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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?"
Power Cord, leftover from 8086. Least valuable part then, most valuable part now. Still using it too.
Hey - I use 1991 keyboard with my dual Opteron database server :)
My boyfriend!
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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"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
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.
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%).