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Where is the Oldest PC In Use?
the_tsi writes "Dell has a contest to find the oldest PC still in service at a small business. The winner gets $15K worth of new computers, and their old PC donated to the Computer Museum of America. " Cute idea actually.
For more info on these PS/2's, see http://members.tripod.com/~ps2page/ ps2specs.htm
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I think my dad's still using one (a TI994A) to print out invoices...
Quest Electronics had a nice kit based on Pop-Tronics' article about building the ELF computer. It was based on the RCA 1802 running at 2 MHz. Mine had a whopping 36.25 Kb of memory (32K of it on an S-100 card), an ASCII keyboard, a 64x16 character display, and a cassette interface for secondary storage. What a machine! It still runs, too. Unfortunately, it sits in my closet most of the time. What a waste of raw computing power...
One viagra in the morning before work; I just know I'm gonna be screwed
Ah yes, but a history book does not ever need to be replaced.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Mmm- yes. I've got a ZX Spectrum you see. It's just as well that this isn't actual competition isn't it? Cos loads of people would be in the wrong then.
Do you see a sign that says "please confine your comments to the rules of the competition'. Some people actually like nostalgia.
Did I mention that I've got a ZX Spectrum at home - and even worse, I've got an Atari2600 which isn't even a computer - but it's old.
Lighten up - you'll get an ulcer.
A little planning goes a long way...
It then becomes a matter of whether the $15K of gear is worth the expense of $100 plus time to copy old application into new old computer.
If I recall correctly, the PS/2 series wasn't introduced until 1987 (including the i8086 models). They may be horribly outdated, but they certainly aren't, well...old.
Model 100s are pretty damn cool. Mine works great as a portable terminal for a headless linux box. Plus, 4 AAs ran me for the better part of 3 or 4 months... before I recharged them and put them back in. :)
*grin* that reminds me, my dad used my C= 128 to maintain his tax records (using a BASIC program I wrote for him) until he died last year. I was terrified that the floppy or monitor would blow, but they never did. I have an urge to go over, slap a game cartridge in it and fire it up...
--
Clear, Dark Skies
I know a small software shop which stocks a lot of obsolete HW and SW that still uses a Commodore 64 for their point of sale system.
And while not exactly 'business' related, the C64 is *still* used a lot in amateur radio because these things will operate in non-climate controlled brick shacks on top of blisterly cold, or satanically hot, mountain peaks in the Sierra-Nevada or out in the Mojave Desert.
Its a bit off-topic, maybe. It's not a computer at all... And we are not small business. They must have known why to make this restriction. Guess how many old boxes you would find at universities...
We have an old hardware vt100 terminal here, in a storage room for old computer stuff. I wonder if it would still be working...
It's before my time, I'm afraid, does anybody know when these boxes have been used, and what you needed for using it (or what machine to use this was needed for...)?
God, root, what is difference? - Pitr
My father still does his company's payroll on a Texas Instruments PC.
8088 @5Mhz - 256K RAM
twin 320K floppy drives - No hard drive
MS-DOS 1.1
I wrote the payroll code in high school in GW-BASIC.
I'm planning on moving him to slightly newer machine and program this year.
It's just a slight Y2K issue.
He's not eligible for the contest being we're in Canada.
Arco Pipeline had a DEC pdp-8 in service up into the mid 90's.
I found tape w/ 1996 dates on it.
The ID tag on this unit says its manufacture date was in 1967.
Im not sure wether the PDP series would be a pc or a small mainframe.
I was under the impression that most of the mission critical systems where very well shielded 80386s, they are protected by lead or something, and it would be to hectic to replace, and the shuttle doesn't need any more computational power anyway. If you needed some serious numbers crunched, you would do it on the ground.
If the definition of a PC is something running on a single-chip microprocessor, there must be a few Intel 4004 and 8008 systems in use somewhere.
Before that, some people were homebrewing systems from 7400 series TTL chips.
I have played with Apple ][ emulators and they work great. Tarballs full of the old classic warez images are available just for looking. The only problem is playing games as they run hundreds of times faster than reasonable.
However, I would prefer the actual Apple box as they are solid pieces of equipment. If I had one, I knew it would last forever. The schematics are available and they have the basic TTL parts, so any repairs would be trivial by anyone with basic troubleshooting experience.
I only graduated from HS last year, and the place still had two labs full of 8088 PCs. Yeah. Complete with these off-brand 15-year-old 10" monochrome monitors, no HD, DOS 4.01 and dual 5.25 floppy drives. Bleagh... They tried to sell 'em all off several times, but no one wanted them. Gee, I wonder why?
As for me, somewhere in a box in my house is an IBM PS/1 with a 286, 40 MB HD and a 2400 modem. Not as ancient as the other machines you guys have described, but still pretty old.
> Why else would they need proof of
> date-of-purchase?
It's so that a business can't buy or borrow something really ancient from a collector, put a little bit of data on it, use it for a week or two, then enter and win the contest.
Er, you're making a rather wild assumption that a 286 will be able to run the app in question. The oldest PC in use is likely to be a machine made back when "PC" meant "Personal Computer" instead of "Computer that uses the same architecture as the IBM PC." I doubt it's going to be anything x86 based.
So it becomes a question of whether $15k of gear offsets the cost of either
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Of course it does, that's what it was made for, counting!
Then, of course, there's always my collection. 8^)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
If Dell really wanted to find the oldest working computers, they should probably head south down I-35 about an hour (to San Antonio, TX) and check out some of the systems in use by the military systems. They don't throw away anything and you can be damn sure they still have the purchase orders for them.
I remember when I used to follow my dad into work, they'd have this general progression of computers as you walked into the room. Up front would be the new computers, then the middle-aged computers and then near the back would be these behemoths that were running some operating system I'd never seen before.
Why do they keep them around? Because they had budget information in formats that could only be read by programs that ran on those machines. It's the same reason my old Architecture professor doesn't upgrade his machine. He wouldn't be able to view any of his old papers that he wrote!
Sorry..I booted it and I was wrong...it only had a 32k upgrade.
Really. If it's just x86, then somewhere :-)
I have an IBM 5150 with a *short* serial number
I could stick an RS232 card in it and connect
it to the net, give it some business-related
service to perform, and voila. It would be
tied with everybody else's 5150 and probably
come down to who's original PC has the lowest serial #.
I already gave away my TRS-80 (which had a TWO DIGIT serial number -- among the first ones made!)
But the expansion interface was long gone anyway
and RS232 wasn't an option without it. If my
dad's trucking warehouse were still around, I'd
bet the old man would have still been using that
!@#$% trs-80 for the job I programmed it for back then ('78!)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
for fun, some friends and I had an XT online, running telnet, ftp, and irc clients, and I think we compiled an ftpd for it once. It was a decent terminal except for the fact that it could only scroll like 3 lines of text a minute. I think the 9" amber monitor is still in use though.
Gee, I must be getting old. None of you remember the days before Bocca Raton, the home of the AT and XT. Anyhow, in 1980-82, I wrote A/R, A/P and General Ledger software for IBM 5100 series and System 23s. 5100s were the original IBM PCs with 9"inch floopies and 64kb (yes KB!) of memory. System 23s came are related to IBM Displaywriters and came out a few months before the first pc. Both boxes were interperitive basic and had no O/S. They only lasted about a year. Need to make a few phone calls, but I think there is still one Sys23 still running a real estate package in Ocean Beach, NJ. Recently I ran across a trophy shop, Atomic Trophies in Edison NJ. He still does all his work on 2 TRS-80s (Radio Shack Trash 80s). Does that count?. Len Head if your out there, drop me a line. dblack@monmouth.com
\8-)
dennis
Why else would they need proof of date-of-purchase?
So that a business can't buy or borrow something really ancient from a collector, put a little bit of data on it, use it for a week or two, then enter and win the contest.
So are they going to migrate the business's
current enterprise solutions to the new PCs,
say, running an Atari emulator or something?
:)
And not only that,
The computers that the FAA is using that would be older than the likes of TRS-80 model I's or Commadore 64's would all fall under the catigory of "Mainframes", and perhaps some "Minis" AFAIK, not "PC's".
There's oodles of 30+ year old mainframes still in use. The contest is strictly for "PCs" (whatever, specifically, their definition of PC is here...)
Gee, think they might be fishing for a "hot" list of people whom seriously need new computers ? "Sorry, your machine was not the oldest, but how about buying this here nice shiny new Dell ?
Smart "contst"
;)
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
My humblest apologies, did I forget to mention that my father prints out invoices with his TI still? You know, invoices, those little sheets of paper that large AND small businesses use to INVOICE their customers.
Oh, wait I did mention it. Forget it then.
Wow! Do you live in a Manchain? I mean, I'd _love_ to be able to fit an eniac into my living room! ;-)
4 Years ago I was in a course to get a license as radio technologist (for in the lab) during my study. The colleges were at the nuclear experiment plant of the Delft Technical University. Over there, they have a completely working nuclear reactor.
OK, I guess you already know where I'm heading.... that reactor was controlled by an old apple ][e, dear slashdotters! I guess that makes a very very old real Personal Computer[1] in a critical mission! However, wouldn't dare to label it the oldest.
Actually, I'm glad the control isn't done by some wintel-box. Delft is too close to home (maybe 30 miles).
Cheers,
Jeroen
[1] By my knowledge, the apple series were one of the early *real* personal computers. They were used at publishing companies, high schools, technical schools etc etc and where capable of a variety of office and educational tasks. Still, in those days you were one of the few (and I was only ten years old at that time).
Writing about music is like dancing about words - FZ
I comes down to how has the receipt that dates back the furthest, the computer does not matter.
- How to build a working digital computer
- The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations
The latter is available from Amazon and other booksellers; the former is out of print and harder to find. Try Abe or Powell's books.by Edward Alcosser
ISBN: 0810407485
by A. K. Dewdney
ISBN: 071672491X
I have also seen computers built from plastic or wood (the Digi-Comp 1) and Lego (not just the case, but actual computation units.)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I know of a company that uses the IBM Displaywriter to get access to some old documents to update and print them. (It uses the 8" disks.) It more of an oversized word processor than anything else but it's still cranking. They have other machines (386-PII) too.
Ohh by the way they're attorneys.
It doesn't have to be some third world sort of country... Edinboro (sp?) University in PA had a VAX as part of their primary server as of three years ago when I visited. Main reason I decided not to go to college their was the complete lack of computer knowledge they showed by using 386's & that VAX when I even had an already old by then 486 at home... Just couldn't go back to using a 386 level machine for getting stuff done.
by Shadow99, Anonmyous only because I'm at work
Y2K problems??
In any "IBM-type" machine before the AT ('286) there was no standard real-time clock. To get "real time" datestamping, unless you manually entered the time at bootup, you had to buy a third party ISA card with the clock and battery on it.
My TRS-80 Model 100 had a Year-1986 problem. The day-of-week shifted off into error with the year set at anything 1986 or above. The friend who I sold it to loves it and uses it regularly.
Of course a lot depends on how they define "PC". (I didn't read the offer.) If you're talking IBM/Intel, a perpetually impoverished lawyer friend of mine (he wasn't a very good lawyer) got a stack of old IBM PC's as payment for some services. The stack included an original PC with the 63-watt power supply and CASSETTE port. I think that's about as old as they come.
More generically, I think I still have an M68000-based UNIX box and a CP/M machine laying around someplace.
Posted by funk311:
hehe... the nice trailed off dates for Nixon's term in office (and life span). That was always fun to find in the history books in my old school's library.
Too bad Dell didn't do this a year ago. I had a customer that was still using a gaggle of IBM PS/2 Model 50's. For those of you who don't know, that was an 8MHz 8088 proc, no hard drive and an 8 bit bus. They even had these things networked using a NE2000 ethernet adapter and IBM PC DOS 3.1. I took one after the upgrade but it lost it's novelty value after I realized that it couldn't run Linux.
--Aaron
You know some Amish guy is going to kick everyone's butt with his Altair or his 12-volt, HeathKit, Z80-based freakin' abacus. If anyone has issue 7.01 of Wired handy, date those machines in the Amish article for us.
Why else would they need proof of date-of-purchase?
So that a business can't buy something really ancient from a collector (or have a replica built), put a little bit of data on it, use it for a few days, then enter and win the contest.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Phear my awesome Sinclair... or how about my Commadore 64, Hell, I have an Apple 2E in my basement, or how about my Amiga?
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
I'll start the bidding off with 54, but that's a ways off from 100+.
It was the planet on "Forbidden Planet",
not on star trek.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Though it isn't even by far an old PC, I still regularly use my Atari 800 for games and home control (lamps, etc.). It still works as if in mint condition and (IMHO) is more advanced than many "modern" PC's. It never crashes and instantly turns on. To me, that's advanced. Computers these days may be faster and push more polygons...but they lack an elegant simplicity.
BTW, I still have the 300 baud acoustic modem for it -- and it still works!
-AC
True,
But, when it mentions the current president in that time period, it's pretty sad =)
Well, I've got a Geneve, based on the Texas Instruments after the line was discontinued, this system was probably the most advanced personal computer of its time. Over 128K ram. And it used a mouse.
Not the oldest but very rare. only 2 in my home town and 4 - 6 in all of Alberta.
Skitz
There are two such PC's being used in India in :-( Guess you win!
a govt. office. Same configuration, but runs
DOS 1.0
I've got two working Texas Intruments 994A's (one black and silver, one beige) I've even got the speech synthesizer for them, it was pretty sweet having a computer that actually talked when all my friends were still using Atari 2600's. I think I still have the adapter to use Atari 2600 joysticks on it too, you could play Slymoids, Hunt The Wumpus, or my favorite, Parsec!.
I've still got an IBM XT that I snagged when my dad's business was throwing it away, it still has all their data on it's massive 10MB FULL HEIGHT hard drive. This one has the nice full height 5.25" floppy drive too, the thing still works, a secretary was using wordperfect on it when it was last plugged in. Too bad the XT keyboards don't work with AT computers, it has a nice clickety-clack feel too it.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I saw a story Russian ICBMs are run on analog computers, that's vacuum tubes.
Okay, quick correction here:
vacuum tubes != analog
Any analog computer is one which stores and operates on continuous values. A digital computer uses a set of discrete values (generally 0 and 1). The values on both may be represented in a variety of ways (analog might use voltage, ampherage, or even resistance levels to mark a continuous stream, while digital might use voltage/no voltage, current/no current, negative voltage/positive voltage...and these are just electronic representations...you should check out hydraulic digital circuits...yes they do exist, although even the engineers I worked with didn't seem them that way.
Vacuum tubes are just one way to do either, depending on the tube type. In fact, there is even a class of tubes called tranisitors, which is where I believe the name we use for solid state versions come from. In each case they are tri-state semi-conductors.
They key point on both is the function not the implementation is what we are describing.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
Here in Portland, OR (Home of the Amazing Tonya Harding),a local pizza joint, Stark Street Pizza,
:)
uses what I think is an old Radio Shack Color Computer (anybody from Portland correct me if I'm wrong, please) to flash customer numbers on a little 13" tv. Whatever it is, I know it is old. The Church of Elvis used to have a C-64 running a fortune-telling (I think) program in the storefront window
Hmm... I'll have to check that out sometime when I'm bored... been a while since I've seen a CoCo in action.
What'd be really nice, is if someone turns up a machine that still runs ITS..
-Erik-
Actually, I didn't see anywhere that the business itself had to be around since the age of the computer, nor that the business used the computer since that time. Only that it is currently in operation.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Well, yeah - but by your definition, a "normal" person could buy a Beowulf cluster like IBM put together recently - wasn't that in the range of $150,000 - $200,000 (about the price of a good house nowadays)?
Just because someone can buy it - above all else (I would rather have the house), doesn't make it a personal computer.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There should be a contest to build your own computer - from scratch. Put limits on the contest - maybe three classes: Mechanical, Electrical, and Electronic (electrical and electronic could use some mechanical components, and mechanical could only use electrical components for power, like a motor to drive gears or something). Electronic would be restricted to transistor level at best. I would love to see what people come up with...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A little less than a year ago I was working in Borland C++ 5 on a 486DX2/66 with 40 megs of ram and Win95 doing OpenGL graphics... of course that was only hobbyist work. If you go back another year, I was using basically the same software, but with only 12 megs of ram. It took 30+ seconds to compile and link *anything*. Ugh.
Interestingly, on the same hardware (486/66 12MB ram), Borland C++ 4.0 was very fast.
These Sinclair machines used a Z-80 processor. So it's conceivable (but just barely) that they could be coerced into being compatable with the GameBoy.
I think the game boy has a graphics and sound chip in addition to the Z80. So, being able to make this thing compatible with the GB would probably be hard. However, if it has an expansion port (like the T/S 1000) you could probably put the additional circuitry required into an expansion RAM pack housing or something.
I went to the Blinkenlights site - Wow!
I want one of those paperclip computers!
I have to find that book!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I have two SYM-1 (cousins of the Kim 1) single board 'personal' computers. Do they qualify if I write a little program on them (using the hex keypad, of course) to record sales at a lemonade stand? They are much older than those 'fancy' newer PCs that have ASCII keyboards and screens. I believe they date from about 1978. (one of them I bought complete, in the original carton, at a swapmeet a few years back for $10)
I'm not sure I would trade them for the big bux, though. They're as obsolete as they're ever going to get. (and still they're even upgradable- I believe there are unfilled sockets to add an additional 6K of RAM on both of them) The new hardware can only go down in value from this point on.
I've been meaning to hook them together and write some sort of deathmatch game to play between them. Maybe a Doom clone or something. They're probably not powerful enough (6502 with 2K of RAM) to run anything Quakelike.
Melbert
I know of a company still using a Z80-based machine for some text processing...I guess they'll get the prize :)
If you do find it, please let us know. That sounds like a cool machine to have around...
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
I still have an old Apple ]I[
///
I think the proper moniker is Apple
-AC
I've got my IBM PCjr too. Still works. Somewhere I have a really early IBM DOS - before subdirectories and time (only prompted you for the date)
I just pulled one of these out of service. It was running a barcode label printer. Nifty thing, and it *never* broke down. Run off just the floppies (back when they were 'floppy').
That and I had an old Compaq 'portable' here as well. It weighs more than most of the desktops we have now.
hee hee...go to your nearest elementary school...or any school I guess...you'll find hideously ancient equipment still being used by the kids.
My dad has a vintage one that was used by a person in his business until 2 years ago when he retired. It was totally mechanical, the power was supplied by a lever you pulled. Push in the number buttons, push the operand, and pull... It would kachunk and print out the subtotal on the tape reel on top... I have no idea about the year...
Ok, this is a few years back when I was first learning to program, but I swear it's true. I had an internship with the DoD, who really didn't need any interns. I brought a copy of Borland C++ 4.0 from home and installed it on a 386/25 (or maybe 40? I don't remember). The install was beautiful, of course, 24-odd diskettes, and if something went wrong (which it did) you had to start over, then they switched me to a different, identical computer, and I had to start over.
So anyways, it was a simple Windows app, but I had never touched C++ (self-taught C only), let alone Windows, so I was recompiling every 5 minutes. Well, you know, 5 minutes to debug, 45 to compile, etc. God forbid I should hit "build all" at any point.
The funny part was when I had to change some little detail with the font in an MDI app. The documentation for OWL (Borland's MFC equivalent) didn't mention the specific bit, so I called their support at like $40.00 a minute, or whatever they charge. The guy stays on the phone with me for half an hour, gets his supervisor, and then says he'll call me back when he figures it out. Two hours later I get a call that he's still working on it. Never heard from him again. Go figure.
--JZ
I had a subscription to BYTE in the 70s, my younger brother threw them all out while I was in the Navy I think, arrgh! the Ads, from places like Smoke Signal that had a 6800 based CPU! There was one issue in particular with a picture of Babbage's Machine on the cover with a historical article by Sol Libes that I wished he'd preserved. Yes, they were looking back even then,
to the days of spare Minuteman missle parts for
homebrews, etc.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
oooohhh.... A new fangled 5151.. Got an old IBM PC(5150) not a new fangled XT model either.. And a couple Bell-Howell AppleII clones made by apple, Plus a Atari 800 and 800xl. Used to have a Sinclair ZX81 machine build from a kit in 1980 with a whopping 1k of memory.. This was before they became the timex-sinclair zx81 which had twice the ram..
beat a commodore 64? easy. Vic20...
:-) I wasn't quite clear on the concept at the time...
I remember when I bought it I was about 11 years old. It had 3k of memory... I told my mom she could use 0.5k for her recipies.
Nope.
The Shuttle computers are proprietary IBM designs that have very little memory or I/O. This is one of the big reasons weather changes screw up the launches - the computers don't have the storage to hold multiple sets of weather data at one time.
They've talked about upgrading for years, but fear of buggy operating systems (look what happened with the Sojourner probe) and buggy hardware (Pentium division bug, anyone?) has prevented it.
Back when Byte was still a good magazine, they had an article on the difficulty of verifying that a computer chip design was correct. They noted that the UK Ministry of Defense had commisioned a team to develop a mathematically-proven-correct design for a CPU chip for use in military avionics. The chip was excruciatingly simple even by mid-80's standards (I think it was comprable to the 8080A) and the proof only covered the design. They planned to correct for fabrication bugs by using three different fab plants using different technologies.
Don't know if they ever actually got that far...
--
Clear, Dark Skies
I can still hear the womans voice:
"Alien Craft Advancing"
Still in business?
Yeah?
You win!
Stay where you are. We're sending some people right over...
**>>BELCH
Don't know if they still do it, but in the late '80s, the ultimate backup computers for the shuttle were the HP41CV calculators that the pilot and commander carried with them. They had a special ROM cartridge burned for calcuating re-entry burns.
I remember that because at the time I had just written an adventure game for the HP41CV and gotten it published in a national user's group mag. Wee-hah! 256 rooms in 4k of RAM, baby!
--
Clear, Dark Skies
I use a Digitial 8086 with 64 KB Ram. Bootable Floppy 5 1/2 in 720 KB, No Hard drive. It is used as a Backup Server Trouble shooter, and a Backdoor to the Server if it has Problems.
it has a 9 pin Dot matrix Printer hooked up with an option Floppy formatted Spread sheet program. and it is runnind PC/m Dos. the one prior to Dos 1.0
I've actually considered this. You could take a $400 box, maybe double that for a multiport serial board, mix in your favorite Linux distribution and a bunch of old VT's or Mac Pluses and replace the system half of us used in college with something easier to upgrade, support and manage (and it would be faster).
If you were really strapped for cash, you could build a dozen of these and plop one down in each lab/building around the campus and only worry about networking those dozen machines. If they were networked, you could really extend their lifespan using coda and another $400 box with a couple of 20 Gb drives to handle the bulk of the storage (and, of course, centralized backup).
It's a Third World dream come true, for the price of a hot passport...
Dose a PDP 11/70 count as a personal computer??
it is not a desktop but you could consider it a "personal computer". running rsx11 it stopped counting years in 1986!!!!
Here's a new idea... how about they give a prize to the slowest development machine...
:)
My company has me developing Windows apps on a P75.. running NT 4.0... using VC6.0... oh the speed... anyone in worse shape?
And no, if you're developing under Linux, you don't get any sympathy from me. You don't have to deal with the overhead of a GUI if you don't want to!
The only good thing I can report is that I've managed to determine the Grand Unification Theory while waiting for compilations to finish!
Piece
I wish more companies could come up with cool little competitions like this, kinda keeps them from being cold and distant.
In the last day or so, I've received inquiries from someone using a Canon Cat (Early work processor) and from someone still using an Epson HC-40 (early portable CP/M machine.)
They contacted me because of my classic computer collection.
There are, however, still plenty of people out there using Altairs and Model 100's and GRiD's and all the other well-known and not-so-well-known personal computers, probably going all the way back to the very first.
Not everyone has succombed to the idea that if it isn't the latest and greatest computer hardware and software, it doesn't work. I drive a 1959 Land Rover; it still gets me where I want to go. Likewise, a lot of people still use computers that do what they need to do without the cost, complexity, and learning curve that newer machines represent.
Unfortunately, Dell is ignoring the fact that the IBM PC and its successors more than anything else to destroy the innovation, creativity, and variety that had existed previously in the computer industry. Very few desktop "PC's" are collectible; virtually none would be of interest to a museum of any quality or reputation.
If you really want to see older computers, come to the Vintage Computer Festival this fall.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
i knew it was dumb for my school to rip open their old C64's and use them as decoration in the PC-lab.....
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
It hardly qualifies as a small business, but I believe that an IMSAI 8080, S-100 machine is still a part of the "Core Board Simulator" at Commonwealth Edison's nuclear data center.
Dog is my co-pilot.
because I'm pretty sure they use a timex sinclair to run their whois server.
Cisco had (has?) a competition for the oldest router still in use. You could win the latest gear from them.
:-)
Although I sincerely hope that those old routers are not connected to the Internet anymore, due to security bugs in the firmware and all that...
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
my grandmother still uses her PC Junior and we have an XT in use also.
So, Dell is looking for the oldest PC still in service so it can be made into a museum exhibit (and thus *stop* being in service). This is like looking for the oldest tree alive so it can be chopped down and put on display.
But I'm sure the oldest PC won't be a PC-compatible. I see Apple ]['s, C64s, and Atari 800's still in use from time to time, and I'm sure even older machines are out there.
While the oldest computer running in MY business is 1989, a client of mine has a computer running that dates back to 1980. I suppose its not really a PERSONAL computer, its one of those 3B2 Unix systems running old AT&T System V.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
You mean Sublogic flight simulator for the C64. I loved that game. Too bad MS bought 'em.
Among our vintage computers still in use, we have a Commodore PET, and a DEC VAXmate still in use at my workplace (a public school district). And yes, they both work perfectly still.
Must be a small business (400 employees.)
Must have proof of date-of-purchase of the computer.
I think this is going to be a tough one to pull a sting on. Just having to show proof of owning a business license for the same business since the late 1970's is going to eliminate most.
You don't really think anything other than an Altair or the like is going to win, right?
Jack
At one point, I had one of the newer Timex/Sinclairs. You're right, it had twice the ram. That would be 2K.
Every bit of RAM was important in these machines. If your program put text up on the screen, the amount of memory used up ended at the last character on the line (a five character line would use six bytes, a twelve character line used 13). So it was possible to run out of memory while running a program by: 1) using too much memory for the program, 2) using too much memory for the data, 3) putting too many characters on the screen at the same time (or some combination of the above).
Mine definitely wasn't 'stock' when I got through with it. I couldn't stand the membrane keyboard, so I rewired an old ASCII keyboard (the kind with a reed switch for each key) and put the whole Timex/Sinclair into the keyboard housing.
These Sinclair machines used a Z-80 processor. So it's conceivable (but just barely) that they could be coerced into being compatable with the GameBoy.
The PDP-8 family of minicomputers were built by Digital Equipment Corporation between 1965 and 1990. The PDP-8 was largely upward compatible with the PDP-5, a machine that was unveiled on August 11, 1963 at WESCON, and the inspiration for that machine came from two earlier machines, the LINC and the CDC 160. All of these machines were characterized by a 12 bit word with little or no hardware byte structure, typically 4K words of memory, and simple but powerful instruction sets.
- Vincit qui patitur.
hehe, I happen to have an IBM PC XT (5151), dated DEC 10 '82 (inside case), pitty I live in Australia, $15K worth of server would be great. :)
This thing has 10Mb HDD and all
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Posted by gtv:
of course the real reason Dell is doing this is to generate a list of small business customers that it can try to sell new equipment to. it would cost a lot more than $15K to generate such a list through other means.
There have to be 50 messages here talking about their old TI or C64, or the 8088 they used two months ago as a debug dumb terminal. Everyone has a C64 in their basement. The idea is that the computer is a PC, presumably an IBM clone, that is being used for business. That is why the 100 word essay.
I think. I saw a story Russian ICBMs are run on analog computers, that's vacuum tubes. At least they wouldn't be Y2K sensitive.
I used a DEC Rainbow, once. Had its own pallet truck to move it. I just exorcised a couple of Leading Edge 8088 4.7MHz last year.
Not Katz. He said "oldest Slashdot reader". Katz only posts, he doesn't read what else has been posted... :-)
"So I wouldn't be surprised if the winner was some company in the third world somewhere."
i think the contest is limited to the US only.
Intresting point, as a matter of fact I have a VAX Station 3130m, WHich is older then I am running as a pageing system with netbsd 1.4, Old compter, I wonder if its limited to the x86 arch.
those things were great! I got one for christmas when I was in kindergarten. I spent hours typing in the BASIC programs out of a little book... even if it was only some cheezy wannabe AI thing when i got finished, the sense of accomplishment was still great. Of course, after laboring away in front of the TV screen for so long, I would always back up my programs to an audio tape. Hell, I even had a printer attached to the thing. I think Parsec was one of my favorite games ever... i think it would still give me the willies to hear that female voice saying "Entering asteroid belt..."
;)
Ah, well... enough reminiscing. Maybe I'll try and buy one on ebay or something.
A few years ago, I was taken on a backstage tour of the Melbourne Planetarium. The highlight of the tour was seeing the computer that ran the whole planetarium show.
An Apple ][.
Apparently the software that ran the planetarium show worked well enough on the old Apple that upgrades to newer computers was unnecessary.
The Melbourne Planetarium is closed for the time being while a new museum is being constructed. I don't know if the Apple ][ will find a home in the new planetarium, or if it will move down the hall to become an exhibit in the museum.
It's a shame that it's limited to small business. Telstra (the phone company) would probably like a chance to upgrade the Vic 20's that they may still be using to control some of the telephone network. (I'm not kidding!)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I remember seeing an old Commodore PET still in use at a Mom&Pop convenience store in (s)Melrose Massachusetts around 1990. I'll hafta take a little road trip to see if it's still in use.
**>>BELCH
So is the sega gamegear. No strings there. :)
Posted by Fleeno:
Am I the only person in existence that has a PolyMorphic System 8813?
Forget the crude abacus. The loom is where it's at. It produces a hard copy.
-AC
Peace,
Loren Osborn
My university (Oxford, England) has us doing all of our practicals on Sparc 1, 1+ and IPX machines. They have black and white monitors with no contrast/brightness controls and come with a whopping 28Mb RAM.
:-)
We do Java 1.2 development on these things
For some reason Oxford University is slipping quickly down the rankings of British universities, having been top (or second) for so many hundreds (literally - my college was founded in 1263) of years... Can't think why.
Definitely one of the cooler add-ons for the ti...
I remember switching from programming in Extended Basic to Assembly.... not having to interpret the language at runtime was awesome...
But, since they used the video memory for system RAM, the thing was reeeallllyy... slow.
sorry, off topic slightly...
Karnal
And don't forget the Vintage Computer Festival.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
just last week, i kid you not,
we finally shut down and got rid
of a slew of personal IRISes that date
back to before 1978 and some SGI NC
computers from back then too.. I
actually used one of those 2, 5, and 8Mhz
SGIs as a dumb terminal last year till
it caught fire while i was out of the
office one day (all the dust over the
years and a hard drive on its last leg
generating more heat than an overclocked
PII under a magnifying glass in the Sahara
finally did it in).
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
Well, I guess the winner will probably be a TRS-80 somewhere, as it was the first real personal computer available (I know, I know, the Apple I was available -- but does a bare board really qualify?)
In fact, does any kit computer qualify? Dell really blew it when they didn't define "PC" in the rules.
In any case, if you are the lucky winner with the TRS-80 model I AND proof of purchase (I once owned TRS-80 serial number 0000002 -- gone now), you can get your Dell PC's loaded with Linux and run Tim Mann's excellent xtrs emulator under X -- it will perfectly emulate a TRS-80 model I running in the neighborhood of 50MHz on a P200. So, emulators DO have a good use!
"Dell will [...] donate the small business' old PC to The Computer Museum of America in La Mesa, Calif."
Neat trick that, donating something that is not yours. A privilege usually reserved by and for politicians.
Does Dell plan to compensate the owner of the computer? If not, then the "free" $15,000 Dell PC isn't really free. Is there a plan for software migration (which is likely why the old computer is still in use)?
I hope that someone still has a working Bendix G15. That would trump thse Altairs.
I can't help thinking this is a bit of a double edged sword. Just think about it for a minute. You have a machine that's been running for over 20 years. It's not doing anything that's going to need to scale -- if it was, it would have done so long ago. It's not unreliable, or it would have been replaced by now. No, what we have here is a machine that's perfectly suited to the task in hand.
In comes Dell and replaces your trusty, fully working machine, with a shiny new PC running Windows bloatware, and takes away your old working one. The PC crashes every couple of weeks, and will be useless in a couple of years, and need replacing anyway.
Sure, you could replace Windows with Linux / FreeBSD / whatever, but the MTBF on modern PC components means the machine will probably break long before it manages another 20 years.
My advice: stick with your existing machine. It does all that you want already, so why change it?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
...I traded away my old TI 99-4/A a few years ago for a guitar. Touted 20k RAM and 26k ROM.
Did have the speech synthesizer though.... quite rad, especially when I played Parsec...
And some older than that. Heck you could put the Shuttle in the museum. The total power of that thing is less than that of a Palm Pilot. They are finally getting upgraded to ~Modern (80-90's) computers. Remember, even though most of the shuttles were built in 79-80, the contracts were awarded in 72. Eeek.
RB
Even better than that. Some FAA computers don't even use transistors. They have a lot of very old coumputers than run on vacuum tubes. Which isn't so bad. They work great for them, they are perfectly reliable and do their air traffic control functions beautifully, but sadly they are slowly being replaced with new spangled microprossor based computers becuase is it just too difficult to get good vacuum tubes these days. They just couldn't keep up the supply through there old supplier, junkyards. They are now using the ones that are taken out of servie to get parts for other old ones still in service.
And to think I threw away out old Victor. It's 10 meg hard drive would have been an upgrade to those poor Apple ][ people : )
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
I have a keyboard off an old analog computer :) Good reason to wire it up to something. Wonder if it would count.
:(
from 1963
My roomate has an altair but he won't give it
up
It's for *SMALL* businesses (UNDER 400 employees).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Well.... check this out...
It based on the Intel 4004 and was mostly used as a dumb terminal over some sort of serialish cable to a PDP10. It's a funky blue case. I think some kids at Caltech made it. It is really a computer though because:
A) It boots of a huge floppy disk
B) It supports something akin to virtual terminals
B) It has some weird command line to support opening various connections. It has a BNC cable in the back that supports telnet over tcp/ip. Its not a real TCP/IP implimentation. It uses some funky packets over the ethernet to connect to the PDP10 (RIP) which the telnet connections orignate from.
The earliest reference to it i have is 74 but it may be older.
My schoool (Jr. High) has over two hundred Classic twos. Their combined power is likely still less than my K6-2 400. One year we were told the shcool had purchased some "advanced video editing computers" - 30 more Classic 2s
Maybe he has an ENIAC-on-a-chip.
I have a Commodore 64, in the original box, with all the original bags, styrofoam, and unused warranty card. "Welcome to the world of friendly computing!"
Sabz.5150
ahamm@hsc.vcu.edu
I want to see a contest to find the oldest PC user to date. How about the oldest Slashdot reader?
Come, you 100+ somethings, you know you're out there. Give us a little "hello."
The US Federal Avaiation Administration. Well over 400 employees. Been in business for decades. Has had the same hardware for decades. Who can say that all of the FAA's hardware doesn't deserve to be in a museum!?
The SCELBI 8H is the first computer that I would classify as a PC. It was based on a microprocessor (Intel 8008) and in commercial production.
I read some article in the West Australian a year or three ago which mentioned some company who specialises in buying up piles of 386s & similar vintage machines to resell in places like the Philippines. Cheapo bulk computing power for locations with better uses for resources than on a PII running turd 98..
I've been gathering up macplus' & LCs & the like & redistributing them as basic email machines to nursing homes so grandma jones can harrass her grandkids.. : ) Don't knock the uses you can still get out of 'ancient' machines..
They don't say what counts as a PC (at least I couldn't find a definition). Is the contest restricted to IBM compatibles or would, say, an old Commodore be eligible?
After all, it wasn't until about the mid '80s that "PC" became synonymous with "IBM compatible PC", and I'm sure there are lots of small businesses using systems that date from the late '70s.
What color is it (the case)? And what kind of keys does it have? If it is grey, and uses regular keys (not chiclet rubber keys) then it is pretty old - probably a Coco 1 with 4K (date - around 1981-82). If it is white, it is newer...
That's pretty old - I think only something like that or an Apple IIe or something will win - forget about an Altair or any computer like that...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Didn't I see an old Commodore PET when I visited NASA (Canaveral) a year or so ago??
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Maybe I can dig up one of the pawnshops here still running on IBM XT's...
Silicon Graphics, er, SGI was founded in 1982.
dunno if he is still using it or not. That was the machine I first learned to program on - initially it was just the box, and I programmed it in machine code, using the switches and reading the lights on the front panel. Then we got an adm3a terminal, an external 8" floppy drive, and an extra 12k of ram (bringing the total up to 64K) and we ran CPM on the dang thing. I know that he kept the company books on that machine for a number of years, but I think it is gathering dust on a shelf, now.
I don't know if its still there, but a couple years back the Ace Hardware by my house had a Commodore PET being used in their paint color matching system. I doubt it acted as much more than a terminal, but they were still using it.
MITS Altair 8800 is regarded as the "true PC". PDP's were multiuser, hence not personal, even if you have one in your house for heating in the winter. So if you have an Altair and you can prove it is the earliest, I think you'd win. Unless you can prove you built something at home before that.
And I'd hope you get a bonus if you're running MS-BASIC on that Altair...
Heh
The schools around my area still use a ton of
Apple IIs, unless they replaced them all behind
my back, heck, I even played around on one in
7th grade during class... Of course,MT is pretty
pathetic in getting schools new stuff. My history
book was over 15 years old at one time
OK its not that old but a friend is still using a Apple II for some engineering calcs. Course he probably doesn't want to enter this. They'd take away his computer. I think he'd be really annoyed its the only computer that program works on. And I don't know where the code is.
-cpd
Not trying to start a war here =)
I would imagine that old Apples or Apple IIs would still be the oldest PCs still in *use*, not just functioning...
I know for a fact that an Apple IIs are still being used in old HS for touch typing and stuff!
Anyone know some computer history?
What's the chronology of Altairs, Z-80s, Apples, Macs, XTs, ATs?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Here in Portland, OR (Home of the Amazing Tonya Harding),a local pizza joint, Stark Street Pizza, uses what I think is an old Radio Shack Color Computer (anybody from Portland correct me if I'm wrong, please) to flash customer numbers on a little 13" tv. Whatever it is, I know it is old. The Church of Elvis used to have a C-64 running a fortune-telling (I think) program in the storefront window
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
A personal computer, IMO, by definition is a computer that could be purchased and owned by a normal person. A single owner. Not a mini-computer, so expensive at the time that it could only be owned by a company.
-AC
Back at my old university in udine, Italy people are still whispering to each other about this wonderful computer locked away in some top secret research area that actually displays graphics and runs mosaic... The rest of course are surfing in flourescent green with lynx, on dumb terminals connected with sticky tape to some old vax.
What some might not realise is that a lot of old underfunded universities or indeed loads of old fashioned firms in not very IT minded areas of the world have crappy old systems. So I wouldn't be surprised if the winner was some company in the third world somewhere.
Which leads to the question of wether the gigantic amounts of old computer parts we're producing each time we upgrade wouldn't actually be *very* useful to people in other countries...
Hey has someone had a business since the late 1970's? If so I have a working msai 8080, you know with the switches on the front, no display, only rs232. It's one of the first pc's/ Was like
2000 bux and you had to assembly the thing your self. Maybe we could win the prize money.
-- stdio
I've got a working 3B1. It runs System V 3.51. =)
I picked it up at a garage sale a while back. It's sweet! I gather that it was built to interface nicely with a PBX.
In addition to that, I've got 2 IBM RTs, a Compaq XT Portable. I think the monitor on the RTs is gone, though.
Too lazy to login,
Phyre
http://pwp.value.net/thehunters/phyre/
I implemented a phonebook on some early PDP computer a few years ago and it was lots of fun sitting in front of the DECwriter. It's surprising that that was only two or three years ago.
If you want to learn more about old computers (not just PCs, though the definition of PC is vague at best), there's plenty of resources out there;
You left out the fact that they weighted a ton.
I used to have one of these. It had 10 digits along the top and ten buttons for each digit (0-9) for a total of 100 buttons is a square. First, hit clear. Then you put in a number with the keys, hit the 'add' button. Then put in the next number and hit add and your sum shows up. There were no ICs, transistors or even tubes in this device. It was all mechanical relays and linkage.
I built a Rockwell KIM and it still plays Wumpus. But I have to reenter the hexcode in every time I want to play.
-AC
...up until a few years ago, I heard rumors of people using old PDP's now and then. Wish I had a 10...or merely an emulator that worked for Macs.
teleny, friend of cats.