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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."
Most electronic equipment was built to last, hence this guy got his modem to work.
I doubt anyone will be able to run a GTX 280 in 45 years.
My hammer was made in 1876.
But your grandfather replaced the handle and your father replaced the head, right?:)
"This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good."- Low King Rhys Rhysson
The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett
No sig for the moment.
And I bet it still interfaces flawlessly with your modern computer. Today's engineers could learn from that.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I take it you don't even look at your cell phone bill? Hint: It would be hard not to pay "thousands of dollars ... over the years" with just about any contract. $50/month + taxes + bogus fees adds up fast.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
So I have the following (it all works unless specified and I fire it up at least twice a year unless specified). And yes, my office looks like a train-wreck twice a year when I pull all this stuff out to keep it alive..
2 Commodore 64s (one works, the other is for parts), and a Commodore 64C
1 1541-II disk drive (works) and a bunch of software.
1 Commodore 128 (Has a couple of broken keys on the numeric pad), and a 1571 disk drive
1 Laser 128 (Apple II clone) with two drives. Works fine and I have a bunch of games and office type software to go with it.
1 Amiga 500, the internal and two external drives (one pulled from an A1000 so it's very big. Another is an off-brand, very small and cool 3 1/2)
1 Commodore Plus/4. Works great.
1 Commodore Vic-20. Works great
1 Commodore 16 which is unfortunately busted
I have a serial modem (14.4) I use to hook up the Amiga to a PC. I cheat because it's actually just doing telnet, but it's cool to get on the web with Lynx by using a kermit terminal program (my Amiga software is so old that it doesn't have a TCP stack). At some point I started getting some public domain amiga tcp stack off ftp but I needed a hard drive to hold it all so I stopped (even emulation is better than the real thing when you don't have enough hardware).
And of course I also keep a bunch of emulators on the modern machines so I can try things out and have interesting stuff to run (being able to run it on the actual hardware gives you a reason to want to pull it out). I love retrocomputing. In fact, that's how I plan on teaching programming to my kids. Yes, they'll use modern hardware too, but for programming I want them to see how there can be very little between you and the metal and you can still accomplish a bunch. All the layers of abstractions can actually make the basics (like why assembly is important and how you actually talk to hardware) a lot harder to understand. If all you have is a Commodore and you have to send commands to the drive to initialize the hardware, and you have to poke values in order to create a little assembly routine or change colors, it just makes it so much more *real*, and there's a lot less to explain of what's going on in the background. Since everything is an extrapolation of that pattern of thought anyway, I think it's better to start the understanding at that level.
- No Sig Today
The handshake protocol is easy, the peer finding is the tricky part.
These people are hackers. Mostly that means good things.
Pushing the bounds of technology is one of the most ancient and noble occupations. Many geeks also manage to push the bounds of reason, good taste, and hygiene, but creativity in tool-using is perhaps the defining element of humanity. Certainly the drive to tinker is responsible for the majority of our progress as a species.
Slashdot is where that impulse goes to die :) Stay tuned for beowulf clusters of linux-running hot grits overlords.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This might be the case if you're talking a hundred or so years back, but today I think its because designers have to build down to a price point rather than up to a standard. I used to have a stapler at work (better than a red swingline) that had "Government Property, 1949" stamped on the bottom. Truly, it was a well-made stapler, solid and (obviously) built to last. When I hit that thing, it felt almost as good as getting out the rubber stamp.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
A shallow materialist will laugh at the "900" year old axe. Meanwhile, the deeper meaning is that someone has a connection to 900 years of family history and tradition.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Are you sure it wasn't just the especially overengineered stuff that tended to survive and the other 99% of the stuff broke down and was thrown away over the years, just like today? I'll maybe grant you that back in the day people tended to overengineer more because they were very close to the finished product and wanted it to have that little something extra, but my guess is that most of the stuff from back then is just as crappy as most of the stuff is today.
I read the internet for the articles.
I would read it, but I haven't felt the same since my brain transplant.
I recently read about some Buddhists who were turned down on historical status for their temple which has been torn down and rebuilt several times. They claimed that the materials that make the structure of the temple may be transient, but that the space enclosed is the important element and is therefore very old.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I'm sure there's room for a Monty Python skit about self-dialling modems and rich, featured Hayes command sets. (just in case you don't know, it's still around and is still used for example to dial through your cellphone to your mobile IP provider, or send/receive SMS messages. Good to see a standard I learned when I was a kid still around and useful.)
That is the greatest post I have ever read on /. since I started lurking a few years ago. Thank you.
PS: My GF says she hopes you are getting laid.