Post subject: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 3:46 am
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Exactly what it says on the tin, guys. I'm curious to see what sort of ancient hardware everybody's used in their time. I myself have used (at work) a terminal from the 60s that ran on tape memory. See the shot below:
Best part? It's a touchscreen. I didn't know touchscreens were that old. Or maybe they jerry-rigged a newer screen to work with the old hardware. Who knows? It's been there longer than anyone who WORKS at my job, so none of them have any idea. Anyway, you get the point. Share away!
Offtopic Comment
Had to get permission from my boss to take this photo. Gotta love stupid secrecy rules, huh?
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 3:53 am
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Windows 8 Beta Fan wrote:
Wow the oldest i've used was a Packard Bell Multimedia D135
How old is that?
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:35 am
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I used to have an old Maxar 286 with 4KB? RAM, a 40MB Western Digital hard drive and 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives running MenuMatic 6.0 on top of MS-DOS 4.01. I still have the manuals somewhere.
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:38 am
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MenuMatic? Never even heard of that. Was it a GUI program? Also, wow. I think the first PC I ever used was some off-brand tower with 8 MB of RAM, a 120 MB hard drive, running Windows 3.10. It was so old it didn't even have a phone jack. All I could do on it was play Math Blaster. Then my mother went and bought the worst possible combo: A cheap Dell tower with Windows ME on it.
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:44 am
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Yeah, MenuMatic was a GUI (albeit a very primitive one). I may still have a copy of it on some floppies somewhere... Also, that 286 had a modem in it. 300 baud maybe?
I did still have those floppies! I did a quick install in a DOS vm I had lying around.
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:15 pm
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The Oldest PC I have used is an AT&T (NCR) Globalyst 200S. Ran Windows 3.1 and I was able to get Windows 95 on it but not so successfully. So I put Windows 3.1 back on it. It has 4 MB of RAM and a 250 MB harddrive. Not sure aboout other specs though...
_________________ Dell Studio 1555~4GB~120 GB SSD~Windows 8 Pro~512MB ATI Radeon HD 4500 Dell Inspiron Duo~2GB~320GB HDD~Windows 8 Pro~Intel HD Graphics Macbook A1181~2GB~80GB HDD~Mac OSX 10.7.5 Barebones Rig~6GB~90 GB SSD~Windows 8 Pro~1GB ATI Radeon HD 5450
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 1:41 pm
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My grandfather's pc, 486DX @ 66Mhz, I think 8Mb RAM (but there were other modules so maybe it was only 4 and I put another 4 in it), 500MB hdd, Windows 3.11 for workgroups
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:55 pm
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I just realized that MOST of the computers at my job are from the 60s and 70s, not just the one I showed above. The most advanced ones are running MS-DOS 6.0 or Windows 3.10 with a custom GUI. Kinda scary given the massive machines these things run.
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 3:02 pm
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evangelikevin wrote:
I just realized that MOST of the computers at my job are from the 60s and 70s, not just the one I showed above. The most advanced ones are running MS-DOS 6.0 or Windows 3.10 with a custom GUI. Kinda scary given the massive machines these things run.
Massive machines? Stuff like CNC milling or other automated jobs? If that's the case, I can understand why such old computers are still in use... Upgrading to modern hardware means that your old software will not work, and upgrading to newer hardware/software will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 3:04 pm
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Actually, high-pressure industrial plastic molding. But yeah, it WOULD be expensive. I love that even the maintenance guys think some of the old ones should be replaced, though. I imagine it's nigh-impossible to get, say, DOS apps to run on a newer Windows version without an emulator, and setting up a hardware/emulator interface would be...umm...well, a pain in the a**. So yeah, I know why they don't do it. It's just kind of funny to me.
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:44 pm
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The oldest machine was a damaged looking PET 2001B from trash. Oldest working PCs were a PS/2 75 a 286 laptop a Siemens PC-D2 running win 1.03 and GEM on dos 3.x all from 1988. Oldest console a Darth Vader 2600. Oldest handheld a Casio PB 100,sold it recently. Oldest smartphone Nokia communicator 9210i from 2003.
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:33 pm
1337 Beta Collector
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soulman wrote:
Does my ZX Spectrum 48k count?
Pretty sure it does, yeah.
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:13 pm
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Joined Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:22 am
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I went into an old Hebel plant that was automated by a bunch of proprietary software running on Windows 98, all the systems were networked via serial communications and some kind of specially-built hardware. I'm sure it would have cost enormous amounts of money to replace all of it.
I was so young when I was around computers I probably couldn't even tell you the oldest I've used. I remember EGA being around. I remember having old Wang computers that only had 5.25" floppies and 5.25" HDDs. Even a few that didn't have onboard IDE, serial mice, DIN keyboards, etc. Nothing any older than that.
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:15 pm
1337 Beta Collector
Joined Tue May 03, 2011 2:08 am
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It WAS Wang! I thought that was the brand on the old one my mom had, but I couldn't remember for sure.
_________________ My brother had a book he would hold with pride/A little red cover with a broken spine/On the back he hand wrote a quote inside/"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"
Post subject: Re: What's the Oldest Computer You've Ever Used? Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:43 pm
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Wish my Mac Plus worked, I loved it until the display board went out in it I mean them. I've got 2 of them and both have bad display boards to the point where the one just has a high pitched squeel and the other just has the click if it turning on but nothing else. Those happen to be the oldest computers I own.
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