot behind a wall for 20 years until a tech decided one day to find out where this cord goes.....
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
"Vintage"? Next thing you know, we're going to go to keyboard-testing events, wash our hands in salt water and blow-dry them between testings, and start using weird adjectives.
"Ah, yes. This eMachines knockoff displays a firmer character, with elements of plozz and fwimple, leading to an oaky finish."
Eep.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I am still using my Nothgate OmniKey Ultra from 1991, and my 3.5 inch floppy drive that was in my old 386 50Mhz system, not to mention the 212 MB western digital harddrive that was in that 386 system..
My 9 year-old 27" bedroom TV gave up the ghost last night, so until I can get to Best Buy to pick up a replacement, I've got a Commodore 1084S monitor in its place.
They do have a damn nice picture. I usually tip 'em over on their side and use them as a MAME display.
~Philly
My boss (system manager for the UConn math department) has (by my rough estimate) about ten cubic feet of well-packed power cables, Y-adapters, gender changers and sundry accessories.
So yeah, other people feel a need to hoard those things.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
When I was a high school teacher I used to edit videos for our schoolwide TV system on this same 7100 using a SpigotPower card.
The 7100 80 set me back $2500 in 1994. Now you can get one for not much over $25.
I'm writing this on a new G-4, but we still run two SuperMac S900's (upgraded to G-4), a Power Mac 8600 (G-3 upgrade) and a 7600 (G-4 upgrade). My daughter plans to hook up a Play Station 2 to the S900's ATI video card AV inputs and use it to play Internet games when she is not doing her homework for the art college she attends.
We've been using Macs since our first IIsi in 1991 and I've seen Apple produce some real lemons. I was foolish enough to purchase a 5200 AV once, but when Apple gets it right, their machines just keep going and going.
Don't believe everything you think.
Until two weeks ago, I was using an old 122mhz 486. That part isn't -too- bad, but I think the case might date back...20 years? I'm a young'un, so it is older then I am.
A friend of mine has an old ast that looks a lot like a those old beige macs. 66 mhz Cyrix with an entire 12 MB of ram. And yes, he still uses it (but he has a bunch of faster computers too).
I'm using a Compaq Contura 420C laptop which I bought for $12 a year ago. It's from about 1994 and has a 486 at 75 MHz. It has 8 MB of RAM built in, which I upgraded to 24 MB ($18 on Ebay, plus shipping). It came without a hard drive (had been a government computer), but one of my old high school teachers gave me one (250 MB) that fit. I bought a used 16-bit, 10/100 D-Link Ethernet card for $15. It's running the latest NetBSD (1.6.1) very comfortably. I don't use X, as there is no room to install it, and it's probably too slow anyway, but it makes a nice portable terminal to any of the several *NIX machines I use. Total cost: roughly $50.
I still use the 3.5" floppy from my old 486 back in 1993.
I still use my Sparc IPX. got to love the 40mhz box.
obsd runs great on it.
The worst part is upgrading to -current.
I have a keyboard thats 13 years old , it was salvaged from when the IRA bombed St Marys Annexe in London so I have no idea it's real age. I love it it's an old clunker but has a real feel to it .
Please.... I bust out my homebrew babbage computer when I'm at a restaraunt and need to calculate tip.
And nothing beats my modded turing machine with glowing fans when I need to kick some ass at unreal tourney
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Dual 44Mb Segate MFM drives (monsters) Intel SnapIn 386-20..? Intel 287 Adlib Card IBM SCSI-II REAL IBM 8514/a card /w 1Mb memory and matching 8514 monitor
Running OS/2 1.3EE
16Mb of memory
I forget what else....basically it is loaded.
Got a 7 disk double speed CD changer from about 94/95 and a HP Scanjet 2c/ADF from probably a year before that. Both SCSI attached, both work great under Linux and both were built to last. Gotta love old hardware, course it sucks power like a mother but it will probably run forever.
I still have a Z80 based ZCPR and CPM/80 system that I use as a controller for a ComputMotor device. Its easy to program, small in size, does the job and serves it purpose.
:)
The M68010 multibus system running Version-7 Unix still runs as a basic server and has IEEE-488 on it. It's only used for a few tasks anymore but it runs fine. Its never had a problem in 25 years. The Heurikon minibox (Unisoft System-V Unix (5.0) and Unify DBMS got water damaged so it was trashed just a few years ago but it was a wonderful system too.
So both circa 1985 systems are running and there just isn't any reason to change. I saw no reason to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
The 1981 Xerox Alto-II XM just needs a new tube and it can also run. It's just a games machine now but I can't find those games for any other system ever made. They're coded in BCPL and I don't have the time to port them to another hardware and software environment. I really should get that CRT tube replaced
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
let me guess ??? Icom..... i actually wrote drivers for those peeps many years ago.... and let me also take a guess at your PLC's.... AB right !!!
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
A company called Unicomp bought the rights to the original design. They are still available, steel backplate, buckling springs, sensible layout, and all. get 'em here, $50 a pop.
I bought four, one for each machine I use at work (including a Mac - used a USB-PS2 converter) and one for my PC at home. They absolutely kick ass. I saw many of the original IBM keyboards at the Vintage Conputer Festival last weekend - tested the feel and weight of them and the original ones are identical to the current ones from Unicomp as far as I can tell.
General Electric side-by-side refrigerator-freezer. Bought 1968. Still purrs like a kitten with a severe throat infection.
Parsec man, Parsec... I just bought one from a Goodwill for $12.99. I have no idea if it works (it looks like it does), but since I have no TV it's hard to tell.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Running this since Jan 1999 and since the original case power supply died out in 2001 I replaced it with a used AT power supply that is around 10 years old. The funny thing is the close to 10 yr old power supply is built a LOT better with stainless steel and is quieter then my old taiwan power supply was lol.
:D
I expect that power supply will last another few years, and when it does die - if ever, then I will finally have to save up for a new machine.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Using for college student friend to surf the net and send email. Still works great, but so old I can't update the BIOS any more. Too bad Red Hat and Mandrake refuse to install on it any more. (Earlier versions of both used to work.) Reluctantly, I put Windows98se on it, which still works fine. Running Mozilla and OpenOffice 1.1.
Still works great, though the knocks and blue sparks inside when you put in a coin are exciting..
Galahad
For computer equipment, besides the arcade games (1981 and 1983) and the old Commodores (1983, etc.) I have a 5 1/4" floppy drive from the late 80s in one of my desktop machines. I use it to copy old video games I get on ebay in the format.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Until I picked up a Chicony KBP9805. (see also the KU9865)
:-(
It's good an old school solid feel, but it only has a single aluminum plate inside, which makes it easy to carry around.
Best part?
Not only is it spill resistant, you can disassemble the plastic components (base, key tray) and put it in the dishwasher. The contact sheet is a clever enclosed rubber design, which is itself washable, and the controller a very simple PCB that snaps in and out of place.
There are good keyboards out there that aren't 20 years old if you do a little searching. Sometimes you have to go straight to the OEM manufacturers out in Asia to get what you want.
Anyway, back on topic... The oldest part I'm still using is the stereo attached to my PC so I can hear my music. I ditched the elderly floppy drive about a year ago.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
20 mb ram
one floppy drive
no hd
two isa nics
and floppyfw
not terribly old but it's in production. it was a great (and cheap) way to learn iptables.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
I'm using a 1995 DX4 laptop running Red Hat 5.1 for a DNS server and remote backup device (with SCSI PC card and 1GB JAZ Drive) the built in laptop battery gives the effect of a UPS on our larger systems. It runs plenty fast for its application, and is very quiet and reliable.
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
Yeah, I'm really surprised, I've never had much faith in 3com, but I still have a half dozen 3c509 cards that have stood the test of time. Still, I'll take an eepro over a 3c509...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I'm running netbsd 1.6 on a 40mhz 12mb of ram 200mb hdd compaq laptop at home as the router. We previously had a 386 running herbix, but the floppy drive died after about 12 good years of service.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
I have a PS2 model 9595 (microchannel) spinning away in my basement. It runs slackware and hooks my 3 systems up using tokenring via a 8226 spliter. :) I even have an ethernet card in there so I can have my cable modem attached. Just lost a 9 year old drive the other day but the nice thing is I have raid 5 running. Even have a nice little display of the uptime and system load on the 8 led panel if anyone else remembers what it looks like. They just don't build them like that anymore.
Until very recently my city (Winnipeg, MB) had a very active Coleco ADAM users group. Matter of fact someone in the group has breadboarded a paralell i/o card for the ADAM. Now they can slave a PC with an ATA drive for program storage so that all the ADAM files are in one place. Most of these guys have a few generations of ADAMs that they are still using almost daily.
Can't belive I also forgot to mention I have a Quantum 120MB IDE drive sitting in my drawer somewhere. I had originally got it in 1992 to use in my then fairly new 386DX-40 machine. That drive had DOS 5, then 6, then Windows 3.1 and finally WFWG 3.11 on it and ran like a champ.
:D
If I were to plug that drive now into a old 486 or 386 machine, heck maybe even a first gen Pentium box - the drive would still boot up and be useful.
Which goes to say the older Quantum hard drives last a LONG time. The one above and the one I've been using now in my old 266MHZ machine here since I bought the Quantum 3 gig new back in 1998.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
I was thinking about putting up a dos/Win95 system so I can play some old games i have, like Warloards III, and hopefully Ultima Underworld The Stygean Abyss (requires EMS!). I have a nice modern system (AMD3000+,1GB ram,nVidia 4600+), and over 3/4 of the time Civilization III won't even load. (what a stupid loader).
Pentium 166, with MMX (ooooooh!). I upgraded it to a whopping 64 MB of EDO RAM, the max.
3GB HD, ESS sound that buzzes when you use the CD-ROM, etc.
No USB. It feels really awkward. And heavy!
The advertisements calling it a multimedia laptop when it was new were being really generous.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
but I have the original ENIAC set up in an old warehouse outside of town. I need six full-time employees just to change the vacuum tubes as they burn out. I use the ENIAC to do ballistics calculations for my bottle-rocket fights with the neighbors across the street.
A pencil. Its easier to do math with pencil and paper than in your head. And sometimes MatLab is just overkill.
My dad's old Mac ][ci is our firewall/mailserver. The old man originally picked it up at the end of the production run in '93, and handed it down to my wife in '95 (he's on a G4 now). After many years of churning out papers and newsletters, we put it in front of the DSL line loaded with various Sustworks products to protect our metastasizing home network against the likes of you all. Still runs OS 7.6.
Initially, the ci hosted our web server too. But, a PPC 6100 fell in my lap for $5, so I loaded that with Debian, and since then the html cranks out much more reliably.
Luke, help me take this mask off
but do you use that apple ][+ still? My keyboard controller was never a problem.
How about this?
-ImageWriter ][ STILL IN USE!! way back from my Apple ][GS! Still have ribbons for it! Must be around 1987 or there abouts. Those riboons can last me 6 years...print gets light, but works.
-Extended Apple ADB keyboard, still used on my G5 from the early 90s. (over 10 years old anyway)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Well, there's the stuff at work, and the stuff at home. At work, our secondary DNS/RADIUS box is a P133 with 64 megs of ram that's been in service for about 7 or 8 years. (The company started up in 1995, I don't know when this box was installed.) We had a "secure" (probably through obscurity, not security) webserver running netscape's HTTPS server that was a P100. It was retired last year. I don't dare look at the hardware in the secondary DNS box, for fear that it might fail. ;)
:)
At home, my router/firewall is an old Frankenstein box running FreeBSD that's using the case from an old Acer Altos 700, which was a server that ran a P60 processor back when P60 processors were the fastest you could get. It's even got the fold-out feet that were used to stabilize the thing in case of god-knows-what and avoid a harddrive crash. The motherboard handily folds out on one side of the case for ease of maintenance, and the power supply is at the bottom, probably to keep the center of gravity low, although it doesn't help airflow and cooling much. Not that it really needs to.
The back of the case had to be "modded" (read, cut with a hacksaw) to accomodate the keyboard plug on the board I put in, an old Micronics server board that could be upgraded all the way to a P100 (which is what it has). It's got 48 megs of 72 pin SIMMs in it and a 1.0 Gig Quantum Fireball harddrive. It's been running nearly continuously without failure for the past 4 years, minus moving and power failures. Uptime is currently 207 days.
I honestly don't know when all this stuff was actually made. I bought the case and motherboard second hand about five years ago, and the harddrive was out of an old computer that was was second hand and obsolete even then - I'd guess its age at about 8 or 9. The other hardware is probably at least that old, as it was the fastest stuff around when it was manufactured - probably around 1995.
Talk about exceeding the MTBF!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Those things look like something out of a VME bus machine. But if they gots to dial in, well, you know. ;=)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
On the other hand, the hardware they are using is pretty old too, so aside from using some of the free alternatives out there, I think a newer OS would bring the poor computers to their knees.
My newest machine is a P2/300 with a Permedia 2 3D graphics card and 128 MB of RAM.
I bought it around 1997.
The only hardware upgrades have been additional disk (now about 60 GB) and disc (CD-RW) drives, and I replaced the original monitor only last month.
I use it 10-20 hours/day, and rarely turn it off.
My other machine, which I still use occasionally, is a P1/75 with 16 MB of RAM and no 3D accelerator card at all.
It's from around the late 1980s or early 1990s.
I also have a Commodore Amiga 2000 that I use very infrequently.
Its only upgrade is a 40 MB (that's MB) hard drive.
I bought that around 1985.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Only 1 hour? Well, what I'm going to describe would be overkill then. It is possible to build a serial cable (simple stuff) that lets a PC be in an Atari SIO daisy chain. The simplest software that does this is called SIO2PC though there are others.
You could have transferred directories to the PC as fast as the Atari drive would run. You can easily make disk images for emulators as well.
I've also recovered old C64 floppies with the cable that others have mentioned. Its really creepy watching PC direct a 1541/1571. Its even creepier watching an Atari boot from a PC.
The slide rule that I can find easily is a Stevens Rally Indicator Model 25, circular slide rule that's maybe 9" across. It's not fancy - only one scale and a set of pointers - but you can get an extra half digit or so of precision out of it. I don't actually calculate with it; it's there as a decorative object along with the other toys on top of the monitor, but I still remember how. I bought it in about 1975, quite used - as the name indicates, it's designed for road-rally calculations like speed-vs-time.
I might have a normal slide rule in some drawer, probably with the slide broken off (or I might have tossed it when cleaning up.) The usual simple model, with six or seven scales. I had a 9-scaler that I used in high school and college, though I didn't use it much after I got my first HP calculator; the previous calculator didn't have trig functions so the slide rule was still useful, and of course in chemistry class you weren't allowed to use electronic calculators on exams, because that gave a substantial advantage to the kids who could afford them vs. the kids who only had slide rules. My father kept a circular slide rule in the car for figuring gas mileage, as well as using them at work.
The one cool analog tool that I inherited from my father-in-law that I never really learned to use was a polar planimeter, which is a wheelie thing that lets you measure areas on a map or drawing. There was an appendix in one of my high school calculus books on how to use it (or maybe it was one of my father's calculus books...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Our staff receptionist was running an NEC 386 or 486 at work until earlier this summer, when I replaced it with a comparatively brand-spanking new NEC pentium 100mhz running IBM's DOS (6.2?). The superintendent had me replace it because it looked too damn old.
:-)
I had to scavenge to get a compatible disk drive to copy the contents of the hard drive out. The box is needed as a lookup terminal for our switchboard phone.
There was about a centimeter of dust on the inside; a picture is available to any interested. you can get it by emailing me at overbom at nospam please yahoo dot com if you're interested in seeing what 15+ years of dust looks like.
I still run my Scanjet 4p. Still works *perfectly*. It's a wonderful full size flatbed scanner that was clearly built to last. Worth every penny.
I also still run my Laserjet 5L. It has a minor feeding problem but it got me through college on one toner cartridge which is absolutely incredible to me still considering how much writing I did. I've changed the toner twice.
I've owned both since 97. They work. Simple as that.
However, if you still use a CRT, *get rid of it*. LCD monitors are a quick way to eliminate headaches and minor vision problems. I mention this because we're all talking about good, dependable hardware but monitors are an area where the technology should be changed regardless of the fact that you might love it. My LCD does 80 frames per second without breaking a sweat.
Laws are for people with no friends.
The poster points out that he bought a mobo with 1 ISA slot for his old modem. Lets not forget that in automation, sometimes old is necessary.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
This is a pretty weak attempt, but the oldest hardware I have that is still *doing something* is my generic Pentium 233MMX (48 megs of matched-pair SIMM RAM, baby), which is acting as my edge router/firewall running Debian Woody. First computer I ever built from parts *tear*.
The processor and RAM in this old box have been turning up at computer shows, though! As keychains! No joke!
--
The Bailiwick - DESIGNHUB2005
I still use my SGI Indy and an old SPARCStation 10. They're very snazzy machines. I realize my iBook and P4 laptop running Gentoo are much faster, but it's fun to web browse or write ona more exotic machine. It's kind of like writers that will only use a certain kind of pencil or an Underwood No. 5 typewriter. A certain tool just puts in you in the mood to get serious work done, even if there's a more efficient tool for the job. Also, I have a Mac Color Clasic that I'm planning to retrofit for a Mac 6500 PPC logic board with G3 upgrade.
The oldest computer-related hardware I am currently using is a screwdriver(opening cases/CD-Rom Drive, connecting the power jumper on ATX motherboards, etc.), it has been used for more than 15 years and still works perfectly.:-)
There's another excellent reason to run very old hardware or software that seems to get overlooked far too often. Sometimes, existing hardware or software does the job acceptably. The IT world is defined by constant change and progress, but 'latest' does not always mean 'greatest' when put into the context of tasks to be performed.
Change just for its own sake is a waste at best, and possibly quite a risk. How many reasonable in-house corporate applications have been re-written as web applications lately, with marginal benefits in ease of administration, and a loss of ease of use?
Of course, not all change is pointless. Much of it provides needed benefits, or is necessary for unrelated reasons (e.g. must have latest version of MS-office because others do). But the value of an existing solution sometimes seems to be overlooked when compared with the glamour of the latest, fastest, slickest new thing.
and it's my firewall box, which I shouldn't ever need to use up close and personal anyway...
It just looks nice on top, I guess. Oh well.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
My home gateway server, a dual PII 400, has an 8-bit MGA video adapter with a Hyundai 9" Amber monitor. It works great since '87 or so. The Linux MGA virtual framebuffer even displays the dual penguin logo on boot. It is a real space saver too in my closet. It also has one of those Epson dual floppy drives, the ones with a 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" drives in one bay. Amazingly, the 5 1/4" drive is a lot faster than the 3 1/2" at writes still. You can encode an Ogg in real-time on a 5 1/4" disk, which is pretty cool. It stores about 5 minutes at 64k too.
I just set up this weekend a Compaq Prosignia with a Pentium Overdrive chip (83.5 Mhz Pentium) and an original Gravis Ultrasound from '94. Had to add some memory chips to bring the thing up to a meg, and ran some demos and played some midi on it. I can't believe how good the GUS still sounds, even if the video effects in a lot of demos seem really cheezy now (Xscreensaver has surpassed even Unreal and 2nd Reality in terms of special effects).
Oh, and I am still using the mechanical 'Laser' keyboard I got with my 286 in '92. It has two layers of converter cable to connect it to a PS/2 plug.
My mother still has her old Mac dot-matrix printer; I forget which model, but it's a pin-feed thing that's better for single mailing labels. She's also got her old Mac (upgraded to 1 MB RAM), which she keeps because a few programs never did work under MacOS 7.x, but mostly she uses her new Mac - a Performa 630. It's hard getting it to keep working well with new printers (sigh), and the monitor and graphics are a bit wonky, and her eyesight's going, so we may have to just get her a new eMac or something.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I use one as a secure backup server. It runs OBSD. Same old 600mB hard disk, 32mB/ram, and slow as hell sun4c architecture. The only upgrade is a 100mbit/s SBus ethernet card I through in to avoid AUI->token_ring->CAT5 conversion headaches.
My school still has two 486's running NT4sp3 as the only proxy servers connecting the entire student network to the internet. If you ever need to cut dual T1's down to 30kB/s, this is the way to do it. ("An NT server can be run by an idiot, and usually is.")
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
A few years ago I was in a dry cleaners in Midtown Manhattan. While I waited for my clothes I noticed dusty old "CP/M" boxes on a high shelf. Despite a language barrier, I managed to find out from the owner that the POS system did in fact run under CP/M.
When I asked him why not upgrade, he said "Why?" Smart man.
_______
2B1ASK1
i am currently typing on a keyboard that came with my dads zeos 386sx from back in the day on the back it has a switch labeled 80286 - 8088 i also have the 14 inch monitor from that system. unfortunately the actual box couldn't withstand my youthful curiousity and was long ago trashed.
lose != loose
I have a 2x CDROM that I think was made in 1993 or 1994 on a Pentium Pro 166MHz with a 60GB HDD made 9 weeks ago. Firewall box incase you are curious.
We've got an Apple IIe running a Mass Spectrometer....
:-)
A 286 running some physics code (that relies on the slow clock timing...
A 486 processing images from an Electron Microscope (well we just upgraded that to a Pentium 1 about a week ago)...
And we just put up our AD test tree, it's a dual P2 running in a Dell Series 310 case (386). We put in a slot loading CDrom so it looks like the 5 1/4" floppy is still installed.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
I'm running a Silicon Graphics Indigo that dates from 1991-1992: 150MHz R4400 MIPS 1MB L2, Elan Graphics (4GEs), 384MB RAM, 9GB Disk, running IRIX 6.5.
Pretty cool to see hardware accelerated 3D from that long ago. The box is just too cool. PCs have yet to catch up with vintage SGIs in terms of packaging and design.
Mine is very similar to this system, but I lack the GalileoVideo I/O board and the Cosmo video compression board:
http://www.nekochan.net/gallery/album11
My Indigo still feels faster than any new PC I've used. And depending on the task it is still quite capable. I listen to MP3s, use OpenOffice, chat on IRC, and surf the net very comfortably. I also run Pro/ENGINEER v20 and Photoshop/Illustrator. Converting video or doing anything with texutres (no hardware texture support) really shows the machines age.
I also have several 180MHz R5000 Indys which were new in 1996. One with a dual-head video card, one with hardware accelerated 3D, one with video I/O/capture/real-time-effects/compression, and one with a Nintendo64 development board. For a basic multimedia/desktop system an Indy is still very useable.
I also have a SPARCstation IPX, 40MHz I beleive. It has a big tablet for using AutoCAD, an optical mouse, and a very neat vertical stand. I don't really use the system but I suppose it's the oldest functioning thing I have.
Still got an old Laser 486 that I turned into a headless, diskless NAT box. Tossed in an old 486DX/2-66 CPU and 16MB of SIMMs that I had gathering dust. Pulled out the whopping 120MB HD and after I set it up with BBIAgent , I pulled the video card as well.
;)
I got rid of my cable modem last year(too expensive), but the box is still here ready to go for next time.
Gotta love using old shit to do something useful. And yes, I'm too cheap to buy a hardware router
lying around somewhere. Can you imagine the excitement when I upgraded to a S3 VirGE!?!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
What I'm using right now is considered ancient history and can be bought for 40 dollars now
:P
433 mhz celeron with 256 megs of ram, and a 20 gig (maximum for the mobo) HDD with a 66 mhz bus.
The oldest bit I have is my apple ][e which I saved from a school. waiting for a netbsd port for that
the second oldest piece I have is an i386 with 2 megs of ram, a hardwired cpu connected to the mobo, 68 meg MFM hd, 5.25 floppy, with win 3.1
3rd oldest piece is my i486 which I bought for 10 bucks, it's a good little sturdy AT&T globalyst 330 with 4 megs of ram, 800 meg HD, cdrom, ethernet and a 66 mhz cpu with a 33 mhz bus. EFAR mobo.
4th oldest piece is my current machine. which is a sad case for me.
I'm trying to get my hands on my sister's old 233 mhz compaq she doesnt even use anymore.
I also want to get one of the acer altos 900's from my school, the scsi stuff is nice, and they're pro-unix
my neighbor is going to give me her old gateway, which is prolly faster than my current computer, doesnt mean that its going to be my primary machine (let's face it, I'd rather use a 433 rather than a 700 mhz or so gateway.)
so far my current computer has been stable and has run nicely. linux made it worthwhile.
the monster I have in planning s going to own, I also want to get my grubby hands on some SGI octane machines..
hell, anything sgi would kick so much ass.
is a p4 2.6 gHz that I bought yesterday. :)
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
I'm still using an accounting program that I wrote on a CPM machine in 1980. I updated it to an exe program when QuickBasic came out. I now run it in dosemu.
It is written for a construction company and there is nothing out there like it. The oldest hardware I use every day is a Microtek PageWiz parallel port scanner. It's a fast little sheet fed scanner that is fairly portable.
Heh, heh, he said "wang!"
Quite surprised I'm the first to it.
Ignore the rantings above. Poster is an idiot.
I just moved to Kansas City Missouri in hopes to find a job in computer security around here, and since I only came with a small suitcase and backpack, I left my hardware behind in New Hampshire.
:)
The second day here I found (in a dumpster) a HP NetServer 5/100 LM server... it's a Pentium 100, 10 gigs worth of SCSI drives, an old cdrom, and 128 megs of ram... its currently running NetBSD, serving webpages with Apache, and running qmail
Anybody ever do things like disguise a 4 GHz P4 in an ancient 8086 machine box?
Well, I started using computers before the 8086, so I don't really think of them as "ancient". The machines I learned on used punch cards and had dials and flashing lights. (I'm not actually that old -- these were abandoned 1970's IBM minicomputers donated to my high school in the late 80's. They were Model/3's, if you care.)
I still routinely use software from 1979-1984 written for the Apple II series. I mostly do this in an emulator now because 5.25" floppies are getting hard to find, but I still use a IIe and a IIc. Aside from games, I use a "word processor" called AppleWriter, which is slightly more sophisticated than pico. It's built-in formatting codes seem to be loosely based on troff -- when I first moved to Linux in the mid-90's and started writing man pages, I remember wondering why Linux boxes kept their docs in AppleWriter's obscure format!
I do it partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of habit -- I'm comfortable writing fiction on it after twenty years. But I also do it because AppleWriter is a 24k binary that can do more than pico can with 171k, and do it on a 1 MHz 8-bit CPU.
I'm getting pretty frustrated at how inefficient so-called cutting edge software has become. The hardware has become many orders of magnitude more powerful than in the old days, but sloppy-ass coding has soaked up most of that power, and the growth in useful new features accounts for only a small fraction of it. If the boneheaded "throw more hardware at it" philosophy hadn't become dominant, the average user could get by with computers costing tens -- instead of thousands -- of dollars.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I have a FUNCTIONAL abacus.
Learn something new.
I've got an client that is a dry cleaner that runs all of his stuff on old 486's and some Pentiums running a DOS 6.0 based application to drive it all. He hasn't upgraded because he doesn't need to. The software does everything he needs it to do and he has a hard enough time trying to teach illiterate non english speaking hispanics (or worse the U.S. born high school drop outs) how to run the stuff.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I've still got my Tandy 1000SE running, running DOS 3.3 and, wait for it, the wonderful game Bubble Bobble! Totally mindless entertainment in all its EGA goodness...
For more serious pursuits, I have a 386SX/25 desktop and a 486SL/33 laptop still running for commercial radio programming (the majority is written in DOS, the majority is damn picky on processor speed, and, for some of the radios, if you try to talk to them with a too-fast machine, you will kill the radio, to the tune of hundreds of dollars to fix...)
Terry
I use a P120 based Thinkpad 560 daily... Also, just retired a 486DX2 based mail server running NetBSD last winter, which has been running pretty much running since '96. -ingo
I'm one l33t m0f0 ruffian lookin' for trouble. I enjoy walking along dusty areas, running my fingers through high-bandwidth pingfloods, and I'm looking for a woman that can withstand my long int without segfaulting. 64bit processing tech at its finest; high quality that lasts and lasts
AlphaPC 164UX motherboard, 63MHz Bus, 633MHz 21164 ev56 CPU; dated 1999.
Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 (Voodoo2 SLI in one PCI slot); dated 1998
VisionTek Xtasy PCI Radeon 9100 128MB; dated 2003 (excellent DRI-accelerated openGL too!)
Surprisingly, this Alpha system outperforms my friend's Pentium3 700MHz system and was bought in 1999!!!! Old, but fast! The latest hardware is too hot and breaks in less than 2 years; why can't they have quality as they first made them? Is it that higher-quality draws too high pricetag and too low of sales shuffle? I still know people with 8086 and 80286 and 80486 technology that has quality that of a rock! Even those nice DEC Alpha Multia systems (running at 166MHz) are running solid with their 64bit long int and perform equal to a Pentium 100MHz of their time! Today's tech is horrible, with exception to Transmeta's Crusoe arch and Via's Nehemia.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
Not sure just how old this baby is, but I have an OmniKey/101 keyboard made by Northgate Computer Systems (do they even still exist? I can't find them). I think I may have had this way back on my 386 (it's now on a Athlon 1.2GHz running FreeBSD). Reasons I like it:
1) It's hefty, like the original IBM keyboard. Metal base, stays firmly in-place on the desk wherever you set it. Nice solid feel.
2) The letters will NEVER wear off, due to the way they're molded. The letters aren't painted on the keys... they are part of the plastic itself, molded all the way through. Awesome! I'm a fast and vigorous typer and not only wear letters off, but wear plastic down.
3) The keys remove for easy cleaning. In fact, I took the entire thing apart for a cleaning not too long ago. I still have the special light-blue Northgate key-removal tool.
4) Mechanical key-switches for that tactile feel.
5) Programmable... although I not longer remember how. There's a flip-up panel in the upper-left with an orange button and some DIP switches. Using the switches you could set it to come up always as Dvorak or do some other things. Using the orange button then pressing an F? key you could switch between QWERTY and Dvorak on the fly, as well as other stuff. You could also buy a set of Dvorak keycaps.
I'm getting to the point though where the noisiness of the keyboard is a problem. People get annoyed when they hear me typing while I'm on the phone. Oh well.
Most ATMs run OS/2 warp. I know cause I've seen one boot up. I was in a 7-11 in a thunderstorm when they lost power for 2 seconds. Long enough for the ATM to go down. I watch as it reboot and gave me Intel BIOS and then the boot up for OS/2. I think if I'd seen it boot Win98 I'd pull out all my money and use my mattress.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Was running a pos television router made back in 1980
.50 cal rifle - see what kind of holes I can make :) )
I'm gonna rescue the poor old thing (the xt) before the router goes to the dump - all 3 full racks of it. (Less one 8x8 segment that I plan to use for target practice with my
That had to be fun back in the day setting up an xt to network with some overpriced proprietary hardware.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
... but a Toshiba Tecra P133 laptop. That sucker weighs a ton, but with all the metal between me and the processor, I don't need to worry about electromagnetic waves mutating my Boing Juniors. Then again, am I supposed to have second degree burns down there?
Tricky.
If you define "using" as "plugged in with electrons flowing through it", then that would be a MS mouse from 93'.
If you define "using" as "serving a useful purpose", then that would be a Macintosh LC II from 92', which is presently being used as a wonderful monitor stand
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
We still use some OS/2 machines ar UPS, maily to control the scanners and for DIAD uploading/downloading. Sort of scared me the first time I saw it!
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Apples
1 Apple ][c w/ 9" monochrome Apple monitor
1 Apple ][e w/ all the trimmings (ext. 80 coll card, mockingboard, super serial card, etc...)
1 Apple ][gs w/ transwarp GS & RamFast SCSI card
2 Apple ImageWriter
Fat Mac, Mac //, Mac Color Classic, Performa 6360 & 6400
NeXT
1 non-adb Cube '040 33 MHz, 64 MB, n4000a monitor
1 Color Slab ('040 25 MHz)
x86
1 286 (Dos) 1 386 (Dos) 3 486 (Dos, WFWG 3.11 & NS 3.3)
and... a Compaq Portable w/ the 8087 math coprocessor. =)
Commodore
1 C64
3 Amigas (500, 2000, 2500)
1 TI-994a
These don't include the newer G4, PB G3 (which are both getting up in age) the new AMD XP3000+, or the systems that I'm restoring.
And yes, all the old systems work and have a use. (Be it word processing, music notation, web server, file server, etc...
If you ask me, outside of vintage instruments (guitars, amps, synths, etc...) and bikes (Indians and Harley's), there's not much cooler than old computers.
----------
#SickNotWeak
Im using it as an armrest. Works flawlessley.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The company I work for still uses Paradox version 4.0 in a DOS window on Windows 98 to generate reports and process data. I believe Paradox is still actively developed and they're up to version 9 now.
I've actually spent a bit of time getting Paradox to run under Dosemu / FreeDOS on RedHat 9 so we can ditch the Windows machines.
Those Paradox machines just sit there all day long and churn out reports so management types can print them out on dead trees, maybe look at them once, and throw them away. Sad as it is, I suppose having a hard copy in their hands is some sort of proof that actual work is being done.
More than a couple people's lives in the office revolve around whether or not Paradox is functioning that day.
Paradox was the last W32/DOS application I had to find either a suitable Free Software replacement for, or find some way to run under Linux in order to convert our office to Open Source solutions.
1989 Mac SE30
1984 Apple II, 2 floppies, monitor, visicalc.
Lost to landfill, my 1985 LISA converted to Apple HFS with 2.5 MB. Was on loan and a friend's husband trashed it. No internal HD
DEC uVAX II. And yes, it still runs - VMS, as a matter of fact. I even bought a new wire rack to load it into so that I could make better use of the space.
-- daecabhir (this mind intentionally left blank)
A few years back I collected a 680 MB HDD made by Micropolis in 1988. I was using it in a firewall machine (mounted in a CD bay) until a couple of months back when it started making grinding noises. That's around 15 years of nearly continuous service - the drive was being used as /tmp on a SGI Indigo until it was retired and I collected it.
I hate to think how much it would have cost back when it was new - the quality of everything from the chasis to the circuit boards is awesome!
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
hehe I'm still using the mouse pad I got when my dad bought his Mac Plus! He had to mail in a coupon to get it, and heck it's awesome!
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
I am still running my soundblaster 16 card and my Super VGA grafix card (with No onboard memory) both origanaly out of a 486 but now sitting in my 333 that still runs like a champ and I can't come up with a good reason to replace.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Among the most memorable Macintosh computers I've recently owned or still have: -A Macintosh IIfx with an 824GC card and two 824 cards, and 80MB drive and a 20MB drive, with System 6.0.7 and System 7.1. This is my "Hellcats over the Pacific" machine. 'Nuff said. -A Macintosh SE/30 I use for accessing old floppy disks. Like-new (no burn-in), 20MB of RAM, System 7.1, and an 80MB SCSI hard drive. -A VIC-20 -An Original Macintosh PowerBook G3 200MHz, with 256k L2 cache. Apple never sold this configuration. -An Apple ///, with 512k of RAM and a 5MB Corvus Systems hard disk.
-A Macintosh 512k upgraded with a Dove 1MB memory upgrade and 800k floppy drive.
-A PowerBook 540c mounted on a clear plastic Apple portable development stand. (These were molded plastic 'Ls' with a u-shaped lip for holding the panel and partitioned standoffs for the logic board and other modules.
-A PowerMac 7100/80 with a 1GB HP hard drive and 72MB of RAM.
I once used an Apple Network Server 700/200SMP with Mac OS ROMs. Cool machine that lost it's ethernet connection on each reboot. Ran AppleShare on it...just for the perverse joy of it.
I still use a vintage 1988 IBM 101 Keyboard. Can't beat em.
Landover Baptist: a hateful-inspired church, fake Christians, don't quote Bible in context, slander people in the Bible, and give a bad name to everyone that quotes the bible for its kindness.
Landover Baptist is the only hateful Church I know of that can mention God and Homosexual and alleged "Niggers" in one sentance.
I'm waiting for God to begin his orbital bombardment of Landover Baptist, because it's the Gomora of today. They spread lies just as Mormon doctrine says that "black people have black skin to reflect the sins they comitted in a previous life." Landover Baptist, please just roll over and die because all you do is act *in the flesh* and not *int the spirit*.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
I have a mac II ci with a Daystar 60mhz PPC601 upgrade in it. It's my mail client database server and runs Claris Emailer on system 7.6.
It's run, continuously, and without a reboot, for about 3 years now, when the power supply failed. It had run continuously for about 5 years before that.
It does it's job and there's no reason to replace it. When I use it for sending mail, which I do occasionally, it still puts the results of my keypresses up on the screen faster than I can type...
I figure it might be late 1988 vintage, through more probably early 1989. I inherited it in 1990, and have used it continuously since.
Oh, I also have a Mac Portable of the same vintage I used until about two years ago when the battery finally stopped working. It'll hold a small motorcycle battery so it might come back yet. The advantages is it has over my 700mhz dell are a real, solid, desktop grade keyboard, the reflective screen looks great in direct sunlight, it doesn't flake out on a summer day, and 12 real hours of battery life.
If only I could get a SCSI to 802.11b pod for it...
The file server is a 486 66 MHz and the webserver is a rescued Compaq Presario (500 MHz AMD K6)and they're Linux boxes, just like the XP3000+.
------
#SickNotWeak
Among the most memorable Macintosh computers I've recently owned or still have:
-A Macintosh IIfx with an 824GC card and two 824 cards, and 80MB drive and a 20MB drive, with System 6.0.7 and System 7.1. This is my "Hellcats over the Pacific" machine. 'Nuff said.
-A Macintosh SE/30 I use for accessing old floppy disks. Like-new (no burn-in), 20MB of RAM, System 7.1, and an 80MB SCSI hard drive.
-A VIC-20
-An Original Macintosh PowerBook G3 200MHz, with 256k L2 cache. Apple never sold this configuration.
-An Apple
-A Macintosh 512k upgraded with a Dove 1MB memory upgrade and 800k floppy drive.
-A PowerBook 540c mounted on a clear plastic Apple portable development stand. (These were molded plastic 'Ls' with a u-shaped lip for holding the panel and partitioned standoffs for the logic board and other modules.
-A PowerMac 7100/80 with a 1GB HP hard drive and 72MB of RAM.
I once used an Apple Network Server 700/200SMP with Mac OS ROMs. Cool machine that lost it's ethernet connection on each reboot. Ran AppleShare on it...just for the perverse joy of it.
Newer sound cards are super cheap nowadays, and I'm sure I could get something for about $30 that would be orders of magnitude better than my old SB16... but damn, this card has to be the most compatible sound card in history (and without using goofy software compatibility layers).
:(
Besides, I can't imagine I'd benefit much from a new sound card when my speakers are bargain basement. I also never play video games that would really benefit from 3D sound or anything like that either (Doom with stereo sound is about advanced as I need).
Sadly, when I tried out Linux 2.6.0-test1, ALSA did some rather odd stuff with my sound card that didn't seem quite right... It might be easier to just buy something newer instead of trying to fight with it. Perhaps it's days are numbered
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
I have a Mac128k and a 486/66DX in the closet. But, the oldest piece I am still using was an ISA 33.6kbps modem until I picked up a cheap 56k PCI modem a month ago. Now the oldest piece is... [looking into open tower...] all of it. P3-500, 384MB RAM, 250W PSU, 20" HP monitor. All circa 2000 and earlier.
This machine is getting demoted ot my brother's box as soon as the motherboard for my new AMD2500+ system shows up.
-bZj
.sig
I am still using an apple macintosh IICX. Put a little extra ram in it have it up to 32 megs, external hard drive total of 1.1 gig hard drive on it. Running 7.5.5 not the fastest thing for word processing but after tweaking the system setup boots in like 15 seconds.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
They were still making them when Wildcat 4 was released in `94, and afaik you can still get new PCI ones.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
I wouldn't give up my model M for anything. However there is this one interesting issue...when you got one girlfriend on the phone, and the other online, the one on the phone gets pissed off saying that you're not paying attention to her because she can hear you typing in the background.
In fact, http://www.cables4computer.com/products/individual Item.asp?groupcode=I0703
Desperation is a stinky cologne
I still have a working 8086 original XT with two 5.25 floppys and cassette interface and B/W monitor. I also have a working (I think still) ST506, 5MB HDD, and ST412 10MB HDD. My oldest working computer is a MC6800 eval kit with hex input machine code; LED display.
'course, I'm a packrat - first class!
I have an old Adaptec 1542 that I use to run my scanner, mainly because it's the only thing that my scanner seems to play well with. The scanner interferes with the disks on the 19160 and isn't recognized at all on the old NCR adapter that I run the tape drive off of. One day, I'm going to have to find a replacement (once this motherboard dies and I can't find one with an ISA slot. :-( ) Manufacturing dates on some of the chips on the 1542 go back to something like '92.
I used to run an old 80MB SCSI drive (from a Mac and found in the bottom of a desk at work) in a system mainly to terminate the bus (I lost the termination resistors during a move... bummer) that I had my CD-R drive on. Later on I replaced it with an bigger drive: a whopping 540MB Seagate that I actually put a filesystem on (it wasn't worth putting one on the 80MB disk :-) ).
I still have my ALR 386/2 system originally purchased in the summer of '87. Original floppy, memory maxed out at 2MB (no... I didn't spring for the US$800 naked memory expansion card). It had the original Maxtor 42MB full-height hard disk in it running off a Western Digitail WD1006WAH MFM controller when the missus used it to run Windows 3.1 to work from home (up until about '97). The Maxtor finally died and I've been planning to slap that 80MB SCSI drive in it and running DOS on it again (mainly so I can fool around with Wordstar and play Zork and Ractor again).
My Samba and print server is an old IBM P100-based desktop system full of whatever disk drives I have been able to scrounge for it. And the firewall was another of those IBM P100s until it died (this past August) and I dragged out the old Pentium/233/MMX that I had left over from the last upgrade to the missus's system that she moved to after the 386/2.
I left my original PC -- a Columbia 1600 XT-clone -- with my parents years ago when they said they wanted to learn something about computers. They got rid of it (Arrggh!!) some years ago but it was still in working condition. (At least when I last saw it. RIP old friend.)
I've been going through some of the older stuff I have stashed in the basement but, man, I still have too much old crap laying around.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I have a DEC VT220 terminal from 1986 connected to my linux server as a console. The plastic has faded to even an unglier color yellow then the terminal orginally was, but it still works perfectly and serves its purpose as well as any replacement would.
This scanner was given to me a few years ago at no charge because, as it turned out, there are no drivers available for it for Windows 2000, Windows XP, MacOS 9 or MacOS X.
It is supported by SANE -- but apparently SANE doesn't like the SCSI layer in OS X, so even though my Beige G3 Minitower does have a SCSI-2 port, I can't use it with THAT. (The latest MacOS drivers are for OS 8 and didn't work when I tried them on 9.)
It's a very large and very high-res scanner that produces very crisp images, and although I don't really have much use for a scanner I still get a kick out of the idea that I got it for free. The guy who gave it to me was a hardcore Windows fanatic and was basically ready to throw it away if I didn't take it.
At this point, the scanner's actually hooked up to a computer I have set up by my treadmill to watch videos on. It ended up there because the only working drivers I know of are the SANE drivers running on Linux, and the only SCSI-2 card I have is an ISA card -- so when I upgraded my main Linux machine to an Athlon XP 1800+ recently, with a new motherboard that doesn't have an ISA card, the scanner had to go where the old motherboard (500 MHz P3) went... Which was by the treadmill.
Please God, let me find my blue hat with the red trim. (Frances Farmer)
just died about a month ago, so I'll write it up as a near miss.
I had a venerable 486/133 which a fried keyboard controller and an 800Meg hard drive with SuSE 6.3 on it. I remember that as I had to install the OS on another machine and transfer the hard drive to it, since (1) the keyboard controller was fried, and (2) the settings for the hard drive were hard-coded and thus couldn't be changed.
It worked well as a firewall machine for many years, and has been in use since I got it back in 1995 or thereabouts.
Amazingly enough, the hard drive still works... the power supply died and since I had already had to do the duct-tape power switch trick a while back, I figured it wasn't worth the effort, since my new firewall (an OLD P2-233) is nice an quiet, and all it would do if it lived was run seti@home.
I also have an Amiga 2000 sitting on the desk in the corner, but I'd not really say that was "in-use".
My Grandfather (who is teaching me to use it) has told me repeatedly that bamboo slide rules do not do strange expansion inaccuracies that can come up in a metal slide rule due to expansion from heat. Of course my dad has a plastic slide rule that I would assume would also not have this problem.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I have set up in my room a Vector Graphics (64K Ram, Z80 processor, S-100 bus) "Mainframe" computer (it has connections for up to five terminials) running CP/M and a Hazeltine 1500 dumb terminal. I still use the system with terminal emulation software to access my linux box over serial cable and occasionaly just to play with CP/M. I also have a Practical Parifrials(spelling?) 1200 baud zoom modem (heh) which was my pride and joy in the days of 300 baud average modem speed. I still have it hooked up to a system, and occasionaly dial into my school's HP-UX system via a shell account when I feel like testing software I've written to see if it scrolls text to fast. (If the 1200 baud can handle it, it is good for any practical purpose). I also still have a Timex Sinclair, a Comodore 64, an Apple II e, and a 8086-based "portable" Zeineth Data systems box, but I don't use them for anything anymore really, I just keep them for sentimental value. Oh, and I have about 6 dot-matrix printers, one of which has options to use serial or the "new" parallel interface. Wonder if I missed something... 486 router, but that's nothing spectacular, I'm sure I'll think of something else as soon as I hit "submit" (even if I preview first).
Little Brother, watching the watchers
P166 with original 850mb hdd - Linux Firewall
P233 with original 3.4GB hdd - In house Web/application server
9 year old bt848 TV card. Still works too.
My laptop is a Compaq M700 (500mhz) that runs MDK 9.1
Give me your old your tired your "under powered" I'll put ram a better video card and linux on it and use it till it dies.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
my fingers for counting. They're at least 20 years old.
Printer is an HP Deskjet 855Cxi, circa 1995.
Secondary monitor and keyboard are both from the 496 era, 94-95 at the newest.
That is the oldest in current use, we do have a few older pieces of hardware lying around here.
I still have an A2000/040 running at the TV station where I work. At one time, we had five Amigas running doing various tasks, including a 1200 doing a constant "glass" logo in the bottom right corner of the screen.
The aforementioned A2000's only job these days is to reach into the Associated Press (AP NewsDesk, running WinNT4_SP6) server via Samba, parse the individual scripts for the latest news program, order them, comma delimit them, and send them to a Linux PostgreSQL server where it is automatically imported, and available via our web page (wdtv.com). All done using AREXX (Amiga REXX) and EZCron (a gui cron written by myself, with a little help from our past Chief Engineer.
Ah, the beauty of it all! It runs 24/7, has not been rebooted since I can remember, and even processes ScreamerNet frames with Lightwave 3D in its spare time (OK, it's slow at that task, but helps about 5%).
The Atari 1040 comes with built in MIDI. Combined with a copy of Cubase its still as powerful as any other MIDI controller out there. Note: A MIDI controller is used to control sound modules and samplers.
Anyone have perhaps a voicemail system running on OS/2? We had an octel system, you never would've thought it was a computer, it was so reliable you might've thought it was an embedded device. It lived right next to the government Novell system, database, we had to retain due to finacial compliancy... records keeping xx years... -PHiZ Who has the link to the novell box that got walled up in a university somewhere, heheh 4 years uptime.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
Seems to run fine when I'm home - makes all kinds of noise though...
I have to disagree with you there. OEM-supplied components *are* quite flimsy, since they compete on essentially nothing but price (well, perhaps extra volume buttons on the keyboard might be a selling point).
There are a number of manufacturers that produce more highly-price, nicer input devices. Among them, Logitech,
which sells a whole line of wireless keyboards, PCKeyboard, which has among its offerings modern versions of old-IBM-Model-M style buckling-spring mechanism keyboards (CLICK CLICK CLICK...), Fingerworks' unusual offerings, the expensive-but-ultimate-RSI-avoidance Kinesis keyboards, and Goldtouch's ergo products.
May we never see th
got a working c64c setup (the one with the snazzy modern-lookin case) that my parents got me way back in the day. and i still can't beat bruce lee :(
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
In my case, the oldest hardware my machine is still using are my PS/2 keyboard and mouse. I got them both "2 machines ago", when I bought a P166, 32 mb ram box. I've changed most of the machine twice, but I am still using the same keyboard and mouse as they work fine and I've seen no reason to change them. The 2nd oldest thing in my box has to be a Creative SB128 PCI.
I have an 80286-8 processor from the mid 80's on my Linux box's case as a decoration. The chip is some kind of flat form factor that clamped into the socket on the mobo. It is just the size to fit in that little 1"x1" logo spot on the generic cases I've been using for years. I saw it about 3 years back as I was throwing away a box of motherboards (286 - socket 5 - sheesh talk about being a packrat) and pulled it out for fun.
.sig?
Hey! Now I have Intel Outside too!
Psst, Hey buddy, can you spare a
As for the steel backplate in the thing: it's known that consumers generally associate some heft to objects with higher quality, to the point that some products are weighted to take advantage of this.
Dunno if that was the reason in this case.
May we never see th
386DX20
After than, he was better.4 MB RAM
60 MB HDD
PCDOS 7.0 (It had Win3.1, but on a PS/2 P70, win31 is more useless than usual, as the entire display is the same shade of red). So...
So, I guess I could run theoretically Linux on him. His name is Flint Fireforge.
for more info
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
I once heard that NASA was looking for sources of old 8086 (or maybe 8088) processors because certain aspects of the current shuttle design have been around a LONG TIME. I bet there are a lot of old workhorse embedded systems using very old processors.
We at (secret area;-) are using ULTRIX on vintage Digital box as a PRODUCTION server. No kidding! The date printed on the box is 1992, ULTRIX V4.3A.
Cuba++ let's make ++ better
Hmm, lessee... still have true oldies in the piles, but in use?
:)
1. I'm typing on an original Northgate keyboard that has seen duty on a 386, then an Amiga, then a Mac, and on PCs again. Has got to be from the late 80's. Still works, my every day keyboard.
2. Video card: Diamond Steath 964(?) A whole 4 megs of VRAM, upgraded from 2, first PCI video card, I think, and originally shipped with a very early Pentium 60. Sadly, no longer supported by Windows, was retired by a recent service pack for Win2000. Still works under Linux, tho. Likely only 10-11 years old, perhaps 12.
3. Monitor: 14" SVGA monitor with dials, a Viewsonic 5, still has a Windows 3.1 upgrade sticker on it. Likely date, new, 1990. Tube is in perfect condition, no burns, nothing. Good for the server rack
Jonathan
The oldest application I am running is actually a little 'fortune cookie' program I wrote in college and compiled in Turbo Pascal for Windows/DOS. This runs on my laptop for my amusement - and I share it with others I find deserving.
I have thought about rewriting it in C++ or Python, but haven't gotten around to doing it.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Still in active use:
IEC power cable off of something that cost $60,000 25 years ago. It & some components off the PCB were the only thing worth salvaging.
My boss makes me dispose of such things as he remembered blowing the year's budget to buy it way back when.
And we've got a couple (dual drive) osborne's kicking around that still work, but aren't used much. The 300 baud handset modem is just a curiosity on the shelf..
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
1987 - VAXserver 3100m30 still running a production webserver and mail. NetBSD 1.6.1
I have lots of old Sun stuff too ranging from IPX's to an Ultra 1
I also have a 1981 vintage Osborne I portable which runs CP/M 2.2.
My wife has a Mac SE she stills uses.
I'm using my Tandy 1000RLHD w/ 768K ram and Seagate ST325 drive to play Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and the TGA versions of Loom, Monkey Island, and Indiana jones and the Last Crusade. Some of the best games ever made.
I even recorded the awesome 3 voice tandy sound track from most of them. Check it out at www.cowclops.net/tandy.htm. Try getting that sound out of any non-tandy (ok, the PCjr used the same hardware, but i don't think it had a floppy drive, so you couldn't play LucasArts games on it.)
finally, the board is double-sided, and you can find all 16 UARTS if you are bored. The resistors on this board are actual soldered-on carbon film tubes. :-)
Ugly as sin, and just as unwieldly. Yet it does less than a modern (tiny) WinBond chip on your southbridge. Sigh.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Every year I pull out the old Amiga 1000, find the Kickstart and Workbench floppies, plug in the "Live" board and SuperGen and boot up Elan's "Invision" software. Hard to believe, but even with all the video digitizers and processing power available, I've not found a video processing tool as cool. And the old Amiga still works. Built like a fricken tank!
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I have an old PC-1 programmable calculator that still does remote control for a door lock just fine. Been in operation since Carter was president. Had to change a few batteries, but that's about it. Still have a slide rule on my watch. Never underestimate it's utility. Over 32 years old.
At work we have a production system which is a SPARCstation 10 running a node-locked copy of WAIS. I hope it doesn't die...
A Mac 512ke (1984/5). Boots into System 1.0 in 17 secs, never crashes, runs off of two 800K floppies: one for system, fonts, and applications, the other for docs. Runs MS Word 3.0 beautifully, if I need things like footnotes, dropcaps, and columns. I gave up the kludgey appletalk network a while ago, reverting to sneakernet for this machine. Mostly, though, I use it to play Daleks, MacDraw, and Kidpix with the toddler.
I think I got my money's worth. I keep wondering when it's going to die, as I contemplate the two-year-old pounding away at it.
Damn those pesky terrorists
My P60 running as a router doesnt hold a candle to some of the other entries. The oldest machine I have handing around is a 386... Had to toss my 8086 do to lack of space.
There are still applications useful in the amateur and commercial land/mobile radio world that will simply not run on anything other than an old DOS machine. The programming software for the Motorola Syntor X9000 series mobile radios is an excellent example. This is why I keep an old NEC ProSpeed 'portable' around. It's built like the proverbial tank, and will probably outlast me.
For later (but still not really 'Windows class') software, I keep several 486's around, in various speeds from 16/33 all the way up to 133. Just like with Motorola, there's lots of still-useful software in the electronics, instrument control/datalogging, and RF world that simply won't run on anything newer than the last version of DOS.
In essence, older computers and OS's are (and will probably continue to be) very useful for running specialized stuff that was never ported to Windows, probably because it never needed the bloat, overhead, and instability that went with it (translation: It did its job very well indeed, and there was no reason to "fix" it).
Now, if you want to expand that definition of "hardware" to include test equipment, the oldest items of such that I have, and still use, are a couple of Tektronix 7000-series oscilloscopes from the mid 70's, and an HP AC voltmeter from the early 70's. All are still going strong, I'm pleased to say.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
HP LaserJet 4+ printer - dated 12/01/1993. Old HP LaserJets print forever- had an even older IIID before switching to this better-featured (higher DPI, higher PPM, builting Ethernet, more memory capacity) 4+.
IBM Model M keyboard - dated 03/21/1996. The ultimate keyboard - I've had failures on plenty of newer, cheaper (Dell, Compaq, etc.) keyboards - but never a problem with a Model M.
Compaq external 5 1/4" SCSI case - dated August 1995. Came with a 4X CDROM, now holds a DVDROM.
Vintage 1993 Sun Sparcstation LX and 10. Still run Linux and BSD fine - much more capable and upgradeable than than PCs of the same vintage.
Also still have an original IBM PC (5150) in storage, vintage 1983. Fully loaded with dual 360KB floppies, 64KB RAM, and green-screen CRT!
How about a Color Computer 3, running a multi-tasking operating system with overlapping windows and mouse and hard drive and everything in 512k of ram and a 6809 processer running a Mhz clock in the low single digits...
ISA 4 Ever, foo! If that's too old for you, try: P4 ISA Power!
Fellowship 9/11
Not being a troll here, just a realist:
I'd say, since you just gave out entirely too much information, you'll reboot soon... probably due to a rooting of your machines.
Jerry Fletcher,
Privacy Protection By:
http://www.cotse.net/servicedetails.html
I bought my Sinclair QL in 1986 (rom copyrighted in 1983) and it is still sitting on my computer desk where I use it to do some hobby programming and other QL stuff. Until 1998, it was my main computer system for home use.
I've got a vintage 1987 Tandon 1.2MB floppy drive (half-height). Came with my old Tandon PCA AT clone. I kept it around because then I could maintain the fiction to my wife that I was still "upgrading" the old computer.
I have some ancient power cables too, but I have no idea how old they are, or where they've come from.
I also have a first generation CD deck (around 1985 or so) in my stereo system.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
It's old and funky and really slow but I can plug in my cell phone and check email or eBay in the middle of Nowhere. And I don't have to bring it in at night. (P133)
Just replaced two MicroVAX 3300's in two different manufacturing plants in Mexico. They never had really any problems. The OS was installed in Apr of 89 and are still running fine (did have to run a couple of "defrags" on some of the disks). The only hardware, THE ONLY HARDWARE ever replaced ever was a couple of TZ-85/6 drives tape drives (DLT's) and a keyboard. Sadly they were replaced with four W2K servers, of course the maintenance for them from Compaq was about $30K a year. On the other hand the line PC's are 486's and even a 386. Of course I was laid off after replacing the relics...
8-bit (6502) based BBC Micro. It runs a keyboard and wavetable synthesiser I sometimes play with. The particular machine I have dates from about 1981.
a.
I AM POSTING USING MY SX 64
We have a local computer bulletin board system that's still running on a TRS-80 Model III. The sysop said years ago that he "planned to keep his BBS going until the computer finally died", and it keeps going and going. He said the only problems he's had so far were a couple external modems dying from power surges, and having to replace the 5.25" floppy disks every so often, when they get accessed too many times and wear out. (On some of them, you could see where it nearly wore a hole in a ring-shape where the directory track is saved.)
(I think users donated him the replacement modems, to keep with his original plan to not spend any money on repairing the thing.)
I've got many (4-6) old 486/Pentium boxes laying around, and nothing useful to do with them. My parents, however, still use the top-of-the-line Dell from my junior year of HS...1992. Too slow for cable modem (WTF?) and not really worth upgrading.
I've got a SparcStation 5 for exploring linux kernels. Hey it was cheap and designed to run headless.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
And that's about all I'm going to admit.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Ahh, My first machine is in the corner of my room, its an old 200mhz packard bell with the neccesary 4mb S3 trio. That was never supported by X very well. Hell getting lilo to work was ajoke because you would boot and it would just print LLLLLLLL across the screen. I also remeber having a bad power supply electrocute me many many times just so I could answer a few messages and play some starcraft. :-D
the memories
You have been sig'd
My company seems proud that they still run windoze 95 and the they haven't purchased a new pc in 3 years. The most recent PC is a pentiumII 350. Recently they have implemented Thin Clients. 266mhz, 4mb video, no sound, two button mouse, 17inch monitor with 60hz refresh. Talk about eye strain! At least they replaced the 15inch monitor! Too bad I sold my 350 for 400 bucks(with 17 monitor and burner) years ago. This from a company that posts 14 mill profit a year!
My first computer was a Leading Edge Model-D with a 7.16 MHz 8088 and a switch that let you run at 4.77 MHz! It came with a "Magnavox Professional RGB Monitor 80", that does CGA and has a composite video input.
The box is long dead, but I still use the monitor at least weekly -- it's the video for my Shuttle Athlon XP 2400+ PVR-250 MythTV Linux box. It needs a periodic whack to fix the colors, but generally works fine. Manufactured in January 1987!
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
I haven't used it in 4 years but it still works! it was given to me by my neighbor who got it with an old 386.
Ride recklessly only when safe to do so.
I had to use excessive and unneccesary violence, but I managed to cram it in. It needs an external CDROM since there's not enough room for one (the mainboard is just to f-ing big).
:-)
Mod me up and I'll post pictures
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
When I need a serial console I still use my Olivetti PCS 286 from '91 running DOS.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
A certain, very large copy shop also still uses 486/25's for their POS (read it any way you like).
And it works together excellently with analog tape recorders, 2.5" floppy and my AMD machine and synthesizers.
It can store a whopping 15k of MIDI events. Boot takes less than a second. User interface based on a 5 digit 7 segment LED display, displays "HELLO" when you start it up.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
And they still work too! The one is a video card in a machine of mine (connected to a 17" LCD and the other one is a router.
Sadly, the old 75 MHz 486 Notebook I took out of the cupboard yesterday was not up to scratch anymore.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
You know, the one with a knob for each player, two paddles on the screen, a square ball and that great 'blip' sound. Still fun.
Come to think of it, I will have to try running it into my TV grabber card so I can play it in a window on my Linux box....
I've never flipped this keyboard over until just now. My windows machine has an IBM keyboard with 1984 stamped on the bottom. Did they already F1-F12 in three sets of four along the top, or is that just the copyright date? The rest of the label is impossible to read.
That said, I think including keyboards in this survey is tantamount to including desk lights and desk chairs. Good grief, the first Selectric typewriter dates back to 1961. By 1984 IBM already had 23 years of experience to draw upon in keyboard design.
How about a real example of protecting the family jewels the technology of yesteryear?
Three days ago I bought a used Asus P2B-S with Pentium II/300 for an Amanda backup server. I threw it into a relatively expensive case (twin 80mm drive fans, 120mm rear exhaust fan, 80mm blowhole fan) and slapped in a decent Enermax 365 power supply. The tiny CPU fan on that giant heatsink could fail entirely and the machine wouldn't skip a beat. 45 loonies for the mobo and CPU, 170 loonies for huge case plus power supply. Installed FreeBSD 4.9 RC2 onto an old 4G SCSI server drive and some giant refurbed IDE drives as my Amanda backup spool. The box is surprisingly snappy. The brand new Intel EEpro network card cost me more than the mobo and CPU. I'm playing around with an old Archive Python tape drive as a way to learn how to configure Amanada. Soon I'll add a modern tape drive or a modern DVD burner, or both. Call me crazy, but I've always liked the steel/watt ratio of those old Pentium II slot-1 cartridges.
Closest I can date the P2B-S is August 1998. The point here is that this mobo is five years old, yet I was still willing to wrap what was basically a new machine around it to perform an important function.
But oh yes, I agonized a lot more about continuing to use my circa 1984 IBM keyboard. I really lost a lot of sleep over that one, sacrificing two whole decades of exponential improvements in keysize reduction.
I have not had the heart to throw it away. The kids loved it so much when they were tots. Now they are adults and not as much fun...
I never used it much (had better machines for myself and as I smoked in those days a puff would cause the wireless keyboard system to type junk characters on the screen.) but whenever it would die I would just open it up and shake out the penneys the youngest would feed the floppy. When he was 9 months he puked all over the keyboard and case. IBM made it so rugged I just took out the Polaroid and snaped a few photos of the keyboard layout, disassembled the whole mess, threw it in the dishwasher then let it dry a day. It worked fine afterwards!
In-fact the youngest's first word was "IBM". (I had it by his crib doing rotations and spins of the basic 3d shapes - torus etc.. and he could change the shape by hitting any key.. Gave him a sense of power and fired off those complex shape neurons...)
After the "GhostBrothers" game I retired it and got them better machines. That cycle has never quit. Upgrade..Upgrade ... new machine.. over and over.
Now he's a journalist and when not on his gameless powerbook just loves all those auto hijacking games.. (The Mouser Cartridge game was soo much less violent.)
Mine is a HP LaserJet 4L.. pumping away on a daily basis, that since if I remember correctly since 1986... from the time when HP meant something ;-)...
-fredo@home
My oldest working machine is an IBM PC/AT, vintage 1984, with a spacious 640 K of useful memory, powered by MS-DOS 3.4, with a brilliant EGA display card and NEC Multisync (without any of those pesky numbers and letters after the brand name) monitor. I have upgraded this wonder with a 120 Megabyte (with an M) MAXTOR hard drive (full height), which is, I believe, the largest MFM drive they made.
In ADDITION, I have THREE external hard drives, which were manufactured by ESS (Electronic Storage Systems) in 1981.. each drive is an 8" PRIAM, and they run daisy-chained off a driver card that shipped with the units (the whole thing looks sorta almost kinda SCSI-like). With the driver software, each physical drive appears to be a pair of 56 Megabyte drives. This brings storage to almost 500 MB, total, a very large amount of storage for this level of technology.
One of these has an internal tape drive, in case you need to backup the data. I've used the tapes, and the software to run that, but in all these years I have had NO PROBLEMS with data loss of disk problems, all this hardware still works flawlesly after more than 20 years.
I am still using it to publish a pair of letters I have to send out quarterly, using PARADOX and WORDPERFECT.... there are number of other applications that run on this machine, but they have fallen into disuse, and are mostly trotted out to show visitors (some of whom are younger than the system) just how modest hardware can produce some very fine results.
I could migrate the letter production and mail-merge to a number of other systems here, but I get such a kick out of using this old machine that it's would be hard to part with it now. In case of tragic failure, I put all the essential data into a portable form, but I don't have plans to retire this machine just yet!
Dead PRAM battery. Does it have the right date? If it's 1956, definitely. Not hard to replace, but it's not a common size -- 1/2 AA 3.6 V. The Apple branded ones are extortionately priced; I believe some chain stores like Radio Shack have a compatible one.
Get the manual from this site. You can buy the battery at Macbatteries.com.
There is a capacitor charged by the battery that kick starts the machine. If the battery is dead, turning it on for a few moments charges it from the power supply, then when you power on again it boots.
My main system, an Athlon XP2000 space heater is nearly legacy free with the exception of the fact I am still using a Tandy AT/XT switchable keyboard with it from a Tandy 2500SX/25 I no longer own. I *really* like this keyboard... It has no windows keys and a solid feel unlike the cheap rubbish that gets passed for keyboards these days.
;)
;)
My secondary system, used primarially for ShowShifter and nolstalgic gaming is a 1.2GHz Tualatin Celery in a upgradeware slotket on an Asus P2B slot 1 motherboard. Aside from still having ISA (and it can even run Monkey Island 1 with the level 1 and 2 cache disabled and all the wait states cranked in the BIOS, no moslo needed!), it has a genuine Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 (Yup, it's 10 years old) with a Wave Blaster 2 card on it that can do Roland MT-32 emulation. A gravis gamepad connected to the SB-16's joystick port is great for some Star Control 2 action.
When I need a MUCH older system to use, I have 2 Tandy 1000 RLX-HD systems that I bought from eBay... While I no longer own the original, the RLX was my 2nd PC I ever owned. 286 at 10MHz, 40MB hard drive, 1MB of RAM and VGA. Okay, I did kinda cheat and connect a parallel port CD-ROM drive to one of them, but that's only cause there's too many classic games to fit on the measly 40MB hard drive. If you ever get an RLX, a neat "stupid Tandy trick" is making your friends think it can play MP3s by playing a 22.05KHz 8bit wave file using the Tandy sound pack from the TVDog archive (google it). Like most of the later Tandy 1000 series, it has DOS in ROM which makes it one of the fastest booting PCs ever made... Your Athlon XP3000 has nothing on it.
As for the oldest software I still use, every once in awhile I still use Deskmate for one reason or another... And sometimes I still use Autodesk Animator. Both programs still run just fine in XP...
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I've got one of those ancient compaq 286 laptops... one of those with the detachable keyboard and the carry handle and the power supply the size and shape of a brick. Battery died ages ago but still runs on wall power. Makes a nice serial terminal to a Linux box.
A lot of other posters have sworn by those old IBM Model M keyboards, and I'm no exception. Mine's a bit oddball in that it's lacking the numeric keypad. But I never use it, so that's just less wasted desktop space.
From oldest to newest
1. MSI 6210 Dual Slot 1 mobo & 2 x PII 350@400. I bought them second hand a few weeks ago and downgraded from a Duron 800@920
2. ACARD SCSI for scanner + scanner itself. Only has external DB25 plug.
3. IBM 20gb deathstar.
4. 64MB PC133 (relabled PC100?) stick
5. Sound Card
6. LG 52x cdrom
7. Network card
8. LiteOn 48x24x48 CD Burner.
9. 1 80mm fan + Blue Cold Cathdote
10. GeForce4 Ti 4200 w/AGP 8x.
11. Another 80mm fan + Green Cold Cathdote
12. Case, which I bought on Sunday. My old one wouldn't fit my mobo because of the CD holder.
No FDD, because I must of fried it by way of inserting power plug wrong way.
The oldest computer I frequently use is a Mac Performa 6115 (same thing as a Power Mac 6100/60). It has the AV video card, 72 MB of RAM, and a 1.2GB SCSI drive (the drive was pulled from my Power Mac 8500) but alas it is still sluggish. It runs System 7.5.5 and Debian, mainly Debian. It gave me some nasty I/O errors the other day that I'll have to look into -- all of a sudden it forgot how to use the hard drive. The 8500 runs Debian and sits in my closet as a SMB, NFS, and AFP fileserver, with 96 MB of RAM and two Seagate SCSI drives (9GB ST19171N and 36GB ST336918N). The 8500's proven itself to me -- it sat neglected in my closet (running Debian then, too) for 50 days last spring because I needed an always-on box in my LAN for me to SSH to from outside.
I've been meaning to reassemble my Compaq Deskpro 386/25. My high school was given a few of the things in 1997 or so and handed me and the other 3 geeks the boxes and told us to bring back whatever parts might be useful. I kept the whole box since I figured there wasn't anything terrifically useful in it. The memory module is a full-length card which goes along one end of the case and has 1MB of RAM on it, with attachment points for 3 1 or 4 MB modules which are square in shape and about 4" in size. Apparently there was a 4MB main memory board available, so the thing could have held up to 16MB. I had all 3 1MB add-on modules for a whopping 4MB of RAM. My sister used its 40MB ATA hard drive (produced by a company I can't recall, but it was a subsidiary of Control Data) to debug her then-new K6-2 based computer when it turned out every other sector was bad on her brand new Western Digital hard drive. She also used its Diamond video card, an ISA based piece that cost $599 when it was new(!), till she could pull the Matrox Millenium and Canopus 3dfx video cards from the P133 that was our home's main computer at the time (1999 or thereabouts). When I first opened it up I was amazed at the 8 expansion slots (3 8-bit ISA, 5 16-bit IIRC), but then I realized that virtually every port other than the keyboard port (big 5-pin, naturally) is on an expansion card.
A stubborn fellow I know won't throw away his old Olivetti 300 which barely even qualifies as a computer... It's basically a typewriter running CP/M80... The manufacture date says 1977. His publisher needs MS Word format, so I've rigged up an old DOS program called 22Nice and a parser on a P1-133 that sits on his desk but never gets touched by him...
If you ever need that Wang serviced, I was driving down the highway with a friend and happened to have one of those disposable cameras with me... We saw a Wang service van with chineese writing on it and a phone number. Nope, I haven't tried calling it yet.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I've got a Versa 2000C, 486DX4-75, but that's decommissioned now.
I've never seen one show up on eBay and I'd really like to have one... It was the last model of the 1000 series made and it was discontinued shortly.
It's also the only Tandy 1000 that could actually run Windows 95, albeit very slowly.
Oh well, at least I've got the second-to-last 1000, the RLX.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A friend of mine is a writer, he has a Dox 4.x box with WordPerfect 5.1. I think it is 12 Mhz. The lack of a screen saver has caused the 14" B&W screen to display the WordPerfect 5.1 menu even when the thing is off.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
My trusty old Plextor 6-Plex 6x SCSI CD-Rom.
I use it to play audio cds. I don't even have a SCSI controller anymore...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I use an old 14" Apple Basic Color screen from '92 or '93 for my 100MHz Pentium OpenBSD mail server. I don't know the details on the ISA graphics card inside that server, but judging from its size and ugliness I think it might even date back to the late '80s.
Commodore Amiga 4000. Yep, it's still running just great as my primary machine. My system isn't the most up-to-date, even by Amiga standards, but it does the jobs I need it to handle. In a nutshell, this is what I play with on a daily basis:
Amiga 4000, powered by a Motorola 50MHz 68060 processor, 144MB ram, Picasso IV graphics card with 4MB video memory, Ariadne-II 10BT Ethernet, 84GB of HD space, including a 1GB external JAZ and a 250MB interal ZIP drive. And I've got a hacked Dell external laptop floppy drive connected so I can read/write PC formatted high density floppy disks.
On the software side, I run my web, email, telnet and FTP servers on this box over a 1.5Mbit DSL line. Not the most modern, or perhaps even the most secure setup, but then again there aren't too many people out there who would try to break into such an ancient system. Besides, I just can't break away from ARexx to move on to something else. Yeah I know, I can learn to use Rexx on other platforms, but all the other software doesn't have a communications port to let me use scripts to control their every function. This is one of the main things that keeps me from completely migrating to Linux. Thankfully my wife's PC dual boots Win2K (ugh!) and RH9, so at least I do have something else to play with when I want.
1987 -- 13" RGB monitor and ADB-based Extended Keyboard (aka the barge)
1994 -- Power Mac 7100/80 (albeit with a 300MHz upgrade board from 1998)
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
From 1986. That beast had a 8MHz 8086 in it (not a 8088), I've upgraded the memory to 640k (the max you can get) and the CPU to a NEC V30, slightly faster and pin-compatible with the 8086. It runs MS-DOS 3.2 and lives in a piggery (litteraly), next to the machine that makes the soup for the pigs. It runs software I wrote for it years and years ago, my first production C program, written using Borland Turbo C 1.0. That program computes some growth statistics for piglets (basically the average daily weight they've gained while they were sucking their mum).
This is not a joke. It was deemed absolutely unnecessary to ever upgrade the hardware given that (a) it works and (b) it does the necessary computations in no time. The only bummer is getting the data out given it's only got a 5.25" floppy drive. We're waiting for that computer to die and it never has.
I suspect a newer PC would not last a month given the universe of grime it would live in.
Mine's circa 1995 or so, and the only "low" setting on it is the refresh rate (no higher than 60 on a decent resolution). 1600x1200x32x60Hz isn't bad for a CRT almost 10 years old.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
I first saw them ca. 1993 when I was on the OS/2 platform. A few years later, I found one at a clearance and bought it. It is a damn fine keyboard worth every penny. I ended up hoarding more via eBay. I now own 3 TP 2's, and 2 TP 4's. They rock.
- 486SX25 DEC LPV25 I swapped a DX2-66 Cyrix. Ran fine as a router using OpenBSD Up until 2 months ago when I placed I Compaq Prosignia Pentium 90 in its place with 2 10/100 NICs.
- Used to own a 386 DX 33 that had one of those proprietary memory cards expandable only to 4megs of RAM.
- 186 3Mhz yanked from an old acer altos
- 186 Later seen as a caching VLB ATA IDE controller
- 68HC11 and 6809 I built for class projects, just recently tossed cause I'm in the midst of moving
- Old Gandalf half duplex modems
.. or were they routers? I hated those things. - Commodore 64. I haven't seen it in ages, but the best game for that was PARADRIOD.
Those were the days..."BSD is about people pissing each other.." (Moid Vallat)
From 1981. Still works perfectly. Never once changed the batteries. It's the first machine I ever used with an energy saving feature that shuts itself down if it's not used for a couple minutes.
I kept a 5.25" floppy drive about for pure nostalgia reasons, then about a month ago a friend came to me with an old 5.25" floppy that had some software on he needed for a research project!
It's now in my machine waiting for the next person who needs it. Just trying to find the 8" disk drive now!
The 1000 RL was certainly released after 1989. I worked for Tandy (in Fort Worth, TX) in their R&D group writing system BIOS code. I was working on the 1000 RL project when I left Tandy in May, 1990. I'm pretty sure it was released in late 1991 or early 1992. Certainly before mid 1995 -- not even Tandy would take 5 years to get something that simple out the door...
"My oldest hardware is a mechanical calculator build in 1913"
I forgot to add this to my post, but I've used a slide rule this century. Actually, I've used two different ones. A K&E and a Pickett. Once to demonstrate the properties of logrithms, and once to calculate a pH based on ammonia and nitrite measurements.
There's something about logrithmic calculations like this, that a calculator does not quite communicate in the way a slide rule does.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For anybody still reading at this point in an overly long thread :-)
Yes, I actually have a Kaypro II, and it still works. I can't actually think of anything useful for it to DO these days, but it looks cool.
As for the stuff I do use... there's my HP spectrum analyzer from 1985 or thereabouts (measuring up to a *whopping* 112KHz or so), 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives transplanted from some ancient gray-brown beasts to my latest machine (Besides being drives from the days before they were built to fail prematurely that will probably outlive me, they serve as an excellent theft deterrent by giving my machine that '286 look), my trusty line printer and SB16 (this is all on my *main* machine).
Servers-in-the-basement get the royal treatment: Pentium 66 and 133, Cirrus ISA video boards (CGA and TTL outs, just enough video board so the machine doesn't go beep-beep-beep when you turn it on), the ever-popular 3c509s, and '80s off-brand keyboards (actually, just the controller board wired to a short plug, for those machines that just can't live without one).
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Bulbasaur runs my webpage, and a few other trinkets in my 22+ node network.
;-)
The pride of my collection, it is a 16 mhz Mac Se/30 running NetBSD. It flies - sort of
I have older hardware (a VAX, etc) but I do not actually actively use it.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
When I come home from college I use my old Apple performa 6300. TV tuner card with remote. Mpeg decoder card. 8x cdrom, upgraded from stock 4x. 2.4 GB hard drive space, up from 1.2. Maxed out at 64mb ram. OS 8.6 and Yellowdoglinux 2.3. I need to get my old telephone software working with it again and it can become an answering machine for me.
http://lowendmac.com/ppc/6300.shtml
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
with a soundblaster 16 isa, and a trident 2mb video card. I use it to play all my old games on... it certainly brings back the nostalgia, being able to play ultima 7, ultima underworld, and other older games that are nearly impossible to get working under windows. I'm thinking about picking up an old sgi indy machine for fun, though.
No, I said 64mb of ram in 1992. In 1982 I built an Apple ][+ clone system with a Z80B add on card with a total of 256k along with dual 143k floppies and an Amalyn 6mb disk pack which contained 5 1.2mb 192TPI single sided floppy diskettes with optical reference tracks and each one was pulled in like a record in a juke box.
Fight Spammers!
AMD K6 300 Mhz overclocked to 333 Mhz so that it can use a 66 Mhz bus? With 256MB of PC100 RAM, this baby is doing production dns on a rather busy network and it's running along just fine!
You can have my Picket N4-ES when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. I've got a little N 200-ES as well. That's the little pocket model in a leather sheath with pocket clip. Anytime I want to be instantly recongnized as the onsite Ubergeek I wear that thing.
I'm still regreting not picking up a Teledyne circular rule when they were blowing them out for a couple bucks apiece, but I'm keeping my eyes open.
Someone actually stole my K&E bamboo rule. The bastard is plasma if I ever catch him.
If you've got anything interesting lying around that you're not using Cliffy Stoll is willing to trade for one of his Klein Bottles.
KFG
Here is what I personally have:
-An ISA ESS Soundcard. It's the one with the ES1869F Chipset. I don't quite know how old it is but it's since it's ISA probably not from this century.
-Another ISA Card, don't know brand. It's a sound card with a cdrom controller on it. One of the IC's has a date of 1993 on it.
-Yep, another ISA Card. A Creative Labs CT3930 Sound Card with date on it of 1994. It also has an IDE interface and both the memory banks(for SoundFont I assume) have memory in them.
-I believe the floppy drive in my Midtower is from the late '90's, I remember using it when I had my Celeron 300A Computer.
-Up until about 4 months ago I was using a Cyrix 233(underclocked to 166) w/48MB Ram for my Firewall until I got my hands on a superfast AMD K6-350 w/128MB of Ram.
Old stuff that is from my(or my Dad's PC Repair Business) customers:
-Church I did some work for still had a couple of HP Omnibook 800's w/dockstations(Pentium 166 models) that they were using as Workstations. I just recently replaced the last of them with a used Cyrix 333 w/64MB of Ram and a 3GB Hard Drive.
-A computer at a Salvage yard has an old Tracker Tape system for backup's, I don't know how old it is but they remember having it 5 years when they remodeled the office. I also replaced an old Server from the same location(and same age) back in the Spring when the Raid system went south, I believe it was 300+ Mhz.
-I'm repairing a Display on an old Compaq Presario Pentium 233 Notebook.
I still use it to play many old games. These games did not use any MS-DOS, but instead you would just put the disk into the drive and directly boot into the game. I have such classics as Burgertime, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug as original PC versions, even Moon-Patrol from 1980. Luckily, my mainboard is able to swith processor speed down to the original 4.77 MHz of an original 8088 Pc.
In my office, across from my new 2GHz dual G5, I have a 1991 NeXT Workstation. Admittedly, I don't have it on all the time anymore, but I do turn it on once in a while to convert old WriteNow files and such. (Until July 2001 it was my main machine and in use daily -- I had to wait until OS X before there were machines up to the task of replacing it.)
:-)
These days, one of my favorite uses of the machine is doing a side-by-side comparison with OS X. I compare the supplied Terminal, TextEdit and Mail applications on OS X and NeXTSTEP, showing that they're essentially the same programs, including details like the Font Panel and Color Picker. I then run OmniGraffle (2.0) on the Mac and Diagram.app on the NeXT -- again the two are essentially the same (OmniGraffle began as a Diagram clone and will read Diagram files). Finally, I run Abscissa (a graph-drawing program) on both and open the same file and show that it's exactly the same third-party app, just recompiled. Along the way I show things like live window dragging. It's pretty easy to see how OS X is in large part a continuation of NeXTSTEP.
The NeXT is, of course, a little slower, but people tend to be surprised when I reveal that the NeXT has a 25MHz CPU, whereas the G5 has two 2000MHz CPUs (factor of 160 difference), the NeXT is maxed out at 32MB of RAM, whereas my G5 is only at 3/16ths capacity at 1536MB (48x more), and the NeXT has a 1GB internal drive whereas the G5 has a 160GB drive (another factor of 160). The NeXT is more than twelve years old and nevertheless holds its own pretty well -- it certainly doesn't seem like 1/160th of the machine my G5 is.
Sadly, these days it takes a couple of tries before the internal 1GB hard drive spins up, and so I think one day it's going to go to that place in the sky that disk drives go to. That'll be a sad day, but not one I can't recover from -- at only 1GB, it's not like it takes much space to store a backup.
Original model PDP-8 ("Straight-8"). One of the ones I own appeared in the ad on the back cover of the "CPU Wars" comic.
I run Minix on a Toshiba T2000SXe; it was planned as a serial console, but I never got to that, so I use it as base for my screen.
I always use HGC ISA graphics cards on my favorite servers whenever I can. I usually get them for free from computer junkyards, schools and government agencies. I complement them with vintage 14" monochromatic CRTs (green or orange) which look very cool and sexy with those big, old, noisy keyboards. Call me a psychopath but I just love to interact with an 8-way monster with 4GB ram and Gb-eth sitting in front of a one of those old-school consoles and listening to Wagner. I don't know why but it helps me stay on the manic side of bipolar disorder most of the time. Also, they eat much less electricity than modern adapters and color CRTs. Being dirt cheap is also a plus.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The real answer is that I use a Dell 486 50MHz with a whopping 20 MB of memory and 400 odd MB of disk space. It still has original flavor Windows 95 on it and it's proved itself invaluable. I have used it too many times to bring our network back to life to chuck it. It can do TCP/IP, has a serial port for modems and consoles. The only thing I'd like to do is to nuke it to the bare metal and and install Linux.
I still own my DEC Robin with CP/M and ZCPR from around 1983. I haven't used it yet this century. I last used it in 1998 - it worked just fine.
I have a 486/33Mhz working as my firewall/router. No HD etc. but running like a champ. The firewall is running two SMC ISA cards (SMC Ultra Combo). Lately the "server" has started to make some noise (powersupply fan) so I may need to invest some euro to that.
I have also four ICL 486/25 waiting for a terminal experiment (with Linux not with an axe!). A 486/100 for other experiments and a P166 (with RedHat 9) for when the better half needs to surf and I need to look something from google.
Just yesterday I shocked my colleagues by saying that I build a RAID system out of two 120 disks. When saying they were 120MB one corrected me by saying "you mean Giga?" to with I just replied Mega!
I just hate to throw old but good and working stuff away!
I do Linux device driver work. It pays to have a quickly-booting diskless machine to do the device driver work on.
So my old workstation (486DX33 -> 486DX66 -> Pentium PRO/150) is now performing that duty. It's still in the case which used to house the 486DX33 (which I bought in nov/dec 1991) with a whopping 8MB ram so that I could run X. Those were the days.
I also use a computer I got from a scrapheap (I think a client left it: "No I don't need it back") as a router. 166MHz pentium.
my PDA is a SHARP ZQ-1250 (34KB RAM, 3 lines of text, QWERTY keyboard); it was a gift for my degree, 1993. It works perfectly. I hate using cell's keyboards, so my PDA has all of my contacts.
Most of the machines have now been upgraded to Pentuim 75s with 16M of RAM. Most were [34]86s until maybe six months ago.
Next time you're considering upgrading give me a call I've got tons of crap^H^H^H^H bargins that you cant' do without!!
The oldest hardware I own and still use is certainly the keyboard from my first 80286 (I don't have my very first PC any more, an Epson PCe with 8088, which I really really regret having to give away but it wasn't my property in the first place).
:-) I have disassembled and cleaned it propably half a dozen times and it still works flawlessly.
:-) A keyboard is something you really torture physically, so now that I think about it I'm really surprised it still works ;-)
I'm 24 now and I got this keyboard propably around age of 10, so it goes with me for more than half my life
There's certainly older hardware in my little computer museum (got around twenty computers), but that keyboard is something I really use on a regular basis. Talk about quality hardware
I'm using an Apple Keyboard that came with a Quadra 700. IMHO its still the best keyboard I have ever used. Our DNS server is going strong on an Alpha 433MHz. our backup DNS is a pentium 1. Both are running linux. And I just upgraded our authenticated SMTP server last week from a PowerMac 7200/90 to a 7200/200...
I have a Compaq SLT/286 laptop (w/40MB internal HD, and a 3Com 10Mbit NIC in the dock) that I use to run my B&C Microsystems UP600 device programmer. I have burned a couple dozen devices in the past two weeks with it. I also use the laptop with Kermit as a dumb terminal. Both rounds of recent use have been in assembling and testing my SpareTimeGizmos SBC-6120 (a modern implementation of a PDP-8 as seen at the VCF 6.0). The 286 replaced my Commodore Colt (8-bit PC clone) after the Colt's motherboard battery leaked. I tried to use an older Compaq luggable, but the PSU wasn't strong enough to run the UP600.
I also have a Zenith 8086 laptop (dual 720K 3.5" floppies!) with DOS 3.3 and Kermit that might as well be a portable dumb terminal.
Even older is an original model IBM 5150 PC (5 slots, cassette port, etc.) that's attached to a Northwest Instruments bus analyzer. It works, but I haven't fired it up in a while. The last time I repaired it, I found a 20MB ST506/ST412-interface disk (called "MFM" by many people) that has too many bad tracks at the end, so it's now a 15MB-effective drive. A former employer bought this PC new for $5K just to run the analyzer (which was $20K). I don't have frequent call to use it, but it was great to have around when debugging a hardware problem in an Amiga a few years ago.
My oldest boxes are several varieties of PDP-8 (some with discrete transistors, not chips), but they don't count because those aren't tools, those are toys.
Don't you mean 486 DX 50? The DX/2 50 had one of those lame multipliers...
Yeah, that's what he/she/it meant (fscking ACs). I can understand where this might be difficult to see, though; as our AC git put half of that thought in the subject line, as if the subject line were part of the comment body.
Hint: the subject line is not part of the comment body. So, Don't Do That.
I support a few legacy systems as I call them for a few local clients. One system is a Xerox Z80 CPM based system still running CPM and Peachtree Mailing List Manager for a local non-profit. This unit is the last of 3 systems that have been canabalized.
As for DOS, I support a few local doctors and a major hospital that run a DOS program. The newer windows version is a POS and for what is involved the doctors stay with the old and tried program that interfaces with a DEC at the provincial health ministry. Access to the health ministry is thru Bell Canada Data Pac at 2400 baud. It has taken a while to find external modems that will connect to the data pac none of the new PCI modems seem to want to connect.
The reason the doctors use this DOS program is it submits their billing claims to the "regie" as well as showing their billing available and hours let in the monthly quotas. The alternative is to use commercial billing services which enter the data and then submit it to the "regie". Doing it themselves the $$ are turned around faster and fewer submission errors occur.
As for Old Hardware, my s/o thinks I should open a museum. I have a working Hyperion Lugable... a souvenier of my time at Hyperion as well as a few old worling 386 sx systems.
In my computer I used to have a 3COM 3C595TX, right untill a friend of mine stole it for his server while I was gone to the states for 10 months.
:)
I don't even know what year it is, but it's bigger than my gfx card. Not quite as big as those old Soundblaster 16 cards though. Man, they were big. I think I still got one laying around.
My other baby is my mouse. As far as I know, it's from 1995, not sure though. A Logitech Mouseman Sensa. In 1996 (97?) I think they renamed it Logitech Gaming Mouse. Now it's like impossible to get. I'm planning on, when it finally dies, to take the intestines from another mouse and try to get it to work again.
For those of you that haven't seen a pic of the mouse, I can tell you that it's just so sweet.
When talking about weird hardware, I must confess that the mousepad I have now, which is also the best I've had ever, is made from a piece of plexi glass. I sanded it a bit on one side to try to get a frosted look, but it didn't really work. I use that Sticky Tack stuff to keep it from moving around. A bonus is that the sticky tack stuff lifts it about 1 mm of my table, so if I have some important papir, I just slide them underneath.
Another cool thing I've got, is a scissor that is stuck to my monitor. Also with sticky tack. I put the cable from my mouse through so it doesn't fall down on the floor. This is definately one of my best ideas ever.
My monitor is a Olivetti DSM 28-171HR (low emission), and even though it's kinda old, it's a pretty good monitor. I think it 15", not sure though. I'd like to get at bigger one, but I don't have the money right now.
My grafics card is a Winfast (?) Geforce256 with 32 megs of RAM. I used to have a Geforce2 MX400, but it died last year when my CPU cooler fell of my CPU and partly fried my motherboard.
As a result of that, my BIOS sometimes freezes/locks up, sometimes it only shows a blue line, and as an extra feature, I'm only able to boot from my HD. I can't boot from anything else, or my computer simply crashes.
Now we're at the HD, it's broken too. I just hate IBM for that. It has bad sector all over it. I can't even download Dev-C++ without it landing on a bad sector. Everytime I do a chkdsk, new bad sectors appear.
Well, that should be enough.
Bye all, going on a vacation
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
Until 2 weeks ago I had a Genius 3-Button Mouse. I never was 100% sure, what mouse-protocol would work in Linux or what mouse-driver I should use in Windows, but somehow it worked nevertheless.
I have this monochrome HP 700RX x-terminal set up by my bed, the worlds biggest xmms-remote-control. :-)
Couldn't find any year on the terminal itself, but the matching monitor says 1992.
I type this on a clickety IBM-keyboard, assembled in May 1989.
I wrote my PhD on a ten year old (at the time) Apple Mac Quadra 700 (circa 1991) - 68040 at 25 Mhz and 20 MB RAM running Mac OS 8.1, and smoothly too. It used to be the server for the department, before it was pensioned off to me. Nice Machine. Solid, and upgraded with a NUBUS video card for ten quid from eBay to give millions of colours! I use an iBook now, but the Quadra still works fine.
I have some clients who still use these so I have to keep one going for testing purposes whenever they want a change.
threadeds blog
I'm still using the P200 I bought in '97, too. Although I have fitted a cd-writer, oh, and the original cd-rom gave way to a dvd-rom drive. I've had to replace the graphics card a couple of times, too. I upped the memory, added a couple of larger hard drives and put in a slightly faster processor to help windows cope a bit more. Ah yeah, but then I needed a new mobo to fit the new processor, and the mobo wouldn't fit the old case.
Oh ok, it's a different pc, but the floppy drive, keyboard and AWE 64 sound card are original!
A Spectacle of Graphics and Sound!
japp.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
I am still using a Macintosh LCII running at a blistering 16MHz. It is still in the original configuration with the original 40MB harddrive. I use it at my small business to print up signs and tags for merchendise.
"cloverleaf" cable then, that your local electrical supply shop *will* have
Of course, Im sure modern games wouldnt support such a legacy card, but oh well, there is always Doom =)
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Been in the family the whole time. Still runs like new.
Oh, and I drag out a 1990 dot matrix printer once a year to print some 3-part forms for my daughters' school auction. They better graduate before the ribbon wears out.
386 runs Linux RH6.2 (a toy)
P133 runs NetBSD 1.6 (apache, postfix, nat)
The wetware that is my body. I'm hoping to upgrade before it fails :(
I still use my old Sun SparcStation IPX, though the NVRam has meanwhile died. I think it's from around 1991 - quite old :-)
I was recently at a school open day at my old school. I noticed that they had the original Commodore PET 8032 on display that they acquired in, oh, about 1978. (This is a 1MHz 6502, 32K of RAM, external casette tape drive) I remember it's arrivial when I was about 14 or 15. No idea if it still works (I guess not), but memories of playing space invaders on that tiny screen....
I haven't used the thing in years, but I still know how :-)
The computer I use daily was manufactured last year, so it's not old at all.
:)
I also have a Mac LC III from 1993, but I'm not sure whether once every couple of months counts as using it
8086, 1M of memory, 20M of hard disk. It runs the assembler, debugger, and flash programmer for some embedded stuff I still work on from time to time. Never really saw a need to upgrade it, since the battery life is good and the keyboard is nice to type on.
Sometimes I edit web pages and stuff on it, in elvis. I suppose if it works, don't fix it.
I am still using a trusty, about 10 years old (got it from eBay) Macintosh LC III with an 68030, System 7.5.5 and the old pre-Open Transport Network stack (because of the Apple Internet Router (not related with the big Internet coming out of your network socket)) at my company to control a series of Mac-only DNA synthesizers. Works like a charm (nevertheless I have four other Macs sitting in the closet in case this one cries for retirement. Old Macs are sooo cheap on eBay nowadays, who said Macs cost more than PCs ;-) ?)
I work with a small consulting outfit, which has had about 8 "generations" of sysadmins working for the same major bank. One of our most valuable and proven tools was "Molly", my baseball bat (named after Molly Millions from Neuromancer.)
It's amazing the amount of work it let you get done, if you brought it to meetings or just fidgeted with it a bit when people came to your office to discuss things.
Not to mention being very effective for justifying upgrades of ancient hardware (whoops boss, I have no idea how that stack of Boxhill drives got such a huge dent in it.)
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
In my previous job we had a lone dedicated PC which ran DOS and some custom Wang stuff with the full size internal hardware card it used to drive things.
The machine's power supply and motherboard fried one day and we had a horrible time finding a machine locally under severe pressure that not only had an EISA slot, but had the space inside for this full-size card.
A replacement was duly found and we were back up and running with a DOS based phone system..
I'm still printing all my code listing on my old 9-pins printer. I bought it in 1987 and it just keeps on printing
;)
Sometimes, I also powerup my ColorComputer2, which is even older than my printer, but I don't really use it on a regular basis like the printer.
On the other hand... I maybe the oldes hardware I'm still using
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
COuldn't be bothered to remove it when I installed smoothwall... so technically it's still in use but actually it only gets powered up.
I've also got a working Sinclair QL that I drag out for kicks, and an old Intellivision games console that we play football on cos it's got just about the best controllers for playing football you can get. the old eight way soft keyboard and the edge contacts for passing and shooting.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I am useing the fist box i ever installed linux on as a Router and DHCP server and its been running concistantly (save for moves,upgrades and a powersuply change ) sence its intital Start-up back in 1997 an old DEC PC 386 CE (IPB1) Wich I thought was Hot stuff at the time Processor 80386-SX 16MHz Maximum Onboard Memory 4MB Embeded SCSI and FDD Interfaces
The oldest hardware I own and will be using again(when I have enough space to unpack it again) is an Apple //e.
I also have a IIgs and a couple of old mac classics.
I'm thinking of making an apple subnet off of my home network to share files between my primary systems and the apples.
Anybody know if there's a (not even decent) web client (like lynx) for apple dos 3.3 or ProDos?
Why? Because I can.....
A golden oldie, still being used as a fax server. Bought in 1992,
Famous last words:"but...."
I still regularly use a NeXT Cube with the legendary NeXTdimension card. She's double headed (1 Mono MegaPixel display and 1 Colour 21" MegaPixel display) with a orignal non-ADB keyboard and mouse.
I use it to diagnose network problems, look up quotes (the book kind not the stock kind) and as a display for my PS2, or Nintendo GameCube. She's in wonderful condition and is a very special part of computing history. I have other NeXT systems, but this is the nicest they made. She was made in 1992.
What about the IBM Model M by Leximark. 1984. Connected to my current PC (1.4Ghz T-Bird) via PS/2. http://www.modelm.org/ for more.
samrolken
from my IBM PS/2 Model 70, bought -85 if I reckon it all right...
hannu
I've got a box of ye olde ISA cards. Some of the most spectacular that are still in use:
- Soundblaster AWE32. This card's a full-length monster, complete with a bit of warping probably due to the weight of the 4MB SIMMs sitting in the on-board slots.
- Hairy old EtherLink - AUI, BNC and RJ45. RJ45's knackered, but BNC and AUI still work. I've got one other BNC-equipped PC that I can hook it up to.
- Atari Falcon - Still set up, although rarely used. 180MB 2.5" HD.
- Atari Jaguar - Might as well weld Temptest 2000 into the cart. slot. Played regularly.
- Atari Lynx (the original model). Unfortunately something's not right somewhere, and the screen is permanently too bright. Got an absolute shedload of really great games for it. Do I bother picking one up 2nd hand, or do I get a Gameboy Advance SP?
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
And that's for work! Yup, they are quite cheap to mass-produce as a processor core (when your production run goes into the millions).
Oh sure, I still have my Amiga 1000 (still use the RGB monitor sometimes too) and my Osborne 1 (yep, still works, learned CP/M and dBase II on it) but the oldest hardware still in regular use is the Apple Newton that my daughter uses as her PDA. Totally Retro. Totally Cool. Teachers ask her about it when she takes it out to jot down a note.
My 1982 Apple ][+ is still running!
Circa 1965. Stainless steel, probably never been washed with soap. Just got it two weeks ago at a church rumage sale. Makes very good coffee, which I am missing badly right now as I am out of town.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I'm using it in the (photography-)darkroom...he it has an excellend ADVAL-meter/converter
Famous last words:"but...."
This is the last bit of the old home network that used to connect my SE/30 to a Deskwriter and my mother's Macintosh classic. Ah, the time when you could do your own network cabling with telephone wires, simple soldering and small resistors.
Computers don't get slower with age. Our expectations on them just increase.
My web server was made in 1996. It's a Dell PowerEdge 4200. My desktop machine is a screaming Duron 750MHz. But those are the faster machines.
Some of my other museum pieces include a Sun Ultra 5, half a dozen Sun Ultra 1's, various SPARCstations from the 1 up to the 20 (and most models in between), a number of old PARISC boxen, couple of old DEC AlphaStations, and a small swarm of Pentium 100-133's.
I operate them all with just one keyboard. An IBM type "M" that was manufactured on Aug 20, 1987 and still going strong after many years of abuse. I keep a spare one around just in case (but haven't needed it yet).
A Pentium 100 with 32M of RAM and a recent installation of OpenBSD is a very useful machine. In fact I've powered down most of mine because I had inflated expectations of how many I'd need to run all the services that I wanted.
The machines that are starting to find their way into dumpsters today are actually Pentium II and Pentium III class, which are more than enough PC for most people. Most need a boost in RAM but the processor is more than fast enough to run a modern Linux distro, KDE with the eye candy levels cranked down, some web surfing, email and KOffice.
Even at the office I'm reclaiming old servers that are about to be put out to pasture, reconstitute them with Linux and some extra RAM, and put them back into service.
Not exactly vintage, but my A1200 still sees a fair bit of use, primarily to run Bars and Pipes, but SWOS gets the odd outing too. I have an A4000 too, but it makes too much noise for the environment I want to use it in. Every time I use the Amiga I'm surprised by the speed and friendliness of the OS. Wonderful computers.
I've also got a Sun ELC (external disk, board in the back of the monitor) which I dig out when I need to check something on SunOS 2.5. Which, admittedly, doesn't happen an awful lot these days.
I'm still using the Hp deskjet520 printer i bought for my first PC (486/33) around 1993/94. Heck, i can remember using it to cheat in my math classes, where i used the incredible 300 dpi resolution to print ultra tiny notes :)
It will mostlikely survive some more years, since the whole gearing is completely made of metal for instance.
It seems that HP doesn't produce homeoffice printers at this qualitylevel anymore. But one of the golden quotes of a printer Salesman i askes about it is still somewhat sad but true.
"If they would have continued to build printers that last over a decade, who would have bought a new one next year?".
The guy who uses a Mac Plus (circa 1986) as his webserver definitely wins the prize for the oldest equipment still doing something semi-useful:
http://aurejac.dyndns.org/
I just love this keyboard, to be honest with you. The 't' key and the backspace are finally starting to stick with irritating frequency, and the 'a' key is soon to follow. According to the plastic case of this keyboard, it was minted in 1986. The circuit board, however, was created in '87. It's an Acer 101 key keyboard, complete with AT-style plug and all.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
It's still chuffing hard without a docking computer...
In Germany at the famous Tempelhof AB in Berlin in the late 80's I was an operator on a Wang 100. Damn good those systems. Reliable as hell and they had text based word processing and a spreadsheet application called 20/20 and a database called EZQuery, all integrated with the Wang office automation system for notes, office mail and calendaring. Not one virus or hickup in the two years I worked there. Can one say that about MSOffice/Exchange crap today, NO! I would dearly love to know what the real improvements have been.
Oh man I miss ours - about five years ago our house got burglarized and they took the computer. That was a good job for the most part and I got a nice new computer as a result. On the other hand they took my Omnikey keyboard - I've missed that that ever since. Really have to go have a look on Ebay...
I'm still FreeBSD 4.9 prelease on my laptop, even though the 5.x alpha releases have been out for almost a year!
And it's does what I need just fine!
Seriously though, a hosting company I used to work for had an old 486 providing web, email, and database services for about 500 domains.
I think the main reason they got rid of it was it didn't fit in the co-lo's rack too well...
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
I use a sparc station 5 110 mhz with 256 Mo of ram,
2 scsi disks of 4 Go and 2 Go.
There is solaris 9 and fluxbox on.
The screen is an old ncd 21" (nov 94).
I use this sparc for doing ssh connection to my laptop, and some low cpu use operation.
AREXX was just damn beautiful. I have never seen anything as powerful and simple since.
IBM buckling spring keyboard. I'll upgrade my mobo, disks, screen, whatever - but the keyboard stays!
I took a look at the recent vintage festival site and came across some images of the Amiga 3000UX, the one that came with a bona fide S5V4 Unix. I remember drooling about owning one of those back in 1991. Those things could have changed the market by themselves if Commodore and Sun and all the other proprietry UNix buggers hadn't been so immesurably greedy.
I have an original MS Mouse. Green buttons, dedicated card (9 pins) and metal ball. It just keep running and the metal ball doesn't seem to pickup desk crud the way the rubber ones do.
I just threw out my Integrand case and power supply because the power supply was bad (must weigh 25 lbs). I would need to convert the case to support ATX motherboards and the 100 CFM fan made it sound like a VAX when you turned it on.
486 DX/4-100 with 40MB Ram
2x540MB Hard Disks
S3 Virge/DX 4MB PCI Video
33.6k Hardware Modem
10Base-T Combo PCI NIC
4x CD-ROM
15" Monitor
Linux/Win95 Dual Boot
I use this machine to play a bunch of old games that I used to like - like Descent.
Purchased in January of 1992, this case has held 4 different mobos and at least six drives of various vintage. It's now my home mailserver (redhat), kitted with a P233 mobo, 3 assorted IDE drives (one of which is a whopping 2 GB) and a 10/100 NIC of unknown lineage. It's still on the original AT-style power supply, which has run 24/7 for about 95% of its life.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
I've got a Game Card III Automatic shoved in one of my legacy slots...I'm not really using it perse but it's still in there. Was using it with my Thrustermaster F-16 FLCS Joystick on Descent 3. Haven't played that in a LOOOONG time.
I'm restoring a PDP-7 and when I get it running I'm probably going to write an IRC client in ASM. This will count as active usage, I presume. Oh, and the URL for pictures (geek pr0n) is http://tore.nortia.no. It sports an 18-bit word, *four* 4Kword ferromagnetic core arrays, an Automatic Priority interrupt. Oh, and don't forget the revolutionary DECtape, storing up to 3 MB, directly addressable. But the oldest one in active use is a 1983 HP 150 machine, (the first machine to use 3.22" floppies, with a 270K format), which I use to turn in my homework. It is the only machine for which I have a printer. Newest is a P4 1600 with 512 and GF4.
Live Long and Prosper -Tore
toresbe
Having been labelled as an aging character-based geek - my employees once affixed a 'Sid' name plate to my door - I have an unhealthy collection of hardware in my basement.
... reason being that this machines has my old (SCSI Weird) tape unit attached and I still have 30-40 reels ... and you never know when you may need that data ;)
... It still boots!
The oldest system that I still have running and use on occaision is a Sun 3/80 / 4/110 [both machines in the same VME chassis]
The oldest (complete) system in my basement is a PDP/11 running Programmer's Workbench (Sys3)
Natty
Maybe the rain Isn't really to blame. So I'll remove the cause, But not the symptom!
Having been labelled as an aging character-based geek - my employees once affixed a 'Sid' name plate to my door - I have an unhealthy collection of hardware in my basement.
... reason being that this machine has my old (SCSI Weird) tape unit attached and I still have 30-40 reels ... and you never know when you may need that data ;)
... It still boots!
The oldest system that I still have running and use on occaision is a Sun 3/80 / 4/110 [both machines in the same VME chassis]
The oldest (complete) system in my basement is a PDP/11 running Programmer's Workbench (Sys3)
Natty
Maybe the rain Isn't really to blame. So I'll remove the cause, But not the symptom!
We're still using an old SEMS Solar System, which was installed 1981, with 2MB of Ram ! It's running on ~8MHz (140ns) and is built completely out of TTL-logic components (the CPU consists out of 3 15"x15" circuit boards)
:) )
:))
It's calculating a lot of process data and serves almost 50 ASCII Terminals and a whole lot of digital and analog signals
We threw out harddrives the size of a wasching machine (50MB) two years ago and replaced them with some emulation systems (from 1992
Well, it's still doing a fine Job at tremendous speed, programmed in Fortran or something called PL/16
Oh and btw... I am using IBM Model M Keyboards where I can (I had to fight for it several times at work, but it's worth it
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
1991 NeXTstation (68040/25MHz, 32MB RAM, 2G SCSI HD).
:) for may iMac. Oh, and it was handy when my iMac's Ethernet port died, although browsing the web is not what I would call one of its strengths...
Well, I can't say I've been really using it for a few years now, but I don't have the heart to move it away from my desk. Besides, it's still useful as an external floppy unit (albeit a big and slow to boot one
But the most I get of it, is that warm feeling inside when I unleash it upon the unsuspecting visitor, and it still manages to make them go "wow!"
Tuff that Smatters.
I have an old 286 laptop that I use soley to play Pirates and Joust. It has 12-25 MHZ (cant remember) clock frequency,1MB of ram and weighs about 14lbs. Here are some more specs
My oldest hardware still in regular use is a trusty Amiga 1200 (bought around 1994), running some accounting program for my parents company, plus emailer and browser. ;) And - gosh - You can just turn it off, no need for a system shutdown. Ah - those were the days ...
Boots in less than 15 seconds
Same here, my router is a nice ss4 which has been up 24/7 for the last 2 years, without any troubles whatsoever.
My oldest: it's a microVAX. Not only does it "still run", but it has been running continuously* since 1988.
(used for DNS and other low-impact services now)
*continuous, except for minor h/w and s/w upgrades, a total of 10 days downtime in 15 years. I have to reboot it every few years just to make sure I remember how to reboot.
It was my main machine until about 1998. It was a dual-boot linux/windows machine at the time.
Then it turned into my router/firewall/mail server/print server/SMB server. Ran RedHat Linux.
Just this year I purchased a wireless router, and another machine has taken over print server duties (a Windows XP Home machine, and it's having some strange problems I've yet to work out). My 486 is still my mail & SMB server though. Still working very well!
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I only pull it out about once a year, whenever I reorganize my stuff and need to find more room in the electronics closet.
Nearly industructable. It just keep working. I can buy new cartridges for $25, and those things last forever. In terms of economy and reliabitly, it's far supperior to those inkjets.
I have read that the LJ-II and the LJ-III, were big mistakes for HP, because they last too long.
For personal use, I have two old 486 PCs. One is over 12 years old and isn't used much. The "newer" one is 10 years old and is used every day. I put a 120GB drive in it and it uses Bacula (www.bacula.org) to backup three other machines. Works great. Cheaper than any tape drive & faster too.
For professional use, I work on a mainframe so that is easy. My customers have some programs that haven't been compiled in about 30 years and are still used. We have round tape drives that were manufactured in the 1970's and are still needed to send data to some of our customers.
i'VE GOT A 486 SX 33 LAPTOP CIRCA '94 i USE TO RUN SOME DOS GAMES AND MICROSOFT OFFICE (WITH THE EASY MIGRATION FROM WORD PERFECT SETUP) - GET THIS - IT REQUIRES A FAT 12 PARTITION TO STASH DATA IN SLEEP MODE. AND i AM USING AN IDE CARD FROM LIKE '93 TO SUPPLEMENT A 99 MOTHERBOARD WITH SOME CONTROLLER PROBLEMS, AND I HAVE A 10 MBPS 3COM 3C509B ETHERLINK CARD MANUFACTURED IN 93 INTERFACED WITH A MODERN CABLE MODEM CONNECTION. I have most editions of intel chips from 8086 to pentium III 650 either archived or in use. Including the original pentium 75 with errors. I also have several cyrix 5x86 and 6x86. I have one cyrix chip that runs at 333 mhz. I have no pentium 4's, as I have switched all my new computers to athlons - of which I have no thunderbirds, alas..
My brother is still using in his law office my old 8088 machine tweaked with a 560mb harddrive and 2mb svga graphics,and surprisingly he won't change the ol'good wordperfect until the pc dies from natural causes....lol.It is remarkable how many people run old dos programs, such as custom databases on old hardware, two months ago i had to service one 286 machine from a cardiolgist's office that had all the patients info in a 80mb harddrive. However, i'm still using my pentium pro powered by a minimalistic installation of SuSE 7.3 and it still has all the old goodies in there, sounblaster 16 and a 8mb graphics card.
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
I got a Diamond Stealth 64 2mb PCI video card in my PII 450. It also has some ISA 56k modem and is connected to a 15" IBM PS/1 monitor with my blazing fast state of the art $350 TEAC 6x SCSI-2 CD-R.
I also have an original 6-switch woodgrain Atari 2600 VCS console. I like old stuff... My computer is hooked up to a JVC DC-7 boombox for sound and it also serves as my record player. (Yes it has a automated slide-out turntable on this 30+ lb portable behemoth.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
One day I came home (2001) and my dad told me he bought a computer for $20.
Since he hasn't touched a computer since he took some night school class in the 90's and learned Appleworks, I was leary.
The clincher was when he told me it was an 'IBM Computer'. Sure enough, PCjr, chiclet keyboard and all. Almost none of the floppy disks worked, but the cartridge games worked. They keyboard has some non-standard connector so I can't even use it to show off to friends.
Poor dad.
Running a p90 with FreeBSD since 2000 -- with UPS it ran non-stop for the whole year of 2000
$ uptime 8:27PM up 276 days, 11:51, 1 user, load averages: 0.01, 0.01, 0.00 cdeever@oliver$ date Sun Dec 17 20:28:29 EST 2000
Posting this message through the machine right now!
My Mac Se/30 I use it almost every day. It has Word 4 on it.
I also have a A500 that lives in its original box.
This
These days you don't need a maintenance service to keep your Wang up and running...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Most of our test stands run proprietary (and old) DOS software. We have one test stand still running an IBM AT (as in an original AT)
the 8 inch floppy drives (weighing easily 10 lb @ were probably manufacturee in the mid-70s.
Still boots, can't say I use it often but the Vedit+ editor isn't 1/2 bad and is setup to emulate Emacs.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
I think the oldest hardware I'm currently running would be 11 Sun Sparc IPCs. The NVRAM is dead in all of them, so if they lose power, I have to manually enter a mac address etc. No hard drives, they all boot off of a netbsd machine that I set up for that purpose. What do they do, you ask? Well, they do a pretty good job of heating up my living room in the winter. I mostly just got them for the fun of setting them up. $100 on ebay for the whole set.
I remember around 1995 I went to a Melbourne Computer Expo. Every stall I went to had a pair of these JUSTer Active 75 80W speakers. They sounded awesome, and at just AU$80, I got myself a pair.
Nowdays, my system consists of:
Gentoo GNU/Linux 1.4
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
CoolerMaster Aero 7+ HSF
ASUS A7N8XDeluxe (nVidia nForce 2 based)
Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2x256MB & 1x512MB DDR-333 dual-channeled)
PowerColor Evil Master II Multi-Display Edition (ATi Radeon 8500)
Maxtor 60GB 2MB 7400RPM IDE
Seagate 120GB 8MB 7400RPM SATA (x2 in RAID)
Hitachi CML175SXW B 17" Multimedia TFT LCD
Pioneer 12X DVD
ASUS 52x24x52x
Enermax expensive as all hell PSU
Enermax FS-710 Aluminum case
Netgear WG311 802.11g network card
Logitech Cordless iTouch keyboard
Logitech TrackMan Marble Wheel
JUSTer Active 75 80W
As you can see, my speakers and mouse are the odd ones out - both aren't made anymore but I'll never give them up (unless I get a bigger apartment which allows for a 5.1 speaker setup).
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
At home: still running a P-200 Gateway desktop with 48MB memory. I upgraded the disk to 20GB long ago, so it's running as the house file server (used for backups). The P-200 would still be doing print services as well, except I purchased a network lp server ($100).
At work: I seem to be the only person still using an IBM PC-300 (192MB memory.) Runs great for web browsing and checking mail, and ssh'ing into my systems at work. Mostly used as an expendable system I can leave on during the night (in case it gets cracked) for remote access. But my _real_ work desktop is 933MHz (256MB memory.)
Yeah, Atari Super Pong.
If you count analog 'hardware' there's my granddad's 1940 RCA radio console standing in the corner - cleaned and re-cap'd, it plays every other night. Has shortwave too! And an input for 'new' formats like 'FM' and 'TV'.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Is this voice mail called Messenger? By a company called Advanced Voice? If so, I wrote part of that!
Using Telemagic, purchased for our original 486/33 network running Windows 3.1 and Lantastic. (its a dos based contact manager). I think its from 1991. (we DID get a y2k update for it, for $150) Using Peachtree 4.0, their first windows application (16 bit) which was designed for Windows 3.1, from 1995.
Still running a Windows 95 server because we don't want to pay for Win server client licenses and time constraints have made migrating to Samba not viable. Also have probs with Samba on a mix of 95a,b,c,98,2k,xp. (yes, we tried PlainTextPassword). That 95 server is on a 1.1ghz Dell 1400SC server, which was really fun to get drivers for 95 to work on, but a nice and fast. (u160 scsi)
Actually, I carved up 95 on that one pretty well. It can't handle any media on the desktop, all codecs stripped, etc. Goes a month+ without a reboot easily, which isn't bad for 95. There are several other DOS utilities we run as well, most hosted on that server, including an out of date zip code tracker (zip = city for searching) and others.
Still have a couple P100 machines, but they are getting replaced in two weeks (for the new Peachtree) with CR-53 boxes (VIA 1.0ghz with built in NIC/Sound/Video/usb2/ps2, very cool TINY boxes for $159 bare at computergate.com). We will just pull the old hard drives (850mb) and CD's out and update the drivers for the OS. Already testing one with geat results. Just add a stick of RAM and they fly.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's got a Pentium 100mHz, 810MB hard drive and a 14" monitor. Granted it's not the oldest piece of hardware in the world, but it still runs 24/7 and was my primary (and newest) system until I built my Athlon XP 2200+ system last September (talk about one hell of an upgrade!) I used that old thing for 5 1/2 years straight! Shove that in your Moore's Law and smoke it! :) I even still have the original packing box with all the contents, books, foam and even the quick setup sheet!
Jeremy http://alucinari.net
The oldest computer currently running in my setup would have to be my console server. It's an IBM RS/6000 POWERstation 250. (PowerPC 601 at 66MHz, about 80MB of RAM, and a 400MB disk) Still runs just fine. However, it's getting replaced sometime soon by an embedded console server of sorts, simply because it's a cleaner solution.
I have a COSMAC elf! that I built circa 1975, the "motherboard" is perfboard with sockets that are hand wirewraped together. the processor is a RCA 1802 that runs at 1.8 Mhz and is connected to 255 bits of static ram.
the machine is programmed by setting the load/run switch to load, flipping the byte togle swithes to the bytes bit pattern and pushing the single-step button to put the byte into memory.
I never got the thing to actualy run but its pretty cool for it's "OMG" factor
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Batteries not even needed. They're EMP-proof, too.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
MicroVAX 3100-80! ^_^ Just managed to get my irc bot running on that sucker! with it's mammoth pair of 1gb scsi drives, and it's huge 16mb of ram!
I'm still using a NEC Multisync 5D, manufactured in 1991.
It makes the lights dim when I turn it on, so I tend to remote display from that box..
I also found out that the metal screws on the side will shock you if you touch all of them at the same time. I found this out when I picked up the monster right after I turned it off when moving. My arm hit all four screws (2 on each side). Ouch! I almost dropped the damn thing.
I'm still using a Pentium 233MMX, circa 1997/98 as my primary computer with a Gravis Ultrasound sound card (circa 1994). I'm writing this on it right now. I'm also using a Pentium 90, circa 1994, as my firewall/server. (I also have a 486DX266, but that's been scavaged for parts. It'll still boot though, if I put a power supply back in.)
My goal was to upgrade my computer when they became 10 times as fast. Now they're well past it, but I have a new kid so we're not spending on things we don't absolutely need right now. Maybe next year.
I have one that I picked up at an old data-entry summer job; the company logo was an abacus, and the owner gave 'em as a promo toy to clients. I nicked one before leaving to head to college.
And what's wrong with analog computers?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
okey, i lied. i don't actually have an IBM Mainframe, but i do have a NUBUS card that fits into my Mac IIsi (and the IIcx) intended for hooking a mac up to a one.
since i don't own one myself, and the only people still running those here in sweden might be the army or some old banks or insurence companies, i havn't been able to test it. but it's in its original anti-static packaging and has a manual and a floppy with (i guess) drivers and terminal app.
i don't have the card here, so i can't tell you brand or make, but i got it as a souvenier when i quit my mac-tech job; when the card was new, it cost around 70'000 SEK (around 6000$). now it's a souvenier...
other than that, i still play prince of persia on my SE, as well as Deja Vu and other stuff that keeps crashing on my iMac.
f64 : doing disturbing things to fruit since 1978
Until about 4 months ago, I was using a PIII 450 with an original SB16 in it. Would still use it but new mobo don't have ISA. I was using it as a secondary soundcard to do passthrough into the vcr to be used with the Radeon's TV out. The TV has crap for speakers and instead of pulling plugs and switching things around when I wanted to watch a movie on the TV instead of the monitor, it worked great.
:)
Have an Adlib Synth card in my old 386 (used as a clock in the living room) and still have "music" on the harddrive that I've composed...man does it suck
Zro . two
"I come from Canada...they say I'm slow....eh?"
Mine means my own, but how can this be if I owe for it?
I forgot about that! I was thinking of the 486/33 I used up to a year ago as my server, and the Tandy M100 that still gets used for text output -- but I have a trump.
My daily calculator at work is a Tandy TRS-80 PCII purchased used in 1983 for $300. It came with a printer/plotter and a casette interface. Now it just functions as a quick calculator, but I occasionally program a few lines of Basic for it.
It was great in University. 4k of memory could store lots of text......
My small home network is still using the old coxial network cable, none of the fancy hubs, switchs or cat5 for me.
I've also got a keyboard from 1994, I had to get one of those stupid adapers so I can plug it in to ps2.
I've got a 486 laptop, which is running win95, sort of useless, but still alright as a portable typewriter. The only really problem with it is that i've got network card for it, so i have to plug in a null modem parallel cable to connect it to the network.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
FYI
I still have an old Quad density 720kb 5.25" drive in my Athlon 1.4 system, to read my old floppies. I still use it about 4 times a year.
It's originally from an old ICL server from 1978.
The BIOS thinks it's 3.5" but that's because the IBM PC never supported Quad density.
It works with DD floppies, as it's magnetic coils use the same 300 gauss field not the 600 gauss of the HD 1.2 Mb floppies.
About the ICL: It was real cool for it's day. If my memory serves me:
8 RS232 terminal ports.
1 centronics printer port.
Intel 8086
CP/M 86 with multitasking option
256k RAM
Xebes 1210 MFM controller with 5 Mb Harddisk
and the above floppydrive
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Man, lemme tell you, we have some old apps floating about still. For instance, we STILL use in PRODUCTION Borland Paradox 4.5 for DOS, why? Becaseu the databases can't (for some BS reason they're telling me) be migrated. And we're still using a crappy mapping program called Maplinx 3.0k...apparently the new versions of Maplinx don't do what the old one does, or something--I wasn't involved in that (thank heavens.)
As for hardware: up until early this year we still had a 486 running very old queries on very old Dynamics data, but now that's been migrated to the new, yet still shitty, Dynamics database.
It's hideous, I tell you, and thankfully we can map LPT ports under Windows 2000 or we'd have not even begun to rollout W2K to the workstations (we'd still be stuck on 98...which was only rolled out becuase I convinced them that it might be a good idea to get away from 95)!
Is your school funded by EDS? You should be able to walk right into a job with them after graduating!
Stick Men
I'm typing this on a 1986 IBM Model M keyboard.
:P I still have a couple drives that are functional and 50M, as well, but they're way too small to use for anything. There's also the 386 IBM laptop w/ the 40M drive. I had DOSlinux on that a couple years ago.
I've got a 120M IDE drive in a router/firewall. Almost as slow as a floppy drive.
I also have a couple ancient floppy drives (that are the 'dark biege' color, not the newer light beige color. Or maybe that's just because they're aged) that are in commission across my network and the networks of family members, when floppy drives are used at all in the first place.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I used to work on a base school, and some of the pc's used there were older than i ever owned myself. I even once found myself standing before a big big big big computer that used floppy's so ancient that they could only hold 1 document ( plain text !! ) this was off course the most insane example, in general it was P233/32MB ram with win95/win98. This all was used on a daily basis. Working there only had one advantage: booted my Pentium III P500 at home ( 1,5ghz was allready normal then ) just felt screaming fast...
He recently asked me to build him a new machine, so I slapped together a 3GHz box. His only previous PCs were a 486 and then a P3 @ about 700MHz, but the new machine finally convinced him it was time to risk a conversion of this critical piece of software. I tried talking him into one of the many off-the-shelf estimating packages I found, but he decided he'd rather have the same old software he has always used. He's a good friend, so I agreed to help, and in the next few weeks I'll throw together a port from Northstar Basic.
What's really funny is that he's been an avid Excel user for several years, and I *know* he knows Excel well enough to reproduce every bit of work this app does, but he just won't give up the safety net of step-by-step prompting...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I know of a DEC PDP 11 still in use. It controls some fab machine in one of MIT's student labs. A plasma etcher, I think.
You insert the cartridge for the etch profile you want, and it does its thing.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
Due to Air Force frugality I'm still using a Intergraph 21 inch Monitor we bought as a package with some incredibly fast Intergraph P166 workstation w/SCSI drives. The PCs have long ago been given to local schools, but the Monitors live on. I'm about to upgrade from a 400Mhz POS to newer 2Ghz DELL P.O.S.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
When I joined the company, the shoved a Alphaserver 1200 in my direction (the things weights a ton and is about 30 by 60 cm and 40 cm in heigh) with the famous words "Here, your workstation". It didn't boot, it got a crappy VGA card,... luckily, there was debian.
A few days later, when I was happy with the machine (I'm typing currently on it), I found out they meant it as a joke. To late, I fell in love with it.
The laptop that was ordered for me with additional keyboard is used to test-drive applications.
My oldest piece of equipment is my first computer case, bought in 1987. It is an XT clone with a 150 W power supply. I took down the 8086 which still ran in 1996. Into the box I put a 150 MHz Media GX and more modern hard drives. Later, I swaped that out for a K6/2 400 with 128 MB ram. It is a nice little internal ftp and Star Office server but mostly it's easy to tear open and stick stuff in. Yeah, I rigged the little red LED to blink with hard drive use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My mother still uses the Tandy 1000 286 that she got for me when I was younger. I've built PCs for my brothers and my fathers business, as well as for her (which she ended up not using and giving to my brother) and even offered to get a Mac for her (she really liked my powerbook and the MacOS X interface) but she's content using the old DOS machine with Tandys "Deskmate" Window manager. She even went and found someplace that had "vintage" hardware when the hard drive failed (I think it was like 20meg) and replaced it hersef. .....I really should just get her an imac or something....
nb
I've got a SPARCstation IPX (with the Weitek PowerUP chip upgrade) that I use from time to time. It runs Solaris 7, as long as you're patient. I haven't tried anything newer.
For a console, I use my old Mac Plus. The original beige version, purchased when the Plus was new. It has the Kensington System Saver fan "hat," and I upgraded the keyboard to a DataDesk 101-key model. The mouse died long ago and was replaced with a Mouse Systems optical mouse -- the Sun style with the aluminum mousepad, not the modern kind.
The Plus still has life in it. The analog board -- the third one in this unit -- is a wee bit shaky, but if it goes I can dig out my copy of "Macintosh Repair Secrets" and order some new capacitors to replace the troublesome components. The thing predates surface-mount.
The funny thing is, not only does the Plus make a serviceable VT100 replacement, but it fits the IPX like they were designed to go together. (Well, it'd look better if it were the later, "platinum" colored Plus, but...) The classic Mac footprint fits exactly on top of the IPX (and anything else in the stack of old Sun accessories, like the 2x cartridge-loading external CD-ROM).
The oldest piece of equipment I've used in production at a job would be an ancient Epson dot-matrix printer. I hooked it up to our loghost, so that all the important log messages were immediately printed. This served two purposes: I had a copy of the logs which could not be deleted, even if the loghost were compromised; and if something unusual was happening on one of the machines, the racket from the printer would alert me to check the logs. It had to be an old dot-matrix for this to work, because
So, if I were in a small-to-medium shop where hacking was a big concern, an old tank-like dot matrix with a good tractor feed would be valuable to me -- and not easy to find anymore.
I still use ARC's Dance of the Planets, which I bought back in 1993. It's still very useful DOS software. But, I have to admit I don't use it that much, since I have to boot back into W95 to use it. Kstars doesn't help either ;)
The code I wrote to gather data from static-testing solid fuel rocket motors is still running strong today, on a PDP-11/34 with 1MB RAM and RL02 20 MB removable hard drives. It's all custom code over RSX-11m, a very reliable OS with excellent real-time capabilities. Just down the road from it is a PDP-11/24 based thrust vector controller, too.
I also know of an Apple ][ that's still in daily use to run a pneumatic controller in a robotic apatosaurus. Natural history museums don't have a lot of money to replace systems that still work.
Personally, I'm running a 400 Mhz P2 in an original PC case (not an XT, a PC, model A) and my main linux server is in a Honeywell DPS6 case (which I have gutted, no more 11" hard drives in there). I have an old VAX too, but I don't ever bother to boot it up any more so it doesn't count.
purchased in 1988. still works. A little slow (damn 4bit processors); but, I don't do complicated analysis with it -- that's what the 750MHz desktop machine is for =)
Upgraded to 2100. Used daily.
Also, I gave away my daughter's old 166MHz Compaq, and it's still in use for email and surfing.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
I use mc (ported to NT) on my w2k box. I can manipulate files an order of magnitude faster than dragging, right-clicking (and the subsequent inexplicable 2-3 second wait sometimes), not to mention windows' caching. I used mc for all of my development (JSP) up until about a month ago when I transitioned to Eclipse.
Oh wait, this was about hardware. I had a hardware dvd card in until a few months ago (Creative DXR-3 or something like that), and I've had the same Gamepad for at least 10 years now.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I was talking about the powermac...
I was talking about the powermac... To tell you the truth I didn't even see the stuff about the Tandy... No offence.. :D
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I'm still using an IBM Model M keyboard made in 1985... it's the best keyboard I've ever used, and it's in a damn great shape. Today's $10 keyboards won't last a week :)
:P
Ah, yes, I have a SoundBlaster AWE32 card too. Got that with a "multimedia kit" back in 1996. I wish I had that 8x IDE drive too, but Creative sucks at doing these things... interestingly, a Xing Ling drive I got one year later is still functional on my firewall PC...
And heh... I still use my MSX2+ and AppleII machines for real work (I use the Apple as a serial terminal to debug some programs). The MSX2+ is used mainly for games, though.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
I aquired a school district's entire network.
My main computer is using a floppy drive from a 91 Packard Bell 386SX.
I still use a Commodore SX-64, because my C128 is still not hooked back up. I need to fix one of the F keys, then it'll be ready to use again. I power up my Vic-20's and Plus 4's every now and then, too.
Anyone else have a Gorilla Bananna printer? or an MPS-801?
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Doubtful. None of the machines are Internet connected.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I still got an old Boca SB 16 clone card with IDE passthru for CD... it is an ISA card... oh did I mention it also has a rocking 14.4 modem as part of the combo card and is about as long as the whole freaking case!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I have a case and power supply from my 1987 Zeos 386SX with an AMD K6-2 475mhz processor running FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE. :) I have some older hardware around but it isn't really being used.
Brian
I still use my great-grandfather's .22 rifle (bought sometime between 1913 and WWII).
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Just a few weeks ago I retired my 486/DX2-66 that I bought in June of 1992. Paid more then $3600 for it with a 4MB Cardinal video card with the Weitek P9000 chipset 8MB of RAM and an incredible 120MB hard drive. The harddrive controller, video board and I/O controller board are all full-length ISA daughterboards. There are no integrated devices on this MoBo at all! The system ran as my home firewall/router for the last 6 years running first RedHat 5.1 and now Debian 2.0. After replacing the bios battery with an external pack of AA batteries a few years ago, it ran fine until recently I tried to figure out why my connection stayed so slow.....the 486 couldn't handle the compression/decompression of the PPP modem connection fast enough. I popped out the hard drive and put it into a Pentium 200 MMX that I had, rebooted and continued on working as usual.
Since I gave up hope, I feel much better.
I once computed a 9 digit trig function (a sin()) using the Taylor series expansion (and converting degrees to radians) in my head. It took about a half hour - and it was correct.
I don't claim any special genius. Anyone can learn this. I still believe it should be taught in school. It's easier, faster and much more reliable.
-- Stephen.
This old 'fat' mac doesn't have any DVD drive or video capabilities, nevertheless it can control a Pioneer DVD-V7400 via the serial port. Since I do a lot of DVDs for exhibition purposes it is helpful to test how various commands work with the discs I create. I brought this Mac in as a conversation piece, but have since found it to be very useful.
Man, we definitely use our Wangs in different ways.
bkr
-----
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
i like the old style keyboards myself... big, heavy, satisfying click with each keystroke... don't make 'em like they used to ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I also have a Timex Sinclair 1000 that still works, with the 16K RAM module and the printer. My wife bought it (for a song, of course) at a yard sale in 1995 or so.
My wife is an aspiring filmmaker who started out in a Seattle "school" of filmmaking that holds that you should work with real honest-to-god film, whatever format you can afford. She works in Super 8. Super 8 projectors are a dime a dozen... and all of them are broken in some way, or break not long after you get them home. The moving parts were never meant to survive 30 years. Even if the machine was never used, the plastic is dangerously brittle by now. Fortunately, super 8 movie cameras are much simpler and have held up much better over the years, and she has found an excellent film lab that does video conversions so good you can see the film grain.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
Blue and white G3 300, overclocked to 400 running debian linux ppc.
At this point, I figure it is going to be functional long after I am not....
============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Some kind of image enhancement machine that my advisor supposedly paid a fortune for back in the 80's. Story is that the damn thing never worked the way advertised but every year some new grad student thinks maybe I'll be the one who gets it to work. Right now that guy is me. Plus we have some really old school chain drive resistance coil electrode pullers that still get used even though we have nice new laser heated ones.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
In 1992 I snagged it and have used it since (more or less).
Ran DOS until 1994, then I upgraded it with a IBM 320MB SCSI HD and installed Windows 3.11. Used it as a backup machine.
In 1997 I installed Linux on it. I think it was Slackware 3.3 or something. Never got it to work properly with the MCA/ESDI setup. So later I installed Debian 2.0 and 2.1 which is currently running with kernel 2.0.39 as backup server for my mail and some files. Runs like a charm with uptime over 200 days (went down in a power outage caused by lightening).
The most impressive is the quality of the parts inside the machine. In 15 years of operation, and running as a server the last 6 years, the only component that has failed is a fan.
I'm suspecting that the ESDI HD will fail soon but I won't hold my breath.
I hate to sound old, but the truth is that they simply do not build computers like this anymore.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
The video rental store I used to be part-owner of is still using the POS / rental system I wrote in multi-user fox plus (the predecessor to Foxpro) back in 1988. One of the two networked 286's it was running on has been replaced with a 486 (the one the database is on), but the other one is still chugging away.
As far as I know, my old partner has only made a couple of small revisions to the code in all that time.
I was asked in a recent interview what my proudest work accomplishment was, and I listed that system in the top 3.
It is one of those old lab machines that is running a simulation environment. We can't run it on a faster machine because it would operate faster than realtime. We can't replace it with a new environment, because it's too expensive and no-one will pay for it. I have been secretly hoping that the stupid thing would die, so I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. But the damn thing just keeps on working. Running MS-DOS 5.0. It has an enormous 256MB Hard Drive, a CD-ROM and a two 3 1/2 inch floppies, and a boatload of custom interface hardware to run our simulation rig. It is used almost daily, and when we are testing a new development, it runs almost 24/7. I hate the thing, but it is a lot more stable than the XP boxes that the IT clowns are putting on our desks these days.
My HP LaserJet 4L is still going strong for almost 10 years.
I have a couple of ~10 year old floppy drives that just won't die.
I use an old 2GB hard drive as the boot drive for my 300MHz Celeron, NT 4 file server. Which also has an old Trident 2MB PCI VGA card.
I also have a bunch of 10-20 year old microprocessor boards that I play around with. 8080/85, 8086/186, 8031/51, etc.
Oh yeah, and a 23 year old black and white TV.
I've got a Mac 128, still used today, but unfortunately only as my trash can. The board died long ago and she has been relegated to collecting tissues and junk mail. Hooray for the all-in-one box with removable face plate!
-Yim
Still runs, and as short a time as 3 years ago it was still the only way to communicate with the mainframe where I was working at the time (Try Disney!). I've moved on, but I had to keep the machine for a while longer to win the class action lawsuit (got a $100 merchandise certificate from Toshiba for just proving I was the original owner of it).
I still keep it around because it can read 360K floppies, 720K floppies, and it can do direct hardware reads on files on floppies with the old Norten Utilities still on it.
As for software, I still run and use Wordstar 7.0C. I was a beta tester for it, and for certain types of programming, nothing has ever beaten it.
Yup, it has a 1200baud modem, 20 meg drive and is an 8088, but it keeps on trucking. Back in 1994, I had the power supply replaced, otherwise, no problems ever.
A 21" Barco Reference Calibrator back from 1996 or so, bought on a fire sale from some design studio. This mean mofo takes a sizable part of my desk space. The colors are still perfect, thanks to the built-in optical sensor.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I still have my 286. It was the first computer I owned personally (though we had even more ancient machines in the family). I still pull it out from time to time to run some of those old programs that just won't run correctly on modern hardware.
And it was a pretty kick-ass 286 too. It actually had a 287 math co-processor, ran at 12 MHZ, and 5 MB of RAM! Yes, a 286 with _5_ MB. Wierd, I know, but that was the system's maximum, with 1 MB on-board, and 4 SIPP slots. It originally was equipped with a hercules graphics adapter, with an amber monitor (both of which I still have), and a 30 MB MFM HD, but it currently sports a VGA and IDE HD.
Despite the enormous size and weight of the original AT-clone cases, I have a hard time parting with this box... it was home to my BBS for years, and I learned assembly language on it.
-Bones.
I have not lost my mind... it's backed up on disk somewhere!
I still got the whole machine, man! DECpc LPx 433SX, still going strong running Linux 2.4 from the original 160MB disk. Design is vintage '92-3, purchased in '94. Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 also still running after all these years. (More than I can say for the crummy monitor currently hooked to it, which is ready for the boneyard after only about three years.) Original keyboard too. The mouse went spastic and had to be replaced, but everything else works. X still runs pretty well in 40MB. (Better than it did in 8MB when I first put Linux on the box.)
I bought a Wells American AStar in 1987. It has a big standard IBM AT case, and came with an 80286 @16mhz. I've upgraded the the guts many times over the years but I still have the original case, power supply and keyboard. I also have an Amiga 1000 bought in 1985, but that doesn't get much use these days. Now if I could only find that Pong game......
A DEC PC (Digital Equipment Company, remember them?) is my firewall machine. 25MHz with 16 MB of RAM but it is almost always at 0.1 load or below. Does admirable service - even after 11 years. I bought it as my Windows machine where I ran Chicago (the beta of what later came to be called Windows 95).
My SE/30 (woodstock) runs NetBSD and is the fileserver for my home network. 80 MB RAM, 9 GB hard drive, and an 10bT NIC! Sometimes I fire up X just for kicks - with IceWM it's not too uncomfortable. I've got an accelerator, but it makes operation unstable, which is a bummer.
How did you get your box running a printserver? I've got a LW 4/600 I'd love to put on my network if I could figure out how. Everyone I've talked to is pretty sure it's not possible without a LT/EN hardware bridge, and even used they're expensive.
Constitutionally Correct
Ok, not really, but I still have my Zoltron monitor from my first 286, which I got around '90ish. It theoretically supports up to 1024x768, however, ever since I lost my trident video card, it's only been able to run 640x480 properly. This puppy is currently is use on my Debian server.
Go Zoltron!
I worked for a company in Houston that had a color printing press that was from 1964, it was hooked up to an IBM computer (I am not sure what kind because the name had worn off) from 1978. We had to rig this to an Apple IIc just so we could get apple talk running so that it could hook to our Novell 2 network and receive print jobs from the Windows 3.11 PC's. Now this might not have seemed odd in '90 or '91, but this was '99. We used to send people to Goodwill to look for "new" PC's for new employees. This same company employs over 50 programmers. Because they are so cheap, they just bought them 486's to run Windows 95 last year. They had someone write their C++ compiler so they would not have to buy any commercial software.
----- "It's all fun and games 'til somebody puts an eye out, then it's just funny."
We daily use our diskmix automation for our Neotek recording console circa 1986 or so. The computer we are running the software on is I think a 386. Newer computers are to quick for the software.
Sig, we don't need no stinking Sig!
I also have a computer dedicated to running oldskool demos. It's a 486dx4-100mhz motherboard with 5 ISA slots and 2 PCI slots. Not only does it have an original Soundblaster 16 sound card, but it also has a Gravis Ultrasound PNP (one of the very first RED expansion cards) and an unknown (but usable) ISA NIC. But believe me, it's worth it to keep this thing running for the nostalgia of running an old demo.
The company I work for may have written that software. We still ocasionally have to support that thing although most have upgraded to the VFP 6 version. We have been trying to make the move to dotnet. The boss is a dbf lover and doesn't want to give it up! Ugh...
And reading the other threads that have developed makes me realize that in fact, my oldest hardware is not my 8 year old monitor, but my 10 year old keyboard. Newer keyboards just don't compare, so with my little adapter I keep using this old one.
:PPP ... no idea where :P.
its somehwere
but each time I find it
I just turn it on to see the ready and the cursor blinking... I breath deeply and then go code on my p4
I acquired an old 80386/16 with Win 3.1.
Upgraded it to 3.11 to get it working on the network.
Finally just turned it into a doorstop...
Then used it to keep the wind from pushing the dumpster around the parking lot.
i actually just ordered a rr-net ethernetcard for my C64 so i can connect it too the web.. i think that's the oldest hardware i got in use..
I have a modern nForce2 system crammed into a Gateway GP6-333 case. I call this a practical case mod because I had to whip out the dremel tool to make things fit, but it was purely for practical reasons, not aesthetic reasons. I had to cut room for the power supply, and also had to cut holes for all the on-board connectors on my mobo.
Despite what the poster said, power supplies are no longer immune to Moore's law. I had to put a new PS in the case to support the power requirements of a modern AMD CPU. It seems a PS can now only survive 2-3 upgrades.
I also salvaged the CD-ROM drive from the GP6, but put in a middle-aged CD burner.
The main goal of this system was to minimize cost. It is a Win98 system purpose-built to run all the old kids games that were targeted for Win95/98 and do not run on Win2K+. It's kind of weird booting Win98 on such a smokin' fast system. Sadly, the Win98 install and hardware discovery algorithms do not benefit much from the speedy hardware.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Floppy drive left over from the original 486 I bought used in... 1998? A Toshiba 4x CD drive, which has the advantage of being completely silent, as opposed to most drives these days. Oh, and a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee AGP, which has been part of my computer for almost the same amount of time, and has become the bottleneck of my system. Even so, WC3 runs without problems. I was impressed.
Graduate of the LeRoy Funkified Badass School of Soul.
I still use my ISA hercules card and a Cannon monochrome green cga monitor as an mda 3rd head in my every day workstation, it is great for text or curses based monitoring apps like iptraf, uplog and such
I've got a bunch of old hardware that still works, although I don't really use it much, except to fire up old games that won't work with emulators.
My most recent old computer is an old Amiga 1200 with a 50 MHz 68030 card installed. I'd probably use it more, but the PCMCIA ethernet card is faulty (it will eventually hang the machine). I've also got a bunch of Commodore 64's kicking around. They work, but I don't have a working 1541 floppy drive.
-Turkey
My oldest computer still in service is an i386dx25 I bought as my first PC while at UCONN in 1991. For many years it ran DOS -> Win3.1 -> OS/2 and served me well. Of course the hardware was upgraded many times from 2MB RAM to the max of 8MB today, SCSI disks and spare serial ports.
As I saw OS/2 petering out I decided to take the plunge and learn linux. I installed Debian Linux a few times before getting comfortable with it (on a 40MB drive!) I cut my Linux teeth on that thing.
Over the years it has played pretty much every role in my network, from various test servers through development, workstation, firewall and wireless router. Now it just hums away and only reboots for power outages happily serving DHCP and DNS to my network.
It will be a sad day that it doesn't come back from a power outage.
-joe
Among other old and/or exotic hardware, I run a 1991-vintage DECStation 5000/25 (named "Firbolg") with 40MB of RAM and a 25Mhz R3000 processor. It takes to NetBSD 1.6.1 like a charm.
It's acting as a shell server for friends who like to play angband as well as being the web development environment for rospa.ca. It has the fancy graphics adapter, a 17" monitor with the evil sync-on-green design (run away!) and the DEC 4800-bps serial keyboard and mouse, but it's currently running headless so it'll fit on a shelf. It runs remote X applications surprisingly quickly for such old hardware.
I bought three of these for Can$40 a while back. One of the best deals I ever made.
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
Anyone else still run old DOS programs on actual DOS machines?
I suggest visiting some of your county offices to see what they use for data entry and bookkeeping. I know of an office that still hires a programmer to maintain a pure text-console DOS program for scheduling meals and deliveries. I bet if they "upgraded" to Windows it would all turn to shit, too (our DMV recently "upgraded" to a Windows-based system, complete with shitty ink-jet printers at each station and Windows 98 on the terminals, what a huge steaming pile of shit that is and much much worse than the system it replaced).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Of course, I'm using it as a weight to dampen the case vibrations. Works great.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Got my Mac Classic, running System 7, bumped up to 4 MB of RAM, 40 MB hard drive, original keyboard and mouse, very little discoloration. 12 years old. Great fun...
I know tons of people who still run it for their programs cause they dont have the money to upgrade. There reasoning is usually along the lines of " I dont need the internet and I dont need email, if it still works why fix it?"
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i had a 286 tandy running untill last year.. all i had on it was games... LIESURE SUIT LARRY!!!! the old type in what you think the character style games were the best... i think power supply went, ive been meaning to get it going again, but haven't found the time.
wud
a 1979 TI-25 calculator, still used often.
And I'm sure a few of us still have old ISA VGA cards running in servers.
I STILL use my IBM Keyboard, which I purchased new in 1987 or 1988. This workhorse is currently attached to my home PC, which is about two years old. As I first learned to type on IBM Selectrics, I like the very heavy feel of the IBM keyboard.
Still an interesting box....
Linear synthesizer music still sounds warmer to my ears than sample-based soundblasters
Not too long ago (though it was several years) I was MUDding over a telnet connection to my ISP using my Commodore 128 in 64 mode using Novaterm hooked up a 28.8 hanging out the back of my Turbo232 cartridge.
In a short break between waxing goblins, the fellows I was adverturing with started bragging about who had the nicest hardware. A few people had apparently recently purchased new x86 hardware, and were bragging about processors, RAM, and video cards. Oooooooh, were they about to catch it.
After waiting for everyone to finish with their brags, I broke out with, "I'm using a Commodore 64."
"No way!"
A few Novaterm and CMDweb (stock now with CMDRKEY.com) links later and I had them convinced.
Though it pains me to say just how geeky that is, to think of the C=128 hanging out online with the lastest Nvidia-equipped Pentiums is pretty humorous.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I've got a friend who's high-end stereo system has a $1000 power cord.
Your friend is an idiot. Wait..... I have a $2000 power cord I'd love to sell your friend. It's twice as good! Really!!
Life is too short to proofread.
I'm stuck administering a power control/access control system for a client that's managed via a 386-16 PC wired to the system via a proprietary ISA board. The nasty software it usues only runs in DOS, uses PCAnywhere 3 for remote access, and isn't capable of handling a date beyond 31 December 1999. The software was written by autistic engineers who were brilliant technically, but morons when it came to interface design. The best part is that the company no longer supports it, has no update to fix the date bug, and its latest product is totally incompatible with the old relay control and card reader hardware. We've been on the client to replace it, but he's too cheap. Meanwhile, this decrepit 386 periodically loses its [power supply/hard drive/modem] and requires much digging around to find replacement parts. Some things should die and not be brought back.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Many Ham Radio contesters are still using DOS to log our contest activity. At KC1XX we just retired a 486/66 MHz running DOS that had been the mainstay of our 40 meter operating position since at least 1995. We are still running DOS 6.22, but now on 90 MHz Pentium I machines. They are networked using 3COM cards, 10Base-T and DOS packet driver. These machines are plenty fast enough for us. We are concerned that too many things can go wrong using a Windows-based environment.
I have one on my 650 MHz Athlon (best PC in my house). It also has a floppy drive from the early 90s.
I also have a DEC Multia (UDB), Sparc IPX, Sparc 20, a couple of HP PA-RISC 7000 systems, and a bunch of old PCs (pentium 60, anyone?).
My home gateway is also a 486 - Compaq Contura Laptop, vintage 1992 or so. LCD disabled, only 27 Watts. I should unplug the floppy for less power consumption.
What a dumbass. 120VAC will run on anything from copper to coathangers and the equipment won't know the difference.
(P.S. Don't use coathangers to run 120VAC. They're not insulated.)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's only this past year that we pulled our last 8 port, 10MB hub from service and pulled the last Sun IPC from service. In each case, it was because we had outgrown their capability to keep up. The IPC and several of the hubs are now happily working at employees' homes.
My 1994 vintage Dell 486/100 (25x4) server is down at the moment, but with a new (for it) HD and PS, should be back up soon.
Sooner or later, I'll find a use for that ZX-80 as well.
Now, who wants to talk about vacuum-tube amps and test gear? I have plenty of that!
I work for a rather large school district with quite the technology initiative. We're running Linux, Netware, WinXp-95, but there's one thing we will never be able to upgrade. It's a Gateway 486 sitting in a corner downstairs running MS-Dos 4. It connects to our ISD which is the reason we have it.
Our ISD runs a Netware 3 Database that is incompatible with all newer versions of the database and is mission critical. They don't want to research alternatives and are never going to faze it out.
As a result we need this DOS box to interface. The client software is DOS only. Packets are IPX encapsulated in IP that make packet forwarding a pain (as it's incompatible with Bordermanager's forwarding mechanism's, and I haven't tried Netfilter or IPFilter on it yet). So as far as my Tech eye can see we're always going to have a DOS box in front of our firewall that makes me very squeamish.
...but where the hell do I buy it? A google search for "Chicony KBP9805" gives me a bunch of links in a Cyrillic language that seem to be looking for or providing drivers. When chicory.com finally finished loading, I couldn't find any "where to buy" links. Does anyone actually sell this product?
I'm still using an old IBM keyboard, but it annoys me because my model doesn't have any LEDs, so I can't tell if any of the *lock keys are on.
I still have the floppy from my first 486 SX-25, but it's in the TV machine. I have never needed a floppy for my main machine (both are Debian). I know it still works because my brother did some artwork for an album cover a while back and put it on a floppy.
My parents are using the first modem I ever got, a 33.6 with fax (no voice). Cheapest, most generic one available at the MarketPro show ($100).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
My web server is an older HP PA-RISC 66 with 128 MB ram... I'm not sure of a date, but it's kinda old. I've got an IBM 286 that still runs DOS like a charm! In high school (y2k) I used it for my QBasic class. Worked great! Here at work we have all sorts of old Vaxen.... Some that use line printers instead of consoles. Fun stuff!
This space for rent, inquire within.
I've got a friend who's high-end stereo system has a $1000 power cord.
> Your friend is an idiot.Wait..... I have a $2000 power cord I'd love to sell your friend. It's twice as good! Really!!
You're referring to the EMPower Modulator?
www.freesco.org
Its a single floppy router, with modules for everything under the sun.
and is still actively in development. unlike some other similar projects.
ya, they need to change the name.. but its not SCO..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
apple macintosh QUADRA 700 - vintage 1992 - 68040 processor at 25Mhz, 20Mb RAM, 10baseT ethernet hooked into cable-modem. running system 7.6, netscape 4.7 (web browser), photoshop 3.0, bbedit 5.1 (text editor), and a copy of OIDS 1.3. just using it this last weekend (october 11) at my parent's house in st. catharines (ontario, canada), and it still boots faster than a 486... :-}
don't know if this other one qualifies as 'using it' anymore -- a macintosh plus (1Mb RAM, 8Mhz) from 1985 booting system 6.0.7 off a floppy drive (full windowing system, and networking into the new machines via LocalTalk - ethernet bridge) -- running as a Cookoo Clock (with digitized cookoo sound), and steve capps original 1983 morphing clock).
regards,
john
EISA bus.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
I have a client who's been running the same software since 1979. They started on some un-named S-100 CP/M machine, "upgraded" to CP/M 8/16 on a CompuPro, then it was ported (from CBASIC) to QBASIC a PC XT sometime around 1985. Today they've got a networked environment (Linux/Samba/2K) but the core software is still from 1979.
Not the original poster, but here's my 386 or so:
My Wang
Still works as a terminal - but I rarely use the veteran.
MINT !
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
my father (a mathematician) still has a mechanical calculator. It looks like an old store cash register and must weigh at least 10 pounds. You set the input numbers via rotary dials, choose your operation (I think it's limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), and then crank the handle until it goes "ping". It has some abacus-like sliders on it as well to help you remember the results of previous calculations...I remember how pissed off he was when I managed to crash the machine as a kid (the handle jammed).
I don't think he still uses it, though. Unless you count as a doorstop.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Acer Altos 1000 - 286 servers - still (I think) 2 of them out there, with date problems, but still running!
Well. Not exactly PC hardware, but I am still running 4 1983 era 1200 baud radio modems, complete with 32k of RAM and Zilog Z80 CPUs.
They've been going 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 20 years - give or take!
Not bad, eh?
My current PC and most of my other older units have 5.25 floppy drives in them for times when you need to read or write a disk from an even older computer. I've also got a number of IBM PS/2 Microchannel machines running OS/2 including some 9595 servers maxed out and a PS/2 Ultimedia computer with video capture card and composite camera. For the mac world, Ive got a Centris 660av with matching display up and running on the network. Old macs are fun! I've got much older stuff, but I have a hard time getting a round tuit.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
That must've been an Atari ST or later, then -- you got lucky. The Atari 800, by contrast, long predates the IBM PC and uses nothing like FAT.
AFAIK, the Atari ST was the only non-x86 system to adopt FAT as its standard filesystem.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Borland C++ 3.1
Standard at any university in my country for learning to code
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Schneider PC1512 - a 8086 with 512K ram. Still runs like a charm with DOS 3.1, officially bought version on those lovely bright red & yellow 5.25" floppies. I found the registration card for that DOS some two years ago and sent it to microsoft, checking the "free trial" section for cobol and fortran77. Never got a response. So long for MS client service. I'm planning on using the babe as a terminal for my desktop. But that's just an idea... if anyone has experience or better idea about such a setup, comments?
most of my first computers were Wang. my dad worked for them and when people would upgrade sometimes we were lucky enough to get the scraps. we had a dozen Wang 386 boxes in the garage at one point. I could kick myself for not cannibalizing them before he junked them.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
My boss gave me his old dual 75MHz sparc station 20 with 128 megs ram in it. That's the oldest thing I have kicking around. He used it to power the oracle database behind lilith fair, back in the day.
Right now, it's running my website for me. I can't believe how heavy that sucker is!
java guy, tech blog...
I have a Tandy 1000 with an old tokenring nic that is currently working as a network avability testing computer. It pings each of our machieens at set intervals and if does not get a reply then a short script drops us an email to tell us to get it back online. The computer seems to work fine, but we realy should move it to another internet conection, as we have no way of telling when the whole network conection is down.
Faith_Healer -- The antethsis to almost everything, and the worlds worst speller.
http://www.x386.net
386, 4U rackmount, colocated, 'nuff said.
(Ok, so I have a SE/30 cranked up to run as a MySQL server too.)
If you know of a root exploit for AmigaDOS or Workbench, I'd be interested in hearing it. As a single-user operating system it's quite hard to get root on :-)
Combat and Video Olympics will still get a party going nicely...
Where I work we use IBM PC-AT's running Procomm+ as serial terminals to talk to some Heurikon V4F units (Motorola 68040-based CPU's from about 1990). That's pretty old. Of couse, up the hill from us, some guys are still using PDP-11's to control some instrumentation.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Seems rather complicated. Why not port the REXX script to the Linux box? There are some free REXX interpreters available for Linux.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Two 5.25" single-sided (180K) floppies, 64K, boots OS off floppy. Original Wordstar 1.0. I use conversion software to transfer to DOS. 300-baud model for serial port, print on Brother HR-1 Daisy wheel printer.
Works great.
Bought another unit at a garage sale for $15 a couple of years ago to use for spares.
Rarely gives a BDOS error.
Though I'm having to learn how to rebuild/maintain certain parts myself...
:)
Oh, you meant *computer* equipment.
There's the 1991 Mac Classic II and same vintage Leading Edge 386 luggable bagged up in the corner of the basement, with a 2400 baud modem, for emergencies. And yes, I know how to replace motherboard batteries
I still have a Mac Quadra running as the FaxServer (replaced the abovebagged Squinintosh). Everything here has at least a basic understanding of TCP/IP; the VIC/20 didn't (and had gotten rain-damaged in storage), so I trashed it.
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
I've got a Sun SPARCstation 5 with a new hard drive that runs as my home mail/web server. It think it's older than my Sun Ultra 2...
I am a computer repair tech, and one machine I was called out to fix was this ancient IBM machine. It ran Unix with the kernel dated as 1976. Anwyay, the problem was that the tape drive in this machine was shot. It was a Wangtek tape drive and luckily I managed to find someone who sold them online. Before I would even touch the thing though I had them sign an 'Antiques computer restoration' form, so should it explode or just plain stop working when I come to replace the drive then it wouldn't be my fault! When I opened up the case I am sure you could have done some kind of testing on the dust to show O2 levels in the atmosphere for the past 10 years as it was that thick, NASTY!
Got it fixed though and I think that is probably the oldest piece of hardware that I have had to work on in the field that still works.
Guess this is what happens when you don't properly fund an organization.
Then they shouldn't have done the upgrade in the first place. When the government does something that isn't an F-22 it will be underfunded and half-assed. I can't wait for a Democrat to win in 2004, we'll go from getting one cent on the dollar to a tenth of a cent on the dollar in government services. Not only that, Big Brother will turn into a giant after nationalized health care in instituted. It's too bad that the Republicans aren't offering anything better.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Working on writing software to make my old Atari 800 into a display and control center for a home automation system (security, HVAC, etc.) It has four fully controllable joystick/serial ports and an SIO port on the back. Also has a great video controller, low current draw and boots to a ROM cartridge in under three seconds.
The oldest hardware I'm still using are my two Pentium 75 and Pentium 60 machines. They are completely broken, long since, and are stripped of all usable parts, also long since. Everything in them is broken. In fact, when something breaks, I have a habit of mounting it in one of these guys.
:-)
But they are put to very good use; they are placed to _appear_ like they are the computers in operation at the place I hack. In case of a raid/prank/whatever, these are the boxes that will be grabbed and go. Good luck and godspeed. My real machines, the ones actually doing the crunching, are stowed away in closets, hidden from view.
Paranoid? Probably. But hey, being overly paranoid has sometimes paid off for me, just because people around me don't believe someone will go to such lengths for a Maskirovka. Hopefully this will never pay off, just like I never hope I'll have to put my electricity-is-out-for-days kit to use.
Now, perhaps I'm answering the question too literally, but I'm still interested in if other people think along the same lines.
That's the oldest. And it still works!!!
how long until
...is a 486. At one time it was my main machine, and then it was my firewall/router/mail server/time server/DNS server/print server. Lately, it's been demoted, and no longer does firewalling/routing, nor incoming mail. I've had it since '94, and it's gone through a lot of upgrades, maxing out the RAM and processor and adding an HD, but never changing the motherboard or the original HD. Now it's being downgraded as I pull out unused parts (e.g., the sound card). Software-wise, it started out with Windows 3.1, then went through OS/2 3.0 and Linux 1.3.20 before settling on Linux 2.0.36. My oldest machine in occasional use is a 286 running Minix. I use it as a telnet or rlogin terminal. This one I bought only a few years ago, at a thrift store ($23); it was my first 286. My oldest machine that's still plugged in is an 8088. Like the 486, it was once my main machine. It's set up as a terminal on my LAN, but it has some trouble booting now, and it's too slow anyway, what with the CGA video. Long after I'd moved on from this as my machine, it finally got a hard disk for the first time -- a 10-meg (not gig) HardCard. It's a late-model XT, dating only to '88 IIRC. (Now that I think of it, the 286 may actually be older.)
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
That would be X2 technology... not 2X.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I think somewhere at my brother's house he's still got our Tandy 1000, still complete with the original CGA monitor (was hot shit until I saw EGA) and keyboard...
:(
I learned all the meat and potatoes of today on that thing... I'll never forget the countless hours playing a Sierra game or surfing BBS through PeachNet....
He's also got our TI 99/4a, complete with speech synthesizer, but I believe it finally died a year or two ago. that was sad
My Apple ][ (no + or e, just a ][) still runs fine! The really amazing thing is that the original boot floppy still works.
See it here.
In my sick humor I mused, "I wonder if this was the last thing Columbia's astronauts saw on their console.
Still functional and occasionally used to support the development of my (Windows NT-based) emulator for same. See [techno-paleontology] for details, if you care. :)
Z-80 processor, 64K RAM, three 5-1/4" (100 K) floppies, H-19 terminal, other goodies.
at home, i have a Performa 6116 CD that runs a 9 gig MP3 server for my father and mother i have a Dual Celeron 300A BP6 motherboard runnign linux as an apache server and samba server in the house and at work we have a database program to store college textbooks written in Q Basic that is still used (and gives us a great many headaches)
1. when there was a kernel panic: memory parity, The IBM support person replaced the memory and said that since DOS didn't stress the memory as much as Unix/Xenix, even though it passed the memory test when you boot up, that didn't necessarily mean there wasn't a problem with the memory.
2. Uploading data via a tricoder to a serial port crashed the machine - the port settings were incorrect. This was a real bug, obviously this shouldn't happen.
Overall, this machine happily supported 14 users with 16mb (granted no fancy gui) and ran for days weeks months with no reboots. In fact we hardly shut it off at all - not altogether a good thing as when we did take it down for maintenance, there was way too much dust inside.
The company later decided to ditch the system and install a fancy new OS and Retail system, all requiring new hardware and more money. They finally made the conversion, got everything working, and a few years later they went bankrupt. Oh well.
mfg 1992; 40 Mhz ; upped to 2 gig hard drive; maxed at 64 M ram; solaris 2.6; original kbd, mouse & 20" tube.
:-|
I got it for free, and still use it for consulting
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
the 1200/2400 baud modems actually are hard coded for the desired baud rate and error correction. This cuts about 4 seconds off the hand shake which is important when you have a 21 second response time for entire transaction.
I got to spend about 3 quality years supporting the backend systems for those point of sale (pos) terminals. While 21 seconds does sounds like a huge amount of time, in computer terms. It actually isn't. A pos request will go across two to three different networks, usually TNS / old compuserv,a check process center and then the banks network. Plus you have to add in server latencies and utilization. Adds up to about 15 seconds.
It's a monochrome monitor from circa 1981, with an ISA MGA adapter, running happily in a Pentium 100 from about 1995, which has been my router and firewall for the past several years... running Linux. Can't tell you how proud/surprised/mortified I was to see such a junky video display still supported in Linux. :-)
I actually just sold the whole machine for $25 where it'll be put in service for several more years, I expect.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
ATI RAGE 64 and a VIC-20
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
Suddenly I just had a flashback of trying lower and lower values for S11 (or whatever it was that controlled the duration of the dialing tones) so that I could keep redialing as fast as possible that really popular BBS that was always busy. There was some threshold where the phone company's system just wouldn't recognise the number anymore, but it was really fast at that point. :-)
Near-zero boot time, and uptime for days (literally) when a "power pillow" made of C-cell nicads is plugged in (it puts the keyboard at the proper angle for comfortable typing).
Coupled up with an ancient Tandy 9-pin dot-matrix printer in "single-sheet" mode, taking minutes for church meetings...just what it's made to do.
Supposedly, quite a few reporters still use the old things, too. Quick, easy, reliable, and (with the proper software), able to transfer documents and files to a PC.
Built back when Bill Gates used to actually program...
Tandy specs
I have a Sharp PC-1403H that dates from the early 80s that I use as a calculator. It's a caculator that can be programmed with a subset of BASIC. It was one of the first computers I ever programmed, way way back then. I don't often use it though, only when a spreadsheet would be to much work/bother.
I have an old ... gosh.. 1987? 1988? something like that.. Zeos branded VGA monitor. Works great! It gets interlaced at anything above 640x480.. but still works fine!
Two 12 guage pump action shotguns side by side with the triggers wired together in my gym bag.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Pre-Creative Sound Blaster Awe32 ISA sound card and in my Redhat 9.0 box.
A total of five 1x CD-Roms floating around in various boxen
Every box has an old floppy that I've had for a minimum of 8 years.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
I still have my first Mac from 1993. It is a Quadra 610 with a RasterOps 24STV video card which has 24-bit graphics and video capture at a whopping 160x120 at 15 frames per second!! The video card only cost an additional $1000 on top of the $2200 computer! It came with Mac OS 7.1, but over the years I've upgraded it to 8.1. With 8MB of RAM and a 25MHz 68040 it was great machine in 1993. It still boots up and the video card can still capture video.
The Apple IIe that serves as a temperature controller for my beer fridge is a fair bit older than that, though.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Because then it would still be complicated, but run on Linux. Whoopty-freakin'-doo.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm still using a couple of fillings that are pushing 30.
Hm, hadn't heard of anything with such low response times. Good to know they are available. Though, it seems that it's harder to get good response times from larger displays (above 17"). Is it possible that this is only a partial response time, b/c some manufacturers list both rising and falling response times, which you add together to get a total response time (like rising = 15, falling = 15, total =30).
The time calculations are correct, "ms" is millisecond, which is base 10 (1s/1000). The 16ms response time you gave works out to 62.5FPS (1/0.016). Is it possible that you're looking more to the framerates put out by your videocard? A video card will put out 300+FPS to an LCD, and display that as the framerate, even if the LCD is only showing you 50 of those frames.
Like I said, I'm not trying to call you liar, I'm just looking for info on good LCDs. I haven't read any reviews of the BenQ (Acer) LCDs, yet, though I've noticed them on the market at fair prices.
I do agree about the one "problem" (aside from response times/ghosting) is fixed resolution, but finding a 18-20" LCD with 12x10 res isn't too hard.
-bZj
.sig
The oldest hardware I have is a Commodore 64, which is (should still be?) in working condition, although due to space and time considerations, I haven't used it in a few months.
The 13-inch Goldstar monitor that I used with it doubles as a TV (when connected to a VCR acting as a tuner), the picture on that is crisper than any TV in the house, even though it is 14+ years old.
I know its time to upgrade this old beast from feb 2002. Its not even smp!
It is just slow sluggish and unhip.
Seriously, right now I am using a circa 1991 IBM AT keyboard. FreeBSD 4.8 does not like my newer USB Microsoft internet keyboard, even though it ran under FreeBSD 4.4??
Anyway, the keyboard is supurb quality and has the resistance right when you type in each key. The "." key is going and I am missing some of the outer caps for 2 of the function keys but it still works! When typing for long periods it can help keys from sticking together and carpel tunnel syndrome.
I read other comments here about still using older keyboards for that reason. In the old days more R&D and care has gone into making computers. They were slow as hell but higher quality.
The Microsoft ones come close but some of the keys stick when typing fast which prints out double characters.
http://saveie6.com/
Now it's connecting my 1GHz celeron (running linux) with a Brother laser printer, and it's still working fine!
I've got a circa 1992 AT&T 3170 notebook in the bedroom, running Slackware 8 quite merrily.
The supertwist display has very nice contrast and is easy to see in all lighting (sunlight!) and at wide angles. The CPU is a 386SL/25, with sizeable cache and an on-chip memory controller: it's surprisingly fast. I lucked across an 8-megabyte Kingston memory upgrade for it (for a total of 12), and a new keyboard, and threw in a 2-gigabyte Hitachi drive that I had laying around.
An IBM PCMCIA combo ethernet/modem adapter from the same era keeps it connected to the world at about 300kB per second.
It has never, ever crashed or otherwise misbehaved in the couple of years its been with me, making it a very good machine indeed.
At work, I've got an HP Laserjet "Series II" on my desk, with a 1986 date code. It -just works-, producing beautiful, crisp 300dpi output, at a rate of about 30 seconds per page. Some day, I'll shop Ebay for a postscript cartridge for it and see if I can improve print speed (currently, the machine has no vector capabilities to speak of, and Ghostscript doesn't care for the printer's built-in bitmap fonts).
Kid-proof tablet..
I do not listen to music, nor play games, so I really have no use for sound, cept streaming news and getting system alerts. Mono is sufficient for that, so using a modern set of 2 or more amplified PC speakers would have seemed rather inelegant to me - if not necessarily a high-cost choice.
I revived a 1973 device that was used to receive music on low-radio-frequency FM carriers (in the same frequency spectrum as today's DSL) over telephone twisted pair, which was a popular service in many European countries before the massive advent of commercial FM broadcasting.
I plucked out the RF board, changed several AC filtering capacitors, added a few in/out sockets, and got myself a nice sounding amplified speaker, with probably around 3W output, built-in power supply, a very retro wood finish, and separate volume-treble-bass controls.
I had considered using a tube amp, but my energy consciousness kept me from seriously looking around for one.
I have an abacus that was given to me by my grandfather. I believe he bought it in Malaya in WWII. This would be consistent with the documentation, which was printed on paper that I had only seen in one other book - an English-Malay dictionary from the same period.
I didn't say anything was wrong with analog - when you want something to do what it does, it's fine. It's just that *counting* isn't one of the things that analog systems do - thus the *emphasis* on *Count*, and the pun about "discrete", and the reference to abacuses, which *can* count.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's a given you can't use it for anything relating to timing but being the first compiler I ever bought (along with my first game, Karateka), it brings back nostalgic memories.
I've got a PC532 (NS32532 homebrew) that still wakes up occasionally for something NetBSD-ish. That's circa 1987. My PDP-11/2 is much, much older, but it hasn't been turned on in a long time.
Forget that fancy, new-fangled PDP-11 stuff...you'd be amazed at how many PDP-8s are out there still running all sorts of scientific, data collection & industrial processes.
That's a possibility but having had put it through some serious games, I'm extremely happy with the output. I wouldn't put 78 past this monitor because manufacturers are afraid to give straight numbers. It just works in my favor here. I'm extremely impressed and I don't know anybody else with this quality of an LCD. I expected it to at least shudder on my 3D games but it just keeps rocking on.
There are *major* discrepancies in LCD information between manufacturers and reviews. I got my information on this from an adrenaline vault article that probably wasn't ready to publish--no formatting or much editorial work at all. Between that and customer reviews at various retailers (lots of astroturf to wade through), I decided on this.
I don't know why manufacturers can't get their information in some kind of useful standard format. I consider the outcome of my purchase to be largely a matter of good luck and/or karma.
Up until this piece of equipment, I've avoided Acer like the plague. Guess the new company name means more than just the name.
Question: why do you want 18 to 20? I don't think the extra space is worth the extra money. The 17in LCD is slightly bigger than my old Dell 19in CRT.
The extra space has been hijacked by my Devastator II (see sig). It was my arcade panel (right behind headaches) that prompted the purchase.
As for information they don't mention in articles about LCD displays...
You'll find yourself playing with the video settings for a couple days. You will find your eyes adjusting over the first couple days as well. It is a completely different situation from looking at a CRT. Can't put my finger on it but there's a definite visual correction that will happen on your part. People will *respect* your monitor and not feel the urge to put their fingers on it. The monitor takes three or so sessions to figure out where the normal colors are but it manages to be largely user-free. Sort of like a firewall--it bothers you for a bit and then shuts up. There is absolutely no glare at all. I have a big sliding glass door behind me and I can still work with the blinds open.
Last point: there are 12msec LCD displays out there. I couldn't find any available but I'm pretty sure they aren't vapor. Peace.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Five years ago a friend gave me a Compaq 8086 which I used for the box, drive cages, and aluminum power supply housing. Torx screws were another timeless feature.
At that time I had not heard of Lian Li and knew of no aluminum pc case or drive cage or power supply case. I crammed a new 250watt power supply board inside of that aluminum ps case.
Modern drives fit into the bays as they still do in archaic 5-1/4" bays now, by using stupid steel adapters to trap heat in the drives. CD's and DVD's are the only drives excusing 5-1/4 bays today.
Nothing excuses steel 5-1/4 to 3-1/2 adapters, since aluminum adapters would take the heat away from the drive frame. Even in a stupid, evil steel drive cage heat could be dissipated from the aluminum bay adapters by silver-epoxying ram heat sinks on the aluminum bay adapters and the end of the drive frame.
Mounting drives to aluminum cages makes them cool to the touch without fans or additional heat sinking. Silver epoxying ram heat sinks to any exposed side or end of the drive frame is A+ passive cooling.
So, the old Compaq case had over-engineered aluminum power supply case and over-engineered torx screws everywhere. I really thought I should throw away my Philips and hex screwdrivers. The thickness of the sheet metal was probably greater than later cases, but that's just bad for cooling.
A modern motherboard fits in the compaq 8086 case but I had to hack out more slots on the back. I use aluminum hvac tape for quick case hacks and Undo function. The case is about the same size as a horizontal desktop style case.
Connectors on the back did not match up, so cutting and drilling and aluminum tape and electrician's duct seal putty made the case work for ATX form factor.
Clear plexiglass cases are even worse for cooling
hard drives by contact than steel cases. Cut away the steel bay adapters and position them to allow as many ram heat sinks to be glued on sides and end as possible, using silver epoxy or silver heat transfer compound mixed with epoxy. No extra fans are needed for drive cooling.
I built two water-cooled raid arrays and both leaked, one to the inside of the drives and the other to the outside world. Then I discovered that drives will cool passively through aluminum cages or epoxied ram sinks. I made one more stupid mistake by heat-sinking a third raid array with a quarter inch layer of aluminum with less fins than required to pull heat out of that quarter inch aluminum plank layer. Better to have used thin aluminum planks between fins and drive frames.
DEC Alpha APXpci,
Compaq LTE/286,
Apple IIgs,
DECstation 5000/240, until someone gives me an R4400;
DG AViiON AV410,
Quadra 640AV.
I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
I've got a pair of needlenose pliers that my dad gave me when I went
away to college. I have no idea when he got them, but I suppose they
are probably older than I am...
Oh, you meant _computer_ hardware? Then that would probably be the
Model M keyboard that's hooked up to the Pentium/90 that is my dialup
router. The oldest thing in my _desktop_ is a Matrox Mystique.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Anyone else still run old DOS programs on actual DOS machines?
Yes, GE Interlogix (formally ITI) runs their PC board tests on DOS programs in DOS. However, I think their oldest computer is still a Pentium.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I've been using a couple of vision 1000 dumb terminals since I found them in the university trash over 5 years ago. When I'm not working from home, I have the terminal with me at work. Saved me a few times from rebooting when I could fix the problem thru the serial port.
Now I have a couple of sparc II computers, and can't wait to connect them to the terminal - I don't have a monitor or keyboard for the sparc II, so the vt100 again is a life saver.
works like a charm, if a little slow
my Dad has an Amstrad pcw8512 that only died last year, he bought it in 1981!
---- Put Sig here:
I daily use my HP 200LX palmtop. This particular unit is four years old (my second), but the machine has been around since 1992 in its earliest (95LX) incarnation. The 200LX came out around (?) 94?
It's a 11oz 186-based handheld/PDA/palmtop, which runs DOS and HP's custom GUIY environment on top of that. Sleeps/unsleeps in a fraction of a second, lets you switch quickly between multiple apps (no true multitasking, however).
Still works for me!
So whatever happened to Bars and Pipes?
A long time ago, Microsoft acquired Blue Ribbon Soundworks, but I haven't heard of any similar MS products. Did they ever do anything with it, or just bury it somewhere?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
yup a DX-50 not a DX2-50.
still in use routing packets. one of these days will replace with a mini-itx system (mainly to drop power usage), but been running like a champ (running I think 2.0.38 and ipfwadm)
Absolutely right. It has the little flange on it so it lies flush with the case, but it's the standard connector. Don't know why I thought otherwise; must've had a brainfart.
The iMac cables, however, are most definitely evil.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I've got a HP 712/80 (yes, 80 Mhz!) that runs my home network. It's curently running Debian but I do have a tape backup of the HP-UX 10.20 it was running when I got it.
I have a 21" Fixed Frequency (1280x1024@72hz) monitor (HP A2094B) that's currently plugged into the 712.
I have a Matrox Millenium 1 (useful for powering the monitor above from a PC since I only have a SyncOnGreen cable).
I *was* running an old Pentium 166 machine but it died so now I've got a 500Mhz Pentium 3 system.
I'll be damned. I haven't thought of one of those in decades!
;-)
One of my first paying firmware projects was with an 1802 that scrolled text messages across an LED array. Was also the first time I ever read a CMOS databook.
Anyway, the oldest working POS I have is my Dad's truck.
Oldest PC equip is an AMD 386SX40 based box that is still a useful X server. It takes about 12 minutes to start mozilla if run locally.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Good info.
:^)
I want something in the 18-20" range b/c I've been spoiled by my 20" CRT real-estate. I don't think I'm quite ready to lay down over $500 to join that club though, but that doesn't keep me from researching.
Thanks,
-bZj
.sig
A 1995 PowerComputing, PowerWave 604/150 Mac clone. 150MHz!
I'm on the web with THIS A2000HD purchased in 1990!
PROCESSOR: CPU 68060/68060fpu/68060mmu
CUSTOM CHIPS: ECS PAL Agnus (id=$0020), Normal Denise (id=$00FF)
VERS: Kickstart version 40.63, Exec version 40.10, Disk version 44.2
RAM: Node type $A, Attributes $405 (FAST), at $8000000-$BF7FFFF (63.5 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $703 (CHIP), at $1000-$1FFFFF (~2.0 meg)
BOARDS:
Board + ROM (HD?) (phase 5): Prod=8512/24($2140/$18) (@$EA0000 128K)
Board (Village Tronic): Prod=2167/11($877/$B) (@$200000 2meg)
Board (Village Tronic): Prod=2167/12($877/$C) (@$E90000 64K)
As can be seen from those SPECS, the Gfx card (on 16Bit ZorroII bus) is 2meg, and it currently has 64meg (FAST) of which 51.4meg is still free! 0.5meg is lost with the Kickstart ROM mapped to RAM.
The case's 51/4" bay ( built for XT-AT Floppy Drive use ) holds the Toshiba 2.5X CD-ROM that I've had for years.
This'll do untill the expected upgrade to the NG system with PPC-cpu rated 1866% faster than this 68060.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
One of the first made bbcs. Still goes and worth a game of elite or defender now and again.
ook ook
4-bit computers, with the honkin' big floppy drive. We kept three of them around to read old spectrum data from double-beta decay experiments.
I have the CBM 1201 amber monochrome VDU originally purchased to display the C128D's 80 column mode. It still does duty as an emergency monitor, attached to the A2000HD's mono port.
When connected to a VCR, a Black & Amber display can be watched!!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
I still have a game-machine that ONLY plays PONG (and variations).
'BLIP' 'BLIP' 'BLIP'
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
"In the beginning was the LOGOS, and the LOGOS was with GOD!"
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
> Looks like the caps lock key is broken after all these years
You don't appear to know what early '80s CBM 8bits keyboards were like?
http://dunkels.com/adam/contiki/index.html
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
The oldest hardware I use on a regular basis is my trusty old 1989 Mac SE/30. It is unchanged from the original except for it having 8Mb RAM in stead of 4. RAMDoubler bumps it to a virtual 16Mb giving it fairly tolerable speeds for WP and spreadsheets.
To have a museum piece that is in working condition is a far cry from having a component in active use today.
Well, what about an old Iomega Zip drive (100Mb), that's going from one PC to the newest each 2-3 years since '97? Or an old HD (800MB)?....
Still using HP-150B from 1984 with Shugart HD (SH412? I don't recall at the moment), Seagate ST506 and 2 ea HP9133XV drives. They're very loud... Also have a dead HP150C. Used to have a HP2000C/F Option 205 w/ a Teletype ASR33 & TI Silent 700 portable. And IBM keypuncher. (Still have a portable keypunch.)
Also still have a ProLog STD-Bus card cage with Z80 board, a Conner 20Mb IDE drive in it. Still used as a BBS under CP/M, from 1986.
Still have a CBM +4 or three and a C64, also used occasionally.
And have a real IBM 5150 PC wrapped up in storage, along with old Toshiba hard disks and Shugart floppies and minifloppies, plus a few of the original Sony microfloppy drives from early 1980's.
I plan to hide a PC104 586 system in a HP150C case. Nice retro look with enhanced brains...
Well, the computer I actually use for normal tasks doesn't have anything too old in it, only a few years each, however, my web server is my original, undisturbed except to be opened up every 5-6 years to be dusted, IBM 486/DX2, running in perfect condition with its state of the art Quad speed CD-ROM, 8 MB of RAM, and 3.5" floppy drive, and an external 33.6 serial port modem. What could be better for a very very very low traffic webserver?
No, it doesn't, I just like to build servers which don't work... *sigh* Of course it does!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
That, in my observation, is the universal result: some yahoo sees a perfectly good textmode DOS app, that does the job efficiently, on any which hardware, and with little or no possibility for crashes or user errors, and decides it's just too stone age to live.. and replaces it with some honkin' big GUI that inevitably is crap by comparison, crashes a lot, or just plain doesn't work right. Leave bloody well enough alone, I say, especially when it's MY tax dollars at work!
(Well, CrisNet -- a Realtor MLS thing -- was always crap, but the GUI version is worse crap. It's not even a proper Win32 port, you'd swear it was built for Win3.0.)
And yes, my two main work machines still boot into plain DOS (in fact, so does every machine I've got other than the Mandrake and XP boxes -- but XP is the top half of a DOS dual boot) and the only reason I run most of my DOS apps thru Windows is because I'm a multitasking junkie.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
.. i think it's the mouse...
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
This programmable calculator is the oldest piece of hardware that I use. On a recent visit to the Smithsonian, I noticed a very similar model to this one behind glass; the only noticible difference between the two was that mine is LCD and the one on display was LED. (My dad still has one that is LED, we just never use it.)
Me. As I get older, my hardware gets slower and my hard drive has less capacity but both still respond to an attractive GUI.
It's probably my old P120 (OC'd to 133 cos' I'm not that worried if I fry it!)
HOWEVER! The oldest piece of kit in the machine is an ISA Sound Galaxy NXPro/16 sound card (about 8 feet long) which has an OPL3 FM chipset on it for fiddling with old sequencers and demos. This used to live in my 386SX/33 but the monitor on that machine is toast.
Other than that it has 80Meg of RAM (free - pinched from work dead work machines). An ISA Nic (3C905 - also recycled). A PCI FM radio card (found in a skip). An SB128PCI which came with my newest machine but quickly found a new home after I got an SW1000XG). S3 8 Meg graphics card (another skip job). 33.6K PnP ISA modem - I actually paid for that. The monitor is a bog standard old SVGA monitor a mate of mine grab from the reserve/junk pile at his company. A 20Gig harddrive of which only 8 can be seen but it's a damn sight faster and quieter than the 1.3 that was in there. PLUS an ancient keyboard and mouse but it all still works beautifully.
So the oldest bit is the Sound Galaxy card and I've forgotten when I bought that!
I like this box - mostly cos' I can abuse it and not worry too much about the consequences! It's run BeOS, QNX, Debian, 95, 98, 98SE, NewOS all sorts of stuff!
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
My old 386 died on my (CPU gave up) but I'm still running the 5 1/4 drive from it in an old pentium. It just a little difficult to find disks.
The drive dates back to the early 90's and still works fine.
Oh, forgot the speakers that date back to the 80s
I have one of those! 'cept I installed linux on it. One hard disk is 110MB, the second is 350MB, with 8MB RAM, and had to install OS from 3 1/2 floppies. Lots of floppies. That poor old box ran four days installing that OS. Makes a good firewall, tho'. An old friend of mine is attempting to move an old DOS database to (anything!) newer.
If I don't want to replace my computer too often, does that mean I'm better off buying PC rather than Mac? I now have my fourth Mac, an Ibook that I bought one year ago. My first was a 1984 model. I had to replace it when they brought in the 800k disk drive and my 400 k drive was obsolete. Then I got a plus in '89 or so, with a 20meg disk drive. I needed to replace it in '97 when I wanted e-mail. I had to replace it because a) it somehow became flaky in terms of internet connection, and b) the new MetroWerks Code Warrior wouldn't run on it. So now I have an Ibook and I'm doing okay. So I was a bit resentful (as a person of limited budget) because some of these changes seem like planned obsolescence, i e they could have supported the old stuff if they wanted to but they would rather force me to spend another thousand dollars on new stuff. So I am wondering, is this less true in the PC world? After all, ms-dos programs are still maintained, but anything of equivalent oldness on a Mac is not. And Apple is there to sell hardware, but Microsoft is there to sell software. So if I don't want to replace my machine as often, am I better off with PC rather than Mac?
Oops. "I had to replace it..." does not refer to replacing the Plus as described in the previous sentence. I am saying I had to replace the '97 machine (which was a PowerBook 190) because I needed better internet and CodeWarrior capability, and that 's why I had to buy an Ibook in '02.
Software isn't necessarly 'crap' just because it runs under DOS. My company still sells DOS software for the forest products industry. One of the advantages of character based programS is that they are easily ported between DOS/WINDOWS/UNIX/LINUX.
That would of course be the keyboard that came with my original IBM AT. According to a sticker affixed to the bottom, it was assembled on June 5, 1987.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
The U.S. Army uses an old DOS database program (ULLS-G) to track and schedule maintenance for its vehicles and equipment.
It's rather funny because the computers that run it are usually modern (Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD, DVD-ROM drive, etc.)
Another fine example of your tax dollars at work...
42
My oldest actively used machine is my firewall. It's a Cyrix 486DX2-66 on some oddball VESA mobo. 1.2GB drive, 48MB RAM, Mach32 VESA video card, two ISA NICs. The 2X Sony CDU-31A CD-ROM drive died just a couple months ago. The floppy still works OK. Never had a single hardware failure in the beast since I got it in 1994.
It has been my firewall for many years now but alas, I am finally getting ready to "upgrade" it to a Pentium 200 MMX. With increasing DSL speeds RP-PPPOE is really starting to peg the CPU, and I can't get the bandwidth I should be getting.
I also get my Commodore 64 out once in a while to play Bruce Lee. My daughter loves it.
Mark
Ancient Budo Master once told me: "All your bruises are belong to us."
FYI, IF they are still avaliable at your local Radio Shack, the Cue Cat people has put out a PS2 to USB adaptor. It is recognised as a human interface adaptor and installes with no problems or special drivers. They are about $10. I picked up a couple for use with an external keyboard for an older laptop and an easy way to attach a laser bar code reader without having to dive for the back of the computer.
The truth shall set you free!
Just the two, left and right, but they still sound better than most anything OEM I've heard in years.
Oldest software? Some DOS programs I wrote myself to hack up Mentor Graphics CAM output files back in 1991. They still do the job (recompiled for 32-bit, without a single change in the code).
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
One point about size... because of a fixed resolution, the physical size is proportional... 15in is 1024 by 768, 17in is 1280 by 1024... you see the pattern? A 19in panel will likely be 1600 by 1200. That becomes a disadvantage if gaming is your thing because not all games go that high. Probably not a problem but it's something to be considered.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I know what you mean, but 18" panels at 12x10 are not at all uncommon, and I could deal with an 18" LCD. Moving above that does become a problem. If they would focus less on increasing resolution, and more on increasing response time, I'd be happy.
:^)
-bZj
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No, then it would be running on two machines instead of three; and the machine he'd be taking out would be the slowest, most likely to break from age, and hardest to replace.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I hear that LCD companies don't care about the gaming market and it, unfortunately, makes sense. In the instance of LCD displays, the pr0n consumer and the gamer are not necessarily allied. LCDs very adequately display movies at 30ms so the pr0n consumer is content. Between the corporate PHB and the non-gamer technophile watching movies, LCD manufacturers don't have to play innovation and they don't have to slash prices. When you can safely ignore video games, collusion becomes easy. Maybe I'm putting on a tinfoil hat here but, for a million reasons, corporations and governments everywhere would like to see the personal computer die and be replaced with isolated appliances. It's a very powerful tool. Too powerful for the rancid masses. Anyway, the Xbox is further evidence of my little conspiracy theory. For the consumer, there is no there anymore. You *will* buy a piece of hardware to do what you want. :)
That went a bit off topic. Sorry. The point is that hardware manufacturing is probably not being driven by games anymore. Definitely not for LCD manufacturers. This year might be the only year for the gaming LCD only because it coincides with the first year of flawless video. It sucks to say this but I doubt there will be breakneck innovation or falling prices in the LCD neighborhood. Manufacturers are sick of capitalism and they want to make money now.
Laws are for people with no friends.
In my game/work machine at home:
ISA AWE64 Gold
AGP Voodoo5 5500
PCI Adaptec 2940 UW
At Work (they have me using office xp):
Pentium 2 266
Intel HX chipset mainboard
ATI Mach 64 video card
Maxtor 2.7 GB hdd
In my firewall/NAT box
Pentium 100 (overclocked to 120 since the mainboard wont go slower then that).
Number9 9FX reality PCI vid card
512 MB 1/4 inch SCSI tape backup
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Any idea how I can get a GeForce into one of these? It's display is only green and I'd like color. And I don't have a hard drive for it. Just the 5 1/4 floppy drive. Does anyone have a spare 60 Gig hard drive I can put in it? Thanks!
My girlfriend is still using DBase5 in a DOS box on Windows XP at work. She says she's being paid too little for her job to upgrade to anything else.