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20-Yr-Old Compaq Laptop Is Still Crucial to Maintaining McLaren's Multi-Million Dollar Cars (jalopnik.com)

Posted by msmash on from the never-gonna-give-you-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes: It may come as a surprise to many, but the 20-year-old Compaq LTE 5280 still plays a vital role in maintaining multi-million dollar McLaren F1s. Jalopnik recently visited McLaren's Special Operations workshop where it found several of Compaq's old laptops serving their masters. Why do they rely on these dated computers, you ask? A McLaren Special Operations staff explains, "The reason we need those specific Compaq laptops is that they run a bespoke CA card which is installed into them. The CA card is an interface between the laptop software (which is DOS based) and the car. We are currently working on a new interface which will be compatible with modern laptops as the old Compaqs are getting less and less reliable and harder to find." For those wondering, the Compaq LTE 5280 comes with a 120MHz Intel Pentium processor, up to "80MB" of RAM, and up to 1.2GB of HDD.

165 comments

  1. tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, an old fashioned dongle that makes them require a 20-year-old laptop.

    1. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by sjames · · Score: 4, Funny

      But please don't tell the wife!

    2. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      i think we could really use a car analogy here.

    3. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      A legacy dongle that requires use of obsolete systems to support it is like that Compac computer Mclauren's cars needed to run the custom interface card.

    4. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

      Oh for modpoints....

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    5. Re: tl;dr : its because of a dongle by war4peace · · Score: 2

      I could live with all that but the T-word, you just went over the line. Shame on you, young man!

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    6. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      But it was state of the art modernity when it was new!

    7. Re: tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll feel better when you finally admit that you're stupid and you feel stupid for being stupid.

    8. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by AntronArgaiv · · Score: 2

      Yes, an old fashioned dongle that makes them require a 20-year-old laptop.

      Hey, we've all been there. Old dongle, software only runs on Win95, all it does it something simple, but the hassle factor (company out of business, particular software no longer supported, feature removed from newer version) makes using the old system the only viable option.

    9. Re:tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm surprised that they developed a proprietary PCMCIA card to service the car. The F1 has an analog modem port for remote diagnostics, one would have expected them to use RS-485 (like the good old RS 232 serial interface, but differential) for local diagnostics and service, just like they did in their Tag McLaren Audio products.

    10. Re: tl;dr : its because of a dongle by war4peace · · Score: 1

      That's better.
      Redemption mode enabled.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    11. Re: tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's a good one for a chuckle:
      âoeIf youâ(TM)re driving in a 50 mile-an-hour zone, and a police officer pulls you over when youâ(TM)re driving 40, and says âIâ(TM)m sorry, Iâ(TM)ve got to give you a ticket because you know the speed limit here should be 35, and you should have known it,â(TM)â

    12. Re: tl;dr : its because of a dongle by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      If you got pulled over in a 50 mph area doing 40 mph, likely it is an impeding the flow of traffic offence, no need to know about a 35 mph speed limit that wasn't posted.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  2. Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Try those specs again..
    Up to a 1.35GB hard drive. Per Compaq's own site.

    1. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Besides, that would be 80MB drive and 16MB DRAM. Whatdya expect from F1? Ever since they took the dying out of the race, it's boring as all can be.

    2. Re:Uhhh nope.... by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      And then there's the odd choice of quotation.

      up to "80MB" of RAM

      If anything I would have quoted "up to." Or is there some DOS legacy code that would keep 80MB from all being addressed at once or something?

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    3. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FAT was pretty limited, they started fiddling with it to address larger disks and made each sector huge. I remember trying to copy a few thousand small files to one and it filling up the hard drive awfully fast

      NTFS was a savior back in teh day

    4. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Michalson · · Score: 5, Informative

      As an owner of a 5280 (including the insane for the time 80mb ram configuration) I know exactly how a lazy reading could lead to a 16MB "harddrive". Like most laptops of the time the 5280 didn't have a SO-DIMM like standardized slots and so the ram was soldered right on the motherboard. The biggest configuration was the 16MB model, hence "up to" 16MB. But there was a way to get more ram after purchase - a proprietary 5280 daughterboard screwed in behind the rear port cover could add additional ram (largest daughterboard had 64MB) for a total of 80MB when combined with the top range model.

      Also the 1.3GB HD configuration was only at release. Larger harddrives where available later on (I've got a 2.1GB) since the HD was the only thing not proprietary to the 5280 and so it could be easily updated without engineering new parts (HD is right between the two multibays and can be exposed without tools).

    5. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Zxern · · Score: 1

      My memory is so fuzzy on this, but I think you could only access 16MB in dos.

    6. Re:Uhhh nope.... by trabby · · Score: 4, Funny

      Call McLaren, they would like to buy your laptop...

    7. Re: Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Mclaren F1 has nothing to do with Formula 1, it's a road car! Don't know about the dying though..

    8. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DOS could only access 1.1 megabytes, counting all the space taken up by the display, etc. If you started with the base 640K and put drivers and such in the himem area, that would give you about 700K. Anything more would require EMS or XMS or protected mode. At some point, Windows had protected mode support, but nothing in the summary indicates whether they run Windows.

      These days it would be better to use a microcontroller connected via USB. But even USB isn't future-proof, as I have at least one USB device (an EPROM programmer by Needham's Electronics) which doesn't have 64-bit-compatible drivers because the company got bought out and abandoned it shortly before Vista. That's right, and I couldn't believe it either. I had to dig up an old XP laptop to run it, which for now I am keeping together with the programmer. (It's not really USB's fault; Windows has always had a crappy USB subsystem.)

    9. Re:Uhhh nope.... by ColaMan · · Score: 3, Informative

      DOS only ever noticed 1MB. To get more you needed a high memory manager.

      If they used a DOS app, then it would have most likely used HIMIS.SYS and EMM386.EXE to access that huge 80MB pool of memory.

      Or maybe it's some hideous 16 bit windows 3.1 application, who knows?

      --

      You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
      There is a lot of hype here.
    10. Re:Uhhh nope.... by just+another+AC · · Score: 5, Funny

      Unless his already runs a nuclear power plant

    11. Re:Uhhh nope.... by lucm · · Score: 1

      yes, FAT was very limited when it came to managing RAM.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    12. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      There are 32 bit apps that come with the old 16 bit installers.

    13. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (It's not really USB's fault; Windows has always had a crappy USB subsystem.)

      Tell me about it..a common problem I keep getting thrown in my direction is 'my USB HD/Stick isn't working properly, it's very slow', this normally turns out to be a windows 'problem' (same hardware, different OS, data transfer rates back to what you'd expect for the relevant USB version).

    14. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you using the full 80 MB? I think the L2 cache goes up to 64 MB, so the top 16 MB is uncached. Only the LTE 5400 has a 512 kB L2 cache that caches the full 80 MB (128 MB). You can read about this in the datasheet http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Scans-028/ScansU2X2592.pdf on page 78.

    15. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1MB in this case is 1088K and not the standard 1024K.

    16. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aside from OS memory concerns, these older machines sometimes had no video ram, so they'd portion off some amount of the system memory and use it as video memory.

    17. Re:Uhhh nope.... by sglewis100 · · Score: 1

      I'm sure performance is key on his mind with that machine.

    18. Re:Uhhh nope.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, thanks to the A20 bug (The 80286 failed to wrap around at 1MB), DOS could in fact access 1MB + 64 kB directly. But DOS certainly was aware of the remainder; EMM386.EXE wasn't a third-party solution. It was the DOS native way to provide EMS memory. However, that followed earlier third-party products which provided XMS and EMS memory without DOS noticing.

    19. Re:Uhhh nope.... by toddestan · · Score: 1

      On a lot of those old Pentium chipsets, the L2 cache would only cache the first 64MB of ram. To make things worse, Windows 95 would tend to load things top-down. Given the performance hit of not having L2 cache, you'd be better off with 64MB than 80MB in most cases.

      Though my guess is you get 16MB soldered onboard, and 1-2 memory slots where you can add in another 64MB.

  3. Currently working on a new interface? by tim.m.holt · · Score: 2

    When did they go, "Oh hey maybe we should replace this" - a month ago? And really, what could be in that card but some TTL?

    1. Re:Currently working on a new interface? by Megol · · Score: 1

      TTL? While that is very unlikely (low power CMOS is more likely given the platform) the logic family doesn't enter into it - it's the functionality that matter.

      And according to the article they started to prepare for replacement as "[the old machines] are getting less and less reliable and harder to find"...

    2. Re:Currently working on a new interface? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When did they go, "Oh hey maybe we should replace this" - a month ago?

      And really, what could be in that card but some TTL?

      This happens in business all the time. As long as it works and does what they need, there is never any thought about replacing it. The vast majority of businesses consider replacing something that still works as a waste of money.

      And, as someone else mentioned, it's not like a new computer will make the car run any better/faster. So, it isn't until something breaks and they can't get a replacement that they suddenly say "Oh shit! What do we do now?"

    3. Re:Currently working on a new interface? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      This happens in business all the time. As long as it works and does what they need, there is never any thought about replacing it. The vast majority of businesses consider replacing something that still works as a waste of money.

      Yes, businesses generally don't replace shit without having a good reason for it. At least, ones which actually make a profit.
      Unlike many consumers, who replace perfectly good shit just for the hell of it, and then wonder why they can't live on $12 an hour.

    4. Re:Currently working on a new interface? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      In a laptop from the Pentium 1 period, a heck of a lot other than just TTL could be in it. It could have a FPGA. Or many other types of electronics. It's pretty unlikely there would be any plain 74xx TTL.

    5. Re:Currently working on a new interface? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh I'd like to believe that but I see businesses throw working equipment out all the time. Often the excuse it "herp derp it's not under a support contract anymore." As if support managed by Indians who can't even order the right part number is some kind of magic wand without which the muggles will fall into darkness forever.

  4. Faster Laptop by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not like a faster laptop would make the car run faster. In the end it only becomes an issue when there is a need to replace diagnostics equipment and there aren't enough spares.

    I suspect a bit of hardware and software effort could port the interface and stack to an Arduino and then you could access it from a phone or tablet for another 20 years. But the pragmatic part of me wouldn't want to why something unless it's broken.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:Faster Laptop by sims+2 · · Score: 2

      Wow I did not expect that to still be worth $200. although from looking at WIP http://windowsitpro.com/window... it used to be something like $6,700 new.

      Still that's a cost of $200 a machine to replace them as they quit. I'm sure they could do much better with a new $6,700 laptop today.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re:Faster Laptop by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      It's not like a faster laptop would make the car run faster. In the end it only becomes an issue when there is a need to replace diagnostics equipment and there aren't enough spares.

      I suspect a bit of hardware and software effort could port the interface and stack to an Arduino and then you could access it from a phone or tablet for another 20 years. But the pragmatic part of me wouldn't want to why something unless it's broken.

      Well, that is the problem - the Compaq is the only laptop with a special slot that accepts the diagnostics interface card. That's the only reason it's there - the special card you need.

      Depending on how proprietary that card is, it may or may not be possible to replace it - I think it was made before every car had an OBD-II port that there's interfaces for via USB, Bluetooth, WiFi and every other thing you have.

      In the end, the solution might be to just replace all the ECUs with an OBD-II port. The only reason they haven't is the F1 is a pretty bespoke car, there aren't a lot of them on the streets so there's not that many of them to begin with, so any replacement is basically going to be one off development.

      Of course, I don't think there's anything non-standard about the interface - a computer that age is probably using ISA on that port so it should be possible to convert it to a standard ISA bus card, then use a PLX bridge to give you a PCI(e) interface on top of that.

    3. Re:Faster Laptop by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      It's broken because it uses 20 year old non-manufactured hardware.

      Like I tried to explain, this is only relevant if you run out of spares.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    4. Re:Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's broken because it uses 20 year old non-manufactured hardware.

      This is just bullshit consumerist ideology.
      The hardware still works, and will continue to work until the day it dies.
      Do banks change their hardware software infrastructure every 5/10 years because old hardware is broken according to you even though it functions perfectly ? Old is not synonym for broken.

    5. Re:Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Usually the main problem with stuff from that era isn't the electrical interface (if it's on x86, good chance it's ISA or ISA-timings-but-with-CMOS-levels) - it's that the software is proprietary and/or the source has been lost a decade ago, expects the adapter(s) at fixed I/O / memory ranges and on top has a bunch of timing loops that overflow on anything > a few 100 MIPS...

    6. Re:Faster Laptop by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 2

      McLaren is a penny-ante outfit compared to a bank. And their IT infrastructure is different by orders of magnitude.

      Banks pay IBM millions of dollars for hardware with guaranteed support and parts availability for 30-40 years following the purchase. The costs for those annual support contracts amount to millions more. And then there's the paid services for installation, migration, and integration when it does come time to replace their kit. What banks don't do, is run mission-critical applications on consumer laptops, no matter how new or old it is. If this story were about a bank running on a 20-year old s/390 or even a 30-year old s/370, no one would bat an eye. A 20-year old Compaq? I'd be scared to breathe on the thing, lest a part falls off and catches on fire.

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    7. Re:Faster Laptop by DidgetMaster · · Score: 1

      Maybe the software is tied to the processor speed. Some old DOS games I played back in the day worked that way. When you upgraded your computer to a faster processor, the characters in the game moved so fast you couldn't even keep up. If they moved it to a faster machine, the car would idle at 3000 rpm!

    8. Re:Faster Laptop by kwbauer · · Score: 1

      Just curious... If the hardware wasn't manufactured, where did it come from? Did they just find it laying there on the beach or in the forest like the Christian watch?

    9. Re: Faster Laptop by geekforhire · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't say McLaren is lacking in the IT dept, they have extremely advanced systems including proper super computers at their facilities for deaigning cars as well as for real-time info they provide back to their F1 team. They just spend their money where it needs to be spent instead of worrying about shiny new rigs to support a handful of cars they sold decades ago. Seems reasonable to me.

    10. Re:Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      McLaren's F1 budget is something like $300 million. They got slapped with a $150 million fine and shrugged it off.

    11. Re:Faster Laptop by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Banks pay IBM millions of dollars for hardware with guaranteed support and parts availability for 30-40 years following the purchase. The costs for those annual support contracts amount to millions more. And then there's the paid services for installation, migration, and integration when it does come time to replace their kit. What banks don't do, is run mission-critical applications on consumer laptops, no matter how new or old it is. If this story were about a bank running on a 20-year old s/390 or even a 30-year old s/370, no one would bat an eye. A 20-year old Compaq? I'd be scared to breathe on the thing, lest a part falls off and catches on fire.

      Actually, banks lease the hardware from IBM - IBM doesn't really sell you the hardware. For that money, the hardware is guaranteed to work. IBM would come around and do periodic maintenance, and when the hardware is so obsolete that they need to change it out, they'll change it out without your processes skipping a beat or having to recompile. (the ISA's been the same for decades). Like I said, they pay IBM big bucks to keep it up, and IBM will service and support it for decades - keep paying the rather high fees and they'll keep servicing your machine.

      IBM's made a name for doing that and for being able to keep the same code running without recompiling. (In fact, they could be the first to actually inventing the ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) that separates the machine code from the actual hardware running it).

      I wouldn't say McLaren is lacking in the IT dept, they have extremely advanced systems including proper super computers at their facilities for deaigning cars as well as for real-time info they provide back to their F1 team. They just spend their money where it needs to be spent instead of worrying about shiny new rigs to support a handful of cars they sold decades ago. Seems reasonable to me.

      Except that people who buy McLaren F1s generally aren't using them to go from point A to point B. The McLarens are rather niche cars and fairly expensive as well (seven figures new). So the owners demand some level of support to keep it running, and they expect it.

      In fact, they were one of the first with a modem you plug into the car and a phone line, and it calls home and reports its status to McLaren. (You actually get a whole toolbox of tools with the car, actually).

      In fact, a car of this nature doesn't have spare parts - they generally manufacture new ones when they need a replacement, and it doesn't ever really "go out of support". Compared to regular cars, there aren't that many F1s on the road, and the ones that are, are owned by people who take care of their vehicles and expect for something so expensive to be serviced by that company.

      Hell, even a Ferrari isn't a Ferrari unless it's serviced by a Ferrari licensed mechanic who not only upholds the precision of the work, but also the parts- given people are fastidious about the things. Even if you total it, it can be rebuilt with a lot of time, money and effort to bring it back to factory specs and recertified.

    12. Re: Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What banks don't do, is run mission-critical applications on consumer laptops, no matter how new or old it is.

      You sir have clearly never worked in a bank.

    13. Re: Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, Rowan Atkinson totalled his one a fee years ago and it was basically rebuilt from scratch by McLaren themselves for couple million pounds if I'm not mistaken.

    14. Re: Faster Laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Turbo button!

  5. Those were the days! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3, Funny

    For those wondering, the Compaq LTE 5280 comes with a 120MHz Intel Pentium processor, up to "80MB" of RAM, and up to 16MB of HDD.

    Remember back in the Pentium days when RAM was cheaper than hard-disc space?

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    1. Re:Those were the days! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's configured with 8 or 16 MB of "Fixed" (non-removable) RAM ... and can take up to 64mb of additional leading to 80mb max ...

      Hard disk is up to 8Gigs ...

      http://www.computer-specifications.com/specifications/Compaq-LTE5280-Specs.html

    2. Re:Those were the days! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember back in the Pentium days when RAM was cheaper than hard-disc space?

      pepperidge farms remembers!

    3. Re:Those were the days! by LateArthurDent · · Score: 1

      Remember back in the Pentium days when RAM was cheaper than hard-disc space?

      No, I don't. I've never had more RAM than hard disk space, and I've definitely never seen it any cheaper. I would have loved that back in the day, we talked about setting up ram drives all the time to speed up disk access, which was really slow. This is just a case of a very large company paying a premium for ram because they needed it, and they didn't need the extra hard drive space.

      In fact, it's pretty weird to have a Pentium 120 MHz with a 16MB HDD. When I upgraded from my 486, I got a Pentium 133 MHz (with MMX instruction set, w00...I had no idea what that meant at the time while still in high school, but Intel sure marketed it successfully) with 32MB of RAM and a 3 GB hard drive. My 486 had a 500 MB drive in it, which we upgraded to from an 80 MB drive.

    4. Re:Those were the days! by sootman · · Score: 2

      > Remember back in the Pentium days when
      > RAM was cheaper than hard-disc space?

      No I don't... because that has never happened. Disk has ALWAYS been cheaper than RAM, usually by an order of magnitude or so.

      I had this exact laptop. (And a couple other Compaqs of similar vintage.) The 80 MB RAM (no idea why it's in quotes in the original) was 16 MB built-in and two 32s, I think. The disk would have been in the 1.2 GB neighborhood. MAYBE a low-spec model might have had a 540 or 250 or so.

      Caldera Linux 2.2 ad 2.3 ran PERFECTLY on it. (That was the one where the installer would ask all its questions and then you could play Tetris while files copied in the background.) And by "perfectly" I mean it drove the screen properly out-of-the-box. IIRC mine had a 12" screen at 1024x768 when many other computers of the day were 800x600. And it was pretty thin for the time. And compact -- very thin bezel around the screen as well.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    5. Re:Those were the days! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > No I don't... because that has never happened. Disk has ALWAYS been cheaper than RAM, usually by an order of magnitude or so.

      Whoosh.

    6. Re:Those were the days! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wernstrom!

    7. Re: Those were the days! by WarJolt · · Score: 1

      I686 was the first to enable MMX, so the funny thing is that you probably weren't taking advantage of it until about 2010 if you were running Ubuntu. Just in time to switch over to amd64

    8. Re:Those were the days! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I think they must have missed a zero off the HDD size. 160MB sounds not unreasonable for a laptop of that era.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Those were the days! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      Hmm ... I dunno... when I had a 486 I bought a 300+ meg drive. When i got my first Pentium (120) I had a 1.2 gig drive.

      I'm not trying to be pedantic, I just remember Windows 95 coming on a CD, I can't picture it installing on a 160 meg drive.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    10. Re:Those were the days! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      You are correct, i was a few of years out.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re: Those were the days! by toddestan · · Score: 1

      MMX debuted with the Pentium MMX. The slowest desktop processor came clocked in at 166Mhz, though they made mobile chips down to 120Mhz (I think) with MMX. For the 6th generation, MMX came in with the Pentium 2. The Pentium Pro didn't have it.

      The biggest benefit of the MMX processors was the doubling of the L1 cache from 8k to 16k. The MMX instructions didn't help much, because the software had to be compiled for them, and most people wouldn't compile for them until they could be reasonably sure that everyone had a processor that supported it.

    12. Re: Those were the days! by LateArthurDent · · Score: 1

      I686 was the first to enable MMX, so the funny thing is that you probably weren't taking advantage of it until about 2010 if you were running Ubuntu. Just in time to switch over to amd64

      Hah. Yeah, I wasn't running Linux at all in those days, but I still doubt I benefited from it in any way. I remember my computer included an intel disk with sample software to demonstrate how great the processor was, that I'm sure was compiled with their own compiler with MMX support. It also came with a racing game that had MMX printed on the cover (really, go Intel marketing), so I'm sure they compiled it with support for those instructions. I can't be certain I remember the name of the game but I think it was called Pod.

      That said, in the 2000s when I started getting into Linux, I experimented with Gentoo and going nuts with compiling optimizations (don't judge me, what idiot things were YOU doing in your 20s?), and I'm sure I enabled MMX and SSE.

  6. Old saying applies here by theGhostPony · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If it aint broke, don't fix it.

    --
    /. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
    1. Re:Old saying applies here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, "most" people wouldn't be surprised, because to be surprised, you first have to care. And I can safely say that I don't give a damn.

    2. Re:Old saying applies here by TangoMargarine · · Score: 0

      ...until it breaks and it's impossible to find a replacement which is the only hardware that will work with your car, then you have to create a new one from scratch.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
  7. DeLorean by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not as bad as DeLorean: it requires Mr. Fusion, which hasn't even been invented yet.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:DeLorean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      However, lightening has been invented :)

      Perhaps they should add a kite upgrade.

    2. Re:DeLorean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "bleb"?

    3. Re:DeLorean by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Let these guys settle it.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    4. Re:DeLorean by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      Time travel is a funny thing. You need to wait until somebody build a time machine but then you can go back to before it existed in the first place. It's a chicken-before-the-chicken scenario.

    5. Re:DeLorean by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      It means someone who's too dumb to google a word they haven't seen before.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Maybe I'm wrong but by Dusthead+Jr. · · Score: 2, Informative

    Those specs seem backwards. Perhaps it had 16MB of ram and an 80MB hard drive?

  9. LOL!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What do U expect? It's a British car.

    1. Re: LOL!!!!! by geekforhire · · Score: 1

      But one of the few worth owning and the only car I can think of that has gone from being worth $300-$500K to over fifteen million in just a few decades. And despite its age it would still smack down modern super cars on the track. Or at least be more fun as it tries to kill you since it came from an era where you were expected to know how to drive it and not depend on computers to hold your hand. But frankly they were smart enough to use a German V12 so that helps a lot :)

    2. Re: LOL!!!!! by omnichad · · Score: 1

      and not depend on computers

      Someone here didn't even read the headline.

  10. Old chemicals by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have worked with organizations that used similarly old stuff and would buy stacks of replacements. The problem was that nearly all the replacements were failing in the same way before any use. Some glue that was fine for 10 years would suddenly start to run and dissolve other important bits. Certain bits would just corrode even thought they had been kept in a pretty damn good environment. LCD screens looked like something like bacteria were growing inside as some strange chemical process crept along.

    One other magical thing is that it seems that if you don't use a hard drive for years that it will spin up, work fine for a very short while and then fail very rapidly. Probably some lubricant just dried up or mutated.

    I feel their pain.

    1. Re:Old chemicals by Ichijo · · Score: 2

      I have worked with organizations that used similarly old stuff and would buy stacks of replacements. The problem was that nearly all the replacements were failing in the same way before any use.

      "You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    2. Re:Old chemicals by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      "...Probably some lubricant just dried up or mutated."

      Dammit! You made me spill my coffee! :-D

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    3. Re:Old chemicals by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 1

      Over the decades, I have seen a huge number of products where chemistry put a time limit on a product's lifespan. Plastics that were supple for the first few years become brittle. Other coatings or seals that just dry up. But one that I have certainly seen a number of times is where the rubber feet seem to be dissolved by the glue used to affix them.

      Then corrosion. In many electronics they have left some critical part uncoated so that it corrodes over time. Often to the point of failure. I remember one entire series of keyboards in an office where the pads under the keys just got a patina causing failure.

      In all of the above many many scenarios, having spares wouldn't have helped as they were undergoing the same failure at roughly the same rate.

      So I don't know what 3rd rate university Logic 101 course you seem to think that I am failing. The key to my point is that even having spares for old electronics isn't always that useful. I am not saying that they all fail all the time, just that they often fail in odd ways over time, thus spares isn't a perfect panacea. To rely on spares vs updating the system is potentially inviting disaster.

    4. Re:Old chemicals by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 1

      I bought one brand of Burnable CDs that claimed a 100 year storage life. Within about 2 years they looked like Petri dishes in the dye layer.

    5. Re:Old chemicals by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Or the proper car analogy, where you go to the junkyard to get a part for your car, only to find that every car in the junkyard like yours either has the same busted part, or the part has already been removed.

      Same reason I hear that guys who have parts cars around prefer ones that were wrecked (though not badly), because if the parts car is a high miles, end-of-its-useful-life vehicle, chances are the parts you would need from it are already worn out.

  11. Not entirely a unique situation. by mythosaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In a previous life, I did the end-user computing environment for a large healthcare company. At one facility we had a PC running a pneumatic tube system. The tube system controller card was full-length ISA. That machine was getting upgraded....never.

    I'm sure a dozens of us have have similar stories -- old fax cards come to mind.

    1. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My uncle's print shop has an old transparency film printer from the early 1990s. Its manufacturer went bankrupt shortly after its release, and the only drivers available for it are for Mac OS 6 and Windows 3.1, and when I tried to pull the drivers off the floppies I found that the first floppy was no longer readable. So the only backkup they have is an image of the working HDD.

      It's a small shop - he handles the client contacts, one employee does the graphics prep work, and another employee does the physical silkscreen printing from the film onto the final medium (poster, t-shirt, banner, whatever). He says he can't afford the ~$15k a new film printer would cost. So he has two 1990-era Mac Quadras with the print drivers installed. (One is a replacement they bought off eBay in a panic when the original failed. It turned out the failure was due to bad RAM, so after I moved the RAM from the eBay computer to the original, it worked again. They keep the eBay one as insurance against future hardware failures.) They're connected to his ethernet network, and a modern Mac (where they do the layout and prep work) sends the print job to the Quadra, which sends it to the printer.

      They things are so old one of the support calls I got was to fix a broken power button. It turned out the Quadra's power button is mounted at the end of a piece of plastic, and the plastic acts like a spring. Well, after 20 years, the plastic had turned brittle with age and snapped off, and the power button had fallen inside the case. I had to jerry rig a replacement spring with some new plastic and epoxy to get it working again. Another call was that the printer had suddenly stopped working. I opened it up and... you don't want to know what 20 years of dust buildup looks like. Fortunately there was a filter keeping the dust out of the film's print path. But the fan was completely clogged and the thing was overheating.

    2. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is actually quite lucky for you, assuming the printer is using standard serial communication and not the extra signaling that RS-422 allows for. I've had some success with Basilisk II.

    3. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      You got Basilisk II to boot os 6?

    4. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by jabuzz · · Score: 2

      Just buy a brand new modern motherboard with ISA slot then. Just because they are not for sale at NewEgg does not mean they are not being produced. Yes they are more expensive than a standard motherboard but they exist.

      The other option is a PCI to ISA bridge card which will do the job just as well. I imagined that PCIe to ISA bridge cards will appear in the not too distant future as well.

      If you have a $ million+ piece of equipment that uses an ISA slot for the computer control you don't just replace the equipment because the PC is knackered.

    5. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Years ago I had a client with an ancient 286 DOS box running V3.3 IIRC. He had a bespoke QBasic application to manage stock and sales in his tyre shop. Being a tyre shop, the machine was black. Originally it was beige, but over the decades road dust from used tyres had accumulated and made it black, on the outside and the inside.

      He also had a dot matrix printer with a stack of spare ribbons that he refurbished multiple times himself before tossing. That broke, and fortunately we managed to find an identical dead one on eBay and transplant a motor belt. But then his 20MB hard drive died. He had the original install disk for the software (unreadable), and decades of sales history on his HDD.

      In the end we managed to recover the critical files and set up a new system running FreeDOS on an ancient 486 laptop. He was impressed by the speed. He was one lucky guy because his whole business was built on that QBasic app, and the developer had apparently moved to New Zealand and was untraceable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by jazzdude00021 · · Score: 1

      I have successfully booted OS6 on BasiliskII. It took some work and frustration, but I managed to upgrade it to 7.5.x. As for getting it to work with serial ports, I've never tried and pity the soul that finds themselves in that situation.

    7. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      In color with 68020 or 68030 or 68040 mode?

      With Optima or Maxima running?

    8. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      I'm sure a dozens of us have have similar stories -- old fax cards come to mind.

      We had an old SCSI film scanner that had been moved to an XP computer when XP was new. The corp IT department was really trying to upgrade everything to Win7 and I'd get a call every couple of months for about a year about it asking to upgrade. I'd have to explain that we'd need a Centronics 50 pin SCSI card for the new computer and even then, we're not sure if there are even drivers for Win7 for the scanner. It was working fine, we weren't using film, and all our current film will be scanned in by the end of the year, so I'd tell them "we're not replacing it till we're done. Talk to you manager, he knows all about it."

      Still, the best was the supply ordering system which was based on special Win95 computers, wall mounted with bar code scanners and touch screen. I don't even want to know what flat panel touch screens cost back when this system was new. To give you and idea of how old this system was, it ran off of a Novell network that was only being run for these few computers on a series of old beige boxes stuck in corners in a couple of com closets. The supply department didn't know how to support them any more, IT wouldn't touch them, so that left it to me as the departmental application support to fix anything that went wrong. Luckily, I only had to reprogram a bar code reader once (required calling the company and having them pass me on to a different company) and power cycle the Novell box in the closet about once a year till they finally got a new system about five years ago.

    9. Re:Not entirely a unique situation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a common problem for industrial solutions. So much, that there's a market for ISA motherboards, so they still make motherboards with ISA and PCI (http://www.esis.com.au/Mainboards/Mainboards.htm)

  12. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    came with 8 or 16 MB of ram, expandable to 72 or 80 MB. Where the summary is wrong is that it came with an 810MB HD (or a 1.35GB HD)

  13. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah i'm pretty sure 16mb = IBM XT/286 era.

  14. ...and... by JustNiz · · Score: 4, Funny

    >> For those wondering, the Compaq LTE 5280 comes with a 120MHz Intel Pentium processor, up to "80MB" of RAM, and up to 16MB of HDD.

    I bet it still runs faster than a modern PC running Windows 10 and Office 365.

    1. Re:...and... by Jumunquo · · Score: 1

      You need to stop running Win10 and Office 365 over your 28.8K modem. Even if you think you're offline in a Word document, you try to insert some clipart, and it goes online.

    2. Re:...and... by JustNiz · · Score: 3

      28.8k lol you early adopters have money to burn. I only just updated to 300 from ^D +++ CARRIER DISCONNECT +++

    3. Re: ...and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever hear someone talk so much, the only one listening is the speaker- who is trying to convince the self? Id10t

      Win mobile is more dead than spinning disks. Still made, just not really WANTED

  15. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Doubtful. I have a Compaq LTE Elite 4/50CX that still works. 486 DX/2 50mhz processor with 16 megs of ram and a 340 megabyte hard drive.

  16. Make it USB/Plug and Play by istartedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just because it would be funny to see: Windows has detected the following new device: McLaren 675LT. Would you like to install a driver for this device?

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by thesupraman · · Score: 1

      No, I would prefer to BE the drive of that device ;)

    2. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by Onuma · · Score: 1

      It could give a whole new meaning to "crash".

      --
      What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
    3. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by divide+overflow · · Score: 1

      Just because it would be funny to see: Windows has detected the following new device: McLaren 675LT. Would you like to install a driver for this device?

      Too funny for words!

    4. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And whilst driving, up pops a paperclip exclaiming: It looks like you're trying to take a left turn, I can help you with that... (and a few seconds later, in good old M$ tradition, we have a crash).

    5. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell, YES!!

    6. Re:Make it USB/Plug and Play by jazzdude00021 · · Score: 1

      Just because it would be funny to see: Windows has detected the following new device: McLaren 675LT. Would you like to install a driver for this device?

      Only if the install file is called "thestig.exe"

  17. Other old saying also applies here by Jumunquo · · Score: 1

    We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

    But seriously, it might be cheaper and easier for them to just stock up on old Compaq laptops, if they can still find them.

    1. Re:Other old saying also applies here by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      After 20 years I'm betting on the bridge being sooner rather than later.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
  18. They will have a new interface soon by the_other_one · · Score: 1

    The laptops will be automatically upgraded to Windows 10 shortly.

    --
    134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
  19. Actual Specs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

            Processor: Intel Pentium 120MHz
            Memory: 32MB RAM
            Display: 11.3-in. active color
            Resolution: 800 x 600
            Hard drive: 1.2GB
            CD-ROM drive: 4x
            Sound: 16-bit with speaker/mic jacks
            Expansion: two PCMCIA slots
            Modem: 56K PCMCIA
            Floppy disk drive: 1.44MB
            Ports: serial, video, parallel, sound, keyboard/mouse
            Operating system: Microsoft Windows 95

  20. Bespoke - Hated English word by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bespoke my hated English word ...

  21. No computer came with 80 megs ram and 16 megs hdd. by OpinOnion · · Score: 0

    They have the hdd size wrong. Min memory was 8-16 megs expandable to 80. The hdd for a computer with that much ram would be in the gigs, not in the megs. A computer with only 16 megs hdd would have 640k ram or such, not several megs of ram. Why would you ever have more ram than you have storage, especially before broadband?

  22. Systematically distortion of product demography by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because it is beneficial to almost everyone in the industry to believe that "everybody" uses only the newest gear, there is a systematic distortion of the facts of what might be called "product demography." I've seen this everywhere I've worked, including several years at a (long-gone) Fortune 500 computer company.

    It seems that almost everyone relies on 15 and 20-year old equipment. Everyone scratches their head in amazement at what's in the back of the server room and the unbelievable story of why it is still in service--but it is there.

    I've had several conversations with people at the computer company that went about like this.
    "We don't need to support that model, it's too old, nobody is using it."
    "I think a lot of people are still using it."
    "Why do you think that?"
    "For one reason, because we still use it ourselves."
    "WHAAAAT?"
    "Sure. Check with Lewis on the 4th floor of building III. They have three of them."
    "What on earth for?"
    "Because of [reasons X, Y, and Z]. And they can't get rid of them because the new models [have problems Q, R, and S].
    "Oh, well, that's a completely unique situation. Nobody else in the world is using them."
    "Trust me, if we're using them our customers are using them. Unless you believe that everyone else in the world is better managed and more up-to-date than we are."

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

    1. Re:Systematically distortion of product demography by Gussington · · Score: 2

      It seems that almost everyone relies on 15 and 20-year old equipment.

      Not anywhere I've worked. I know they exist, but I tend to gravitate to new, start-up type businesses as the work is a lot more fun. No rules, make stuff up as you go, leave when thing get too routine and process driven. And you never ever have to deal with archaic legacy shit that drags you down.

    2. Re:Systematically distortion of product demography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You might have to learn new hipster web stacks each year, however.

    3. Re:Systematically distortion of product demography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Had something similar at a company I used to work at about ten years ago. A client selling scientific equipment wanted a fancy website with lots of complex javascript and the like. I pushed for making it usable without JS but got a lot of "oh but everyone has javascript these days". I made it usable anyway. Good job I did, because 30% of the traffic to the site when it launched was from Lynx! Turns out a lot of their customers were hitting the site from text-only UNIX workstations in laboratories.

    4. Re:Systematically distortion of product demography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not anywhere I've worked. I know they exist, but I tend to gravitate to new, start-up type businesses as the work is a lot more fun. No rules, make stuff up as you go, leave when thing get too routine and process driven. And you never ever have to deal with archaic legacy shit that drags you down.

      You do realize that if the startup doesn't go under, it will be your "make stuff up as you go" decisions that lead to future employees working with "archaic legacy shit dragging them down"?

    5. Re:Systematically distortion of product demography by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      This should be modded up. It is so true.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  23. My old boss had one by rainer_d · · Score: 1

    Insane thing. The laptop, of course.

    I remember, yes. It must be 20 years already. My first "real" job (an internship).

    --
    Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
  24. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WTH are you talking about? The maximum amount of RAM that the XT could take was 640kB!!!

  25. I hope their new platform isn't Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Boy, are their developers going to be in for a big surprise when they find out what they have to do to get anything approaching realtime + non-standard hardware working in Win 10...

    Windows != DOS

    heh, heh, heh......

    (Really, try something different - like anything but windows (ABW)...

  26. Not that unusual by Webmoth · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are many industrial processes and machines running ancient hardware. Also common in the medical field.

    A local radio station I service (IT) finally replaced an audio editing computer last year. This computer was running Windows 95. Why? A 'bespoke' audio editing card, which required an EISA bus. So why not some other software solution? Because this software did EXACTLY what they wanted to do, was very easy to use, and very easy to train new users on. We maintained an inventory of spare parts -- including a spare motherboard -- to keep the system running.

    So why did they replace it? The audio editing card (which was a dedicated computer on a daughter card) began to fail, and that's the part they didn't have a spare for. The replacement product they are using is Adobe Audition.

    I know of many other industrial and medical machines that are running old versions of windows on old hardware because they have proprietary software or hardware that is not cost-effective to upgrade (and is working perfectly fine). Some of the software and hardware would be tens of thousands (in some cases hundreds of thousands) of dollars to upgrade -- just to run a more modern OS. If a return on investment cannot be identified, the hardware will not be upgraded.

    --
    Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
    1. Re:Not that unusual by havana9 · · Score: 2

      There are many industrial processes and machines running ancient hardware. Also common in the medical field.

      A local radio station I service (IT) finally replaced an audio editing computer last year. This computer was running Windows 95. Why? A 'bespoke' audio editing card, which required an EISA bus. So why not some other software solution? Because this software did EXACTLY what they wanted to do, was very easy to use, and very easy to train new users on.

      I think also that the fast pace of hardware innovations and ditching older interface in the IT industry in respect other field of technology and manufacturing makes different vision of what ancient is. Add to this that the older equipment still in use today after 20 or 30 years of use self demonstrates its reliability and fitting for the job in most cases. Unfortunately in the nineties the most cost effective and flexible option at the time was to use an off-the-shelf PC running a DOS-based software instead of a custom hardware solution, or a fully custom one. Unfortunately the idea "get rid of old trusty interfaces, serial, parallel, vga, audio out, whathever because there's the new fancy gimmick" and "throw away backward compatibility on software" mantra of these years if making a lot of damage because of this. Older systems using custom hardware aren't affeccted so hard with this problem

    2. Re:Not that unusual by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Manufacturing plant equipment likewise also tends to use much older software. I have a customer who has a bagging machine and the end of their production line, it would cost about 1.5 million to replace, and it's control software runs against window 3.0 and needs an Netware 3 server to pull job files from . They expect to get another 10 - 20 years from this bagging machine and thus will not replace the machine just to to update the software. Thus the original computer has be replaced by one that emulates the original machine and runs windows 3.0 and the control software on a PC emulator running on Linux. The Netware server has been replaced by us running MarsNWE on one of the Linux servers. Fortunately it's Netware emulation is sufficiently good to make the control software work (which does not use the Netware client library but some Netware client of its own built in).

  27. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously you've never installed RAM expander boards. My XT clone in the basement has two 128kB ISA boards, and i've seen the possible configuration to bring an XT (or maybe AT?) up to 128MB ram.

  28. Pretty misleading by wicka_wicka · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a 20-year-old laptop being used to service a 20-year-old car. I don't find this very strange. It's not like any current McLarens still require the same laptop.

    --
    hi
    1. Re: Pretty misleading by geekforhire · · Score: 1

      Finally...someone gets it. These guys have legit super computers and a large budget, but they made a limited number of the F1 road car and it was decades ago, why waste money for an occasional task that you can already do just fine? They have no obligation to service these cars but they do anyway. Seems good enough to me.

  29. try programming an older motorola radio by ThePhish · · Score: 1

    Mother moto wrote the code for the infrastructure of the times, and many older radios require a 286/386 dos environment to allow suitable speeds of data transfer. USB / high speed processor cache / Pentiums / 16550s need not apply.

    1. Re:try programming an older motorola radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      16550s need not apply? If you need to run DOS to get high enough speeds, you almost certainly need a 16550, because of its 16-byte FIFO. Its predecessor's 1-byte buffer would easily overflow and end up dropping characters.

      dom

  30. 1. 2. 3. Profit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    1. Comb electronics surplus stores, swap meets, and hamventions for the best existing Compaq LTE 5280.
    2. Purchase it for next to nothing.
    3. Sell it to McLaren, for a McLaren :).... Profit!

  31. A CA Card is what exactaly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know about PCMCIA cards, but not CA cards. Anyone have any idea?

    1. Re:A CA Card is what exactaly? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I know about PCMCIA cards, but not <name of their specific PCMCIA card> cards. Anyone have any idea?

      It's a matter of specificity

  32. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by evilviper · · Score: 1

    Those specs seem backwards. Perhaps it had 16MB of ram and an 80MB hard drive?

    Extremely unlikely... My 486/33 laptop came with an 80GB HDD and maxed-out at 40MB of RAM if you had the money.

    More likely somebody dropped a zero on the storage, and the included HDD was 160MB.

    A quick search finds that refurb units came with 1.2GB HDDs:

    http://www.overstock.com/Elect...

    First hit on eBay says the original HDD was 1.35GB. Others say different, so storage was likely upgraded over the years that model was sold.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  33. kids stuff by TRRosen · · Score: 1

    I know a company that uses a 30 year old wang to run 40 year old software. They trade parts with a special obsolete equipment unit of the military that seems to be the only other place that still has one.

    1. Re:kids stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know a company that uses a 30 year old wang to run 40 year old software. They trade parts with a special obsolete equipment unit of the military that seems to be the only other place that still has one.

      I have no interest in seeing your 30 year old wang...... weirdo

  34. Baloney by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There was no laptop ever made with 16MB of HDD. There was certainly not one made with more ram than disk, and 80 MB is not a normal size for ram. Who writes this crap? I'd believe 16MB of ram and an 80 GB HDD perhaps.

    1. Re:Baloney by JamesKeane7745 · · Score: 1

      and 80 MB is not a normal size for ram.

      Yes, it was reasonably common. 16MB and 64MB are more common admittedly, and when a 16MB module was soldered and a 64MB daughterboard was added, it was a reasonable configuration.

    2. Re:Baloney by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      This. My first Linux laptop had 32 MB soldered on board, and a single SODIMM slot for a maximum of 128 MB extra, so I ended up with 160 MB. I thought that was such a huge amount I wouldn't need any swap...

      The soldered-on trend is still alive in chromebooks, netbooks etc. but in many cases there aren't any extra slots. If there are, the sizes are more similar, in ratios like 1:1 or 2:1, so you won't see these weird totals any more.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  35. Surprise - why? by lars_boegild_thomsen · · Score: 1

    No, it does not come as a surprise that they run their software on a 20 year old laptop. Have anybody noticed their current standing in the Formula 1 Championship? They have made what - 4-5 points in total this season. In other words - they are at the absolute bottom of the field, so it can hardly be a surprise they are not really up-to-date from an engineering perspective.

    1. Re:Surprise - why? by JamesKeane7745 · · Score: 1

      They have made what - 4-5 points in total this season. In other words - they are at the absolute bottom of the field

      They have 10 points. Force India, Renault, Sauber and MRT have less points. They are decidedly middle-of-the-field.

  36. Re: "Masters" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Must be pretty interesting. You replied to them.

  37. Re:...and... you really dont get it, do ya? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The future you describe is dead. NSA killed it. And no amount of marketing will make any difference.

  38. No wonder McLaren has been the laughing stock by guacamole · · Score: 1

    Ok, I know it's really silly to draw analogies between using ancient laptops and the team performance. I just want to mention here that since 2013 season McLaren has been been a shadow of its former self.

    McLaren finished the 2012 season arguably with the fastest car on the grid, but for the 2013 season they abandoned the 2012 design and started with something entirely new. The 2013 performance was so bad, that there were voices calling for McLaren to go back to its 2012 design. Then 2014 season was even worse. McLaren was basically a mid-field team. They switched to Honda engines in 2015, and amazingly finished a season without scoring a point. In 2016, based on their performance, I'd say McLaren is barely a mid-field team.

    1. Re:No wonder McLaren has been the laughing stock by neurovish · · Score: 1

      Ok, I know it's really silly to draw analogies between using ancient laptops and the team performance. I just want to mention here that since 2013 season McLaren has been been a shadow of its former self.

      McLaren finished the 2012 season arguably with the fastest car on the grid, but for the 2013 season they abandoned the 2012 design and started with something entirely new. The 2013 performance was so bad, that there were voices calling for McLaren to go back to its 2012 design. Then 2014 season was even worse. McLaren was basically a mid-field team. They switched to Honda engines in 2015, and amazingly finished a season without scoring a point. In 2016, based on their performance, I'd say McLaren is barely a mid-field team.

      They don't use the Compaq laptops for their Formula 1 program, they use them to service McLaren F1s...you know, the supercars from the 90s.

    2. Re:No wonder McLaren has been the laughing stock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, the summary doesn't make it clear, I'd actually forgotten about that car. TFA might be clearer, but it is a fine ./ tradition not to read it.

  39. 20 years from now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Headline:

    20 year old smart watch still running key process!!

  40. Holy Crap...road car, not Formula 1 Car by neurovish · · Score: 1

    I know...I actually clicked on the article and read it instead of just jumping to conclusions like everybody else commenting. The McLaren F1 is from 1996, and they do not make them anymore. It would make sense that these cars, state of the art at the time, require legacy computing hardware to keep running.

  41. finding old laptops. by pebear · · Score: 1

    Looks on eBay, Craigslist and land fills all over...

    --
    Paul E. Bahre
  42. Good reason to break out the old laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like a good reason to break out the old IBM 365XD Thinkpad laptop (10" TFT, 8+32MB RAM, 810MB, Red Hat 6.2/Win95), install the 56K PCMCIA modem, and reminisce about how things used to be, lol. :P

  43. we will see the same with smartphone in some years by datadefender · · Score: 1

    more and more "things" (cars, stereos, cameras etc) can only be operated with an iPhone or Android smartphone.
    Volvo even plans to do away with car keys and open the car with the smartphone.
    Cars and other hardware live longer than most techno-fads.
    So how do you open your Volvo (which probably lasts 20+ years) when the smartphones of the future do not have the matching app any more ?
    The McLaren story is a great example that we going the wrong direction.
    A long living asset like a car shall not be dependant on short cycle electronics.

  44. Re:Maybe I'm wrong but by toddestan · · Score: 1

    An XT could do 640k of ram. You might be able to get it to 1MB using expansion cards, but the 8088 could only address up to 1MB so you'd be sharing that address space from 640-1024k with whatever expansion cards and peripherals you might have. Still, later versions of DOS would be able to take advantage of some of it (the "high" memory).