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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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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...)
- 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.
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.
An 8MHz 8088 machine is TURBO. The original PCs ran at 4.77 MHz. I remember when I got my first taste of speed running one of those 8 MHz screamers.
.01% of it) just meant putting in a second phone line and broadcasting the number. My board had enough traffic that I ended up sponsoring a bowling league (that's a league, not just a team) based out of members of the BBS. Those were the days when 1200 baud was what the higher-end people were using.
I ran a fairly active BBS on a 4.77 MHz 8088 box with a 5 MB hard drive and all 640K of RAM (expensive because a 256K x 1 chip was like $12 or so) in the late 80's. To own a substancial chunk of "cyberspace" back then (I must have owned at least
Melbert
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
Presumably all submissions should be based on the 8088 architecture.
So, yes, it would count.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Yes, I remember there were academic types back then who looked down on homebrew stuff. (they fooled around with this thing called Unix that no mere mortal could afford. Of course, this meant they didn't really OWN any computing equipment....) The only way to get onto the 'net' back then, was to use University computer time or work for a Defense contractor. CompuServe was $12 an hour if you wanted a > 300 baud connection.
Your first modem was 2400 baud? That makes you newcomer to the modem scene.
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."
Silicon Graphics, er, SGI was founded in 1982.
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*
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...
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;