45-Year-Old Modem Used To Surf the Web

EdIII writes with this awesome snippet from Hack a Day: "'[phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.' Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years."

Comments

Still working with Paper Tape

[Cassini2]

The CNC industry is still using NC machines built to work with paper tape. 30 years old and still going strong ...

Re:My hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

For those not familiar, the parent is referencing the Ship of Theseus paradox which is an interesting read.

Re:Model M Keyboard

[hairyfeet]

If anybody wants an old "clacky" keyboard, there really is a really cheap and easy way to get one-Go to your local mom&pop shop. We always have stuff like that around, because we are packrats and never throw anything working out. When I ran low on "claky" keyboards I just went to the other shop down the street and he let me rummage through his keyboard box. I got an old IBM and the Compaq I'm typing this on now for a whole $7.50 for the pair.

So go and visit your local mom&pop repair shop, it is like old PC junk heaven. Hell I even have some old S3 Virge cards sitting in the drawer here somewhere. Hey, you never know when they may come in handy! But any mom&pop repair shop that has been around for any length of time quickly becomes a "Sanford&Son" junk shop for anything tech related. We just don't have the heart to throw working gear out. Some come on down! It'll be an adventure! Don't suppose I can interest you in some S3 Virge and Matrox PCI cards?

Re:Just Throw It on the Meme Heap

[Hes Nikke]

If you watched the video you'd know that this acoustic coupler doesn't support AT commands - or any other kinds of commands. it just converts bits it receives on the serial port into pulses in the tone it generates, and it converts pulses it receives into bits on the serial port.