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Commodore C64 Survives Over 25 Years Balancing Drive Shafts In Auto Repair Shop (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: One common gripe in the twenty-first century is that nothing is built to last anymore. Even complex, expensive computers seem to have a relatively short shelf-life nowadays. However, one computer in a small auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland has survived for the last twenty-five years against all odds. The computer in question here is a Commodore C64 that has been balancing driveshafts non-stop for a quarter of a century. The C64C looks like it would fit right in with a scene from Fallout 4 and has even survived a nasty flood. This Commodore 64 contains a few homemade aspects, however. The old computer uses a sinusoidal waveform generator and piezo vibration sensor in order to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain or force by converting them to an electrical charge. The C64C interprets these signals to help balance the driveshafts in vehicles. The Commodore 64 (also known as the C64, C-64, C= 64) was released in January 1982 and still holds the title for being the best-selling computer of all time.
...when things were built to last. I tried my C64 about two months ago, which had been collecting dust on a bin for over 20 years and it worked just like the day my parents got it for me. Including the datasette and 1541 disk drive.
The 1541 floppies were definitely not as sensitive as later 3 1/2 floppies (which got corrupted if you looked at them funny), but they weren't invincible, dust and fingerprints could still cause problems.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Most electrical strain comes from power-on.
If the unit runs 24/7 (which there is little to no reason to think this system could not do), and the program read from the disk stays in memory the entire time (because the system is never turned off), then the mechanical parts in the drive wont wear down because they are only used when the program is initially loaded, and the capacitors in the PSU dont have much stress on them, because they dont get power cycled all the time.
6581 is semi analogue, it wouldn't be at all the same built on a different process.
No that was not why they died. The whole management was corrupt and Irving Gould used the company as his personal check book.
That likely wasn't soot from exhaust, it was brake dust. Automotive exhaust unless it's diesel has a very low soot footprint, you're talking 20 PPM or less in counts even back in the 90's. I was an apprentice in the 90's when the switch over from non-metallic aka full asbestos to semi-metallic happened. And you'd find that shit everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The vic20 we used for alignments was full of it, it would get into tool cabinets, into air lines if they'd been hug for a while, it would even clog your compressor air-intake. Exhaust was almost always vented outside(or with the doors opens) since you have a CO hazard in enclosed spaces.
Until the real dangers of asbestos were known, simply knocking the brakes loose was the standard practice even into the late 90's. Meaning when you broke them loose you were kicking asbestos and other particulate into the air, and of course breathing it in. Then we started spraying down the drums and rotors to mitigate the dust problem. I go for chest x-rays every 3-4 years to check for mesothelioma and for good reasons.
Om, nomnomnom...
Not just Irving Gould. Ali Mehdi was just as greedy personally, and penny-pinching in running the company. When engineers proposed the A3000 with a 68030, he personally called them up to ask whether the 68030 was truly necessary, if there weren't cheaper components that could be used
Yes, but not the same exact model, that's what the 64 managed. It was the same machine sold for a decade.
THIS. It is the biggest selling single model of computer ever made. There were several hardware revisions for cost reduction and simplification (from ~40 chips down to 16 as they integrated a lot of components over time), but it was essentially exactly the same computer manufactured and sold from 1982 to 1992.
Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali can both rot in h*ll as far as I am concerned. I will NEVER forget those names. They took a company that had a successful product and great engineers and squeezed it for every last penny purposely skimping on re-investment and new products for the express purpose of greed.
Uhhhh dude? Yeah did you not see where this C64 is? Wanna guess what the main vehicle was before the wall fell in that area of the world? A little hunk of shit known as the Trabant which was a 2 stroke smoke generator.
Remember friend it was an area controlled by Soviet Russia, where soot generates YOU!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think most millennials would have had dial-up if they had internet in their household when they were growing up. We really need a different term for the folks born post 1990. I figure by the strict definition that I'm a millennial but I started with 28.8 and later 36.6k and playing the 3 Stooges Game on a Commodore Amiga and reader rabbit off 5.25" floppy disks on a 486 system.