Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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.