What's the Oldest Hardware You are Still Using? 1705
ScottBob asks: "Seeing the recent post about the vintage computer festival got me thinking about old hardware I'm still using in my 'modern' computer. I have a 1 ghz Celeryonion machine, but when I bought the mobo I specifically looked for one with an ISA slot so I could still use my old Zoltrix modem I bought in '97 when V.90 was adopted (when it probably would have been cheaper to buy an ISA-less mobo and a PCI modem). I've also moved a '93 model floppy drive from machine to machine, and it still works. Usually, monitors and power supplies survive the ravage Moore's law has on hardware, but what other things does everybody else save when they cruft together a new machine? Anybody ever do things like disguise a 4 GHz P4 in an ancient 8086 machine box? While on the subject, is anybody still running old DOS programs in a DOS box on a Windows machine (e.g. a database) because your company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with any free alternatives?"
Still have an old 486 running... (Score:2, Interesting)
Keyboard (Score:5, Interesting)
old hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
The motherboard isn't 100% Y2K compliant but it runs like a champ.
IBM model M keyboard (Score:5, Interesting)
A 1200 baud modem.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oldest I've seen in use but not by me (Score:5, Interesting)
My Router (Score:1, Interesting)
The sick thing is that it's mostly idle.
Do slide rules count? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have two. The newest is from the late 60s. The oldest was given to me by my father. I think he got it when he was in college in the early 40s.
In the early 90s, I returned to college for another degree. I routinely used the slide rules for homework. The graders couldn't figure out why I only gave 3 digits of accuracy and the third was sometimes wrong.
On another occasion, I pulled it out to do a quick calculation during a test. The prof had never seen one and made a bee-line to my seat (on the aisle) and spent about 5 minutes looking it over.
I run some old stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently retired my 486DX2 (later OV83) system with 64MB of ram, that I built in 1992.
Physics labs beat them all! (Score:5, Interesting)
The one I was working in recently is still using an Apple ][ to scan the dye laser that forms the frequency reference in the world's first and only solid-state quantum computer.
It just goes to show you that the really clever guys simply won't upgrade until either something breaks or the old system won't do what's needed. Otherwise, keep the Apple.
BTW the Apple is sitting near a superconducting magnet, and still works. Its first failure that I know of was a few weeks ago when the power supply died. It's now got an AT power supply hanging off it
The Roland LAPC-1 from 1990. (Score:3, Interesting)
I also have a HP LaserJet IIIP from '91 that still works and is cheaper per page than all those crappy inkjet printers.
Old DOS apps (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, OK, actually it runs just fine and rarely gives us trouble. Can't say the same for our MS-SQL servers...
Re:IBM model M keyboard (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a lot of really old equipment, but I'm finding that I use it too little and am trying to toss what I can, but my Model:M will leave me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Q&A 4.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, I still do modifications on it from time to time.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IBM model M keyboard (Score:2, Interesting)
But I had experienced the bliss of springing, and I was hooked. I spent the next 6 months trying to track down a 101 key model M locally (finally did, too... using it to type this right now!)
And then my best friend got an IBM Thinkpad R31. I got hooked on the eraserhead pointer and had a dream about a keyboard combining the tactile response of the model M with the efficient mouse-at-the-fingertips of the trackpoint. Amazingly, THE VERY NEXT DAY one of my friends was cleaning out her closet and found not one but TWO!!!! IBM Trackpoint 2 keyboards. And she was even kind enough to let me have them... I use the Trackpoint on my DEKA-BOOTING (FreeBSD, Win2K, MS-DOS 6.2,Win3.11, SuSE 8.2 Personal, RH 9.0, Mandrake 8, Debian 3.0, Gentoo, and Knoppix) primary box now (athlon 2400+, 512MB DDR2700, 80GB HDD) While the Model M soldiers on for my great-grandma's pentium 166 (I'm not dissing, she really uses it) and will always remain a classic, it's second best to the Trackpoint in terms of pure functionality (IMO)
Re:Still have an old 486 running... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a 486/33, homebuilt in December of 1993. Currently serving as the house firewall, it's been running 24/7 since May of 2001. Ran 24/7 during summers in 1999 & 2000, plus other vacations. Before Fall of 1997 it was my normal machine (until I started college).
It's got an upgraded video card (4 MB Diamond VLB ugpraded from the original 1 MB Trident), and has a 4 GB drive added last November, plus NICs that have been added.
Currently on the third power supply fan. Other than that, it's run great for nearly 10 years.
Radio Shack TRS80 Model 100 (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, it's only got 64KB of memory, but it will run forever on 4xAA batteries. And the keyboard is great.
Why the assumption? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the assumption that a company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with free alternatives? Believe it or not, there is still some software for which free alternatives do not exist. And probably will never exist, because it is so specialized.
At one bio lab where I worked, I had to support a bunch of DOS machines connected to lab equipment, because the controller programs only worked in DOS, due to the age of the equipment. Replacing the device would cost more than your average waterfront condo, so it's not exactly as if the company was being "cheap". Besides, the old device worked fine - if it ain't broke... etc.
Another place I worked at used a proprietary database for storing patient records. The server was a 386SX/25 and was accessed from dumb terminals connected to a multiport serial board. Replacing/upgrading this woudl require spending a huge amount of money to obtain a new system, or a huge number of man-hours developing a new open-source system and getting it certified. (Such systems need to be certified what with privacy laws and the like.)
So, there are plenty of reasons why a company might keep old hardware arround - almost anything which has custom boards or software written for it is likely to be running on older hardware, simply because there's no reason to upgrade.
Nuke plants, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, on the subject of companies still using legacy hardware, nuke plants have to be the king of dinosaur computer users. No new nuke plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island accident in the late 70's, and all the hardware they use (everything from pump motors to computers) have to go through so much regulatory red tape that it is cost prohibitive to upgrade, hence, the computers running the control systems are all geriatric 70's era mainframes that constantly have to be maintained. Most nukes were never meant to go over 50-75% of their rated generating capacity, but in today's energy hungry world, utilities try to squeeze out every bit of energy they can from them, pushing them to 105% rated capacity and beyond. And the NRC is okay with this given the age of their control systems??
By contrast, I recently visited a coal burning power plant that uses various Windows 2000 machines and Sun hardware running Solaris, all networked together with fiber and using modern off-the-shelf control system software. So much for the "modern" miracle of nuclear power.
Re:Do slide rules count? (Score:2, Interesting)
I use to think the M was the cat's meow... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's good an old school solid feel, but it only has a single aluminum plate inside, which makes it easy to carry around.
Best part?
Not only is it spill resistant, you can disassemble the plastic components (base, key tray) and put it in the dishwasher. The contact sheet is a clever enclosed rubber design, which is itself washable, and the controller a very simple PCB that snaps in and out of place.
There are good keyboards out there that aren't 20 years old if you do a little searching. Sometimes you have to go straight to the OEM manufacturers out in Asia to get what you want.
Anyway, back on topic... The oldest part I'm still using is the stereo attached to my PC so I can hear my music. I ditched the elderly floppy drive about a year ago.
Re:SGI (Score:2, Interesting)
Then again, we still have a Personal Iris (R2000) that is being used as a print server (parallel port). We have provisions to replace this print server, but for some odd reason nobody wants to pull the plug on this old (circa 1988) computer. I can't. It is odd, but I somehow find that pulling the plug would be cruel.
Then again, this use to be my desktop system over ten years ago. I wrote a lot of code on that ancient computer (X11? Motif?, nah, GL and NeWS).
Northgate OmniKey/101 (Score:2, Interesting)
1) It's hefty, like the original IBM keyboard. Metal base, stays firmly in-place on the desk wherever you set it. Nice solid feel.
2) The letters will NEVER wear off, due to the way they're molded. The letters aren't painted on the keys... they are part of the plastic itself, molded all the way through. Awesome! I'm a fast and vigorous typer and not only wear letters off, but wear plastic down.
3) The keys remove for easy cleaning. In fact, I took the entire thing apart for a cleaning not too long ago. I still have the special light-blue Northgate key-removal tool.
4) Mechanical key-switches for that tactile feel.
5) Programmable... although I not longer remember how. There's a flip-up panel in the upper-left with an orange button and some DIP switches. Using the switches you could set it to come up always as Dvorak or do some other things. Using the orange button then pressing an F? key you could switch between QWERTY and Dvorak on the fly, as well as other stuff. You could also buy a set of Dvorak keycaps.
I'm getting to the point though where the noisiness of the keyboard is a problem. People get annoyed when they hear me typing while I'm on the phone. Oh well.
Re:A 1200 baud modem.... (Score:3, Interesting)
CoCo? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Impressive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oldest I've seen in use but not by me (Score:2, Interesting)
About two years ago, I had a customer call me in to completely upgrade their office systems. When I showed up, I found they were running Wyse dumb terminals on a Cromemco under CP/M. (For you young'uns, this system was old in 1985. It used a 4-MHz Z80 processor and an S-100 bus.)
Reason for the switch: they could no longer get 8-inch floppy disks.
System they switched to: Mac (talk about culture shock!)
Re:COBOL???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:School ... (Score:2, Interesting)
In uni 15-20 years ago, I used the raw TSO command-line interface to MVS (analogous to cmd.exe or
Now sonny, you want hard to use... imagineif... you knew a little bit about IKJEFT01 (believe it or not, the load module that "ran" a TSO session under MVS, like
Gack, I quite enjoyed hacking the school's mainframe via JCL and 370 ASM back when I was a teenage geek girl.... when school practiced the fine art of information-hiding and refused me access to certain manuals, I ran to my compuserve account and begged any mainframe systems folks in PROGFORUM for exactly the ones I needed, contentedly marching into school with them within a week. The lead systems programmer finally just gave up stressing over keeping me out of things, gave me access to some utility macro libraries, answered a question or two for me now and then, and promised to hold me accountable if I ever did one iota of damage. How well did I do at avoiding this? Well, when I did something (non-technical) to politically upset the school's computer center director and he pointed at me and said to the systems programmer, "Off with her head, use anything you've got on her to make her go away from here permanently"... his answer was NO.
For the record, I'm only 39, but I have been paid to program in COBOL, FORTRAN, ASM/370, C/370, SAS and PL/I (a lot like C), in addition to the usual suspects like C, C++, Visual Basic, perl, SQL, etc.
And what do you mean, can't get by on anything older than 5 years for a workstation? My 10+ year old Sparc 10 is still a darn fine UNIX desktop from which to manage a network.