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Commodore C64 Survives Over 25 Years Balancing Drive Shafts In Auto Repair Shop (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the stand-the-test-of-time dept.

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.

9 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Re:dust by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Disks? It probably uses cassettes!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Commodore engineers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The management of Commodore was pretty incompetent in the later years, but they always had top notch engineers. The C64 and the Amiga have lived far beyond many of the other computers from their eras, which is a testament to the engineers. The MOS 6581 (MOS was owned by Commodore) is still in high demand today because of its unique sound quality. As I understand it, the MOS 6581 was an unfinished product and was being designed to have far greater capability than what it ended up with. There's no substitute for great engineers who develop a great product, but so many businesses today do a half assed job with that. And that's why things don't last anymore.

    1. Re:Commodore engineers by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That works/worked* in the car industry where a car that's twenty five years old isn't typically much less advanced than one twenty years old. But in our industry?

      Commodore's problem was more that they took an age to substantially improve the Amiga and make those improvements available. The A500 was more or less an A1000 in a keyboard case and was still being sold as one of TWO Amiga models five years later. And the A2000, the other model, wasn't more powerful than the A1000 (or A500), it was just more expandable. In the same year they finally relented and released the A3000, a 32 bit Amiga, but priced it way out of consideration for most people.

      None of this was the engineers' fault it should be pointed out. While it took a while to come up with a better base chipset to replace OCS/ECS, the engineers were still belting out some fantastic designs, most of which were squished by upper management. Commodore Management's response to the increasing obsolescence of their low end model wasn't to replace it with something better, it was to replace it, at the same price, with the A600, a machine that was worse in almost every respect (well, it did have an IDE interface...), and which had been designed as a replacement for the Commodore 64.

      Had the A3000 replaced the A2000 in 1990, with a similar upgrade given to the A500, I think Commodore might have stood a chance.

      * OK, there's a reason I put 20 years there and "worked" - the car industry is genuinely going through a development phase which is nice to see.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Re:Floppy drive by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not the solid-state components that I'm worried about. It's the capacitors in the power supply, and the mechanism in the floppy drive. Either this machine has regular maintenance (and several spare power supplies on hand), or it has an amulet of +20 Luck.

  4. The last C64 I saw... by ctrl-alt-canc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...was managing the inventary of a bookstore here in Italy. I saw it about five years ago, and the bookstore was specialized in ancient books.
    It was a really inspiring vision to see on the same desk a C64 surrounded by some in-folio books. Too bad that the store was shut down recently, don't know what happened to the C64.

  5. Best selling computer? by Yenya · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I highly doubt C64 is the best-selling computer of all time. Wikipedia estimates 10M-17M C64s were sold. It of course depends on what is a computer: for example, many smartphones have CPU(s), memory, storage, and even display. According to this page, in 2011 Apple sold 72M iPhones: https://www.statista.com/stati... . Also, 10M Raspberry Pi computers were sold till 2016: https://www.raspberrypi.org/bl.... I guess Arduinos have similar numbers, but they are hard to track because of clones.

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    -Yenya
    --
    While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
  6. Re: If it works by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Communism produces a more ingenious, crafty workforce that can think outside the box, simply due to necessity because of shortages in materials and spare parts. People who could keep your plastic car running with shoestring and rubber band (provided that's available, if not, substitute) were highly sought after and could actually make a comfortable living for communist conditions.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Another 'oldie' but goodie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Our local school has an Amiga running the HVAC in 9 schools

    http://woodtv.com/2015/06/11/1980s-computer-controls-grps-heat-and-ac/

  8. What I would like to see... by Not-a-Neg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is the quality of the balancing compared to the modern equivalent device shops use. Is it still accurate after 25 years? Was it ever accurate or as accurate as a modern device can calculate?

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    -==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!