NationStates Jolt Archive

I was back at my family home lately going through the attic when I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET CBM Model 4032.I found a plug and expecting a loud bang and lots of smoke switched it on.Well shit on me, didn't it only go and work.Anyone remember a programme called LOGO?

So whats the oldest piece of tech/computery stuff you own??

I had a motherboard with a 386SX surface mounted, but threw it in the garbage. I've got a Pentium-mmx 233 running as a fileserver. It is somewhat old. Let's see ... what else? I have an old tape drive, an unknown Pentium classic processor (I think it is a p90), a dot matrix printer, and that's about it for old hardware. Of course, none of this compares to what you have

I've got a 500kb harddrive around somewhere. Things the size of my head and weighs as much as a pickup truck.

Somewhere, in my mess of crap, I have an Altair 8800. I built the damn thing, then got fed up with throwing switches to enter instructions. But, I couldn't bear to throw it out.

Did anyone ever do anything useful with those boat anchors?

My old commodore 64/128 is long gone sadly.

I do have a 5 1/4 floppy still in the packaging it was sold in though.

My current monitor and keyboard are 10 years old......:(

My oldest piece of hardware is only like 5 years old.

I do have a 5 1/4 floppy still in the packaging it was sold in though.
Save that. It's going to be like a Barbie doll someday. But only if you have it in the original packaging.

I have a temperamental Amiga 500 knocking around somewhere. Probably doesn't work anymore, actually. Last time I used it was about eighteen months ago, I think.

I still have my first computer, a Spectravideo 328 (http://www.samdal.com/sv328.htm)with a data cassette tape drive, circa 1983. As far as I know it still works.

I have a TRS 80 model 1, still working. I even still have a few games for it.

I've got an old 1200 baud modem around somewhere. Probably early 80s, doubt it still works though.
I think my old Spectrum +2 still boots up. That would be mid 80s I guess.
A Nintendo Game&Watch. That must be fairly old.
Several Amigas, mostly working. Several Snes's.

Somewhere, possibly at my Grandmother's house, we have a Tandy TV Scoreboard console. That must be from 77 or 78.

One of those old cabinet style hi-fi stereo systems.

I'm still using the speakers from 1991.

My current monitor and keyboard are 10 years old......:( Mine is 9 years old. I love Win98...

I got an Apple2 off of a School's "Surplus" (Throw it in a dumpster when you get the time too) stack when I was working on sorting though that stuff for a job.

I have a NES, and some other things as well.

I have these great antique glass doorknobs...

Oh, wait... no... that's not what you meant... :p

I was back at my family home lately going through the attic when I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET CBM Model 4032.I found a plug and expecting a loud bang and lots of smoke switched it on.Well shit on me, didn't it only go and work.Anyone remember a programme called LOGO?

So whats the oldest piece of tech/computery stuff you own??

I had a C64 up until a few years ago. It worked pretty good until I (somehow) let out the magic smoke that causes it to work.

I used to have a couple of real vintage bits and pieces, but gave up on playing with them eventually - except my old HP-29C calculator. Ahhh, the good old days of punching in commands in reverse polish notation.

My first roomate after high school, however, never lost the obsession. His current collection (http://www.parse.com/~museum/index.html) includes several PDP8s.

Yes, he IS the king of the geeks.

I still have my TRS 80 and it still works, and I have games on it that my child plays.

I've got an Amstrad PCW kicking around here somewhere.

Hell, I have a 1mb hard drive thats about the size of a CRT moniter and weighs as much as a stove, takes 1 people to move it.

Theres about a million connectors on the back, bought it at a expo for 30 bucks, I think I might turn it into a clock.

Hell, I have a 1mb hard drive thats about the size of a CRT moniter and weighs as much as a stove, takes 1 people to move it.

Theres about a million connectors on the back, bought it at a expo for 30 bucks, I think I might turn it into a clock.

One people, eh? Crazy ;)

Sounds like my lovely little 500kb

A like 11 year old Micron computer.

One people, eh? Crazy ;)

Sounds like my lovely little 500kb

Crazy typo, I feel stupid, I actually tried giving it power once ( yep its 120V ), and it was sooooooooooooooooooo loud, sounded like a car with exhust on it.

Takes 2 ppl to move it :)

I have an NES... does that count?

Somewhere, in my mess of crap, I have an Altair 8800. I built the damn thing, then got fed up with throwing switches to enter instructions. But, I couldn't bear to throw it out.

Did anyone ever do anything useful with those boat anchors?

IDK if anyone's ever accomplished anything with one, but if you ever decide to get rid of it, I'd be interested. :D

IDK if anyone's ever accomplished anything with one, but if you ever decide to get rid of it, I'd be interested. :D
I will. MIT has a pretty cool robotics museum -- I'm trying to find out if any of the computer engineering departments around town have a computing museum or display.

A 40386 I've had since I was five. I'm pretty sure it no longer works, but I use the case for a monitor stand.

Still got all the original parts.

I have an NES... does that count?

I have an NES as well. Mine still works. I occasionally still play Mario 3 on it when I'm bored.

We have an ancient Super VGA monitor in the cellar. It was last used about a two years ago when when the secondary monitor on an Apple editing machine died.

Max res was 800*600 with either 8 bit or 16 bit colour.

Amstrad 1640 (8088, 640 Kb RAM, 2x 5'1/4 FDDs) with (externally mounted) JWC SCSI 1x CD-RW and WD 20 Mb RLL HDD and SupraModem 9600

We have an ancient Super VGA monitor in the cellar. It was last used about a two years ago when when the secondary monitor on an Apple editing machine died.

Max res was 800*600 with either 8 bit or 16 bit colour.

LOL, young one... EGA is ancient, SVGA is just old...

LOL, young one... EGA is ancient, SVGA is just old...It's over 15 years old and still working perfectly. Show some respect you horrid little man. :p

My dad also has a box of computer punch cards from when he was a CS Major.

In the 70s.

I have a tape roll or whatever you call it from a computer from the fifties.

What, in my comp right now? Or in the house overall?

The former, probably the DVD drive. Latter, god knows. Probably an old CD-ROM drive or something.

My dad also has a box of computer punch cards from when he was a CS Major.

In the 70s.

My first year of CS in high school was Fortran on punchcards. The horror! the Horror!

Somewhere I still have a cassette with Space Invaders for the Apple IIC on it....from the days before floppies.

I'm holding a Texas Instruments 486 SXL2-50 chip.

I also have a I A80386-16 so I imagine that's a 386 chip :). They make good paperweights and what's even more amazing is that, at one time, these chips were so expensive and so fast that people wondered whether or not we could go any faster.

My brain....:cool:

LOL, young one... CGA is nearly pre-historic, EGA is ancient, SVGA is just old...

fixed an ommision. :D

Erm.. We have a Gateway laptop..?

Two, count 'em, two C64s.

I was back at my family home lately going through the attic when I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET CBM Model 4032.I found a plug and expecting a loud bang and lots of smoke switched it on.Well shit on me, didn't it only go and work.Anyone remember a programme called LOGO?

So whats the oldest piece of tech/computery stuff you own??

Simrad KN250. The most out of date tech I own (but it's not a computer).

A still functional Philips Videopac G7000 (aka a Magnavox Odyssey² ) gamesystem.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey2

my first computer that worked was an ohio scientific c1p! i had built some of their 400 series boards before that, including the backplane for them, but could never in those days get the parts to build the power supply it needed.

after that i got a comodore vic 1001/20 (the us packaging called it a vic 20 but the manrual in engrish called it a vic 1001!) which i upspanded to almost a c-64.

don't have either of those anymore, nor the paia analog synth modules before even mits/altair 8008 kits became available in the mid 70s.

i DO still have an old 8-bit pc clone sitting on my workbench out in the shed, that i fire up once in a while just for grins. it's got i think an 80meg hard drive, yah that's meg, not gig. and a full hight 5-1/4 floppy!

i've also got a one speed, external, cd drive, the origeonal 6800mx, that right now is doing yeoman service as a book end. i did actually use it to load software into my first p1, that i used to get on line with for about ten years. may even still have been using the first time i got on here.

for noncomputer hardware though, we've got a couple of kerosene lamps, the old kind with wicks, not mantles, must be damd near a century old, that we actually used every winter when we lived up tword and on the summit when the power went off, at least a couple of times every year. and an old toaster that isn't a pop up, but one of the first electrics made back in the 1920s, where the bread when in this kind of holders that set beside the element and you had to watch it and the holders had little knobs on them so you could turn them arround to toast the other side of the bread.

all of which still actually work, and even get occasionally used, just fine!

=^^=
.../\...

When I was back home in NZ, I found my old ZX-Spectrum 48k in my parents house.
No idea if it still works, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Atari 2600, bitches. Console, paddles, joysticks, and a bunch of games all packed away.

A hundred year old ball-peen hammer. Oh. You meant computer hardware.

We have an early 90's keyboard. Not using it right now, but it works fine.

Our television, as a side note, was actually made in 1982. And we have a radio from the 30's or 40's.

an old memory upgrade for the Amiga somewhere in the house

My brain. Manufactured 1963-4, extensively modified since. ;)

I have an antique Sun Sparc IPX, looks like this (http://www.obsolyte.com/sunPICS/ipx/sparc_ipx.jpg). But I didn't have it back when it rocked.

I owned a Sinclair ZX80 brand-new. It NEVER rocked. I declined to pay Sinclair 60% of the new price to send it back unfixed. Goodness, I can't think why they went out of business ...

an old memory upgrade for the Amiga somewhere in the house

You want an A500 to go with that? Pay the postage, and it's yours! :)

My dad also has a box of computer punch cards from when he was a CS Major.

In the 70s.

I found a roll of punched tape when we were cleaning up my parent's attic. That had to date back to my high school days -- early '70s.

One of my colleagues has a slide rule framed on his office wall. I thought a nice sticker with "Break Glass in Case of EMP" would look nice.

My brain. Manufactured 1963-4, extensively modified since. ;)

I have an antique Sun Sparc IPX, looks like this (http://www.obsolyte.com/sunPICS/ipx/sparc_ipx.jpg). But I didn't have it back when it rocked.

I owned a Sinclair ZX80 brand-new. It NEVER rocked. I declined to pay Sinclair 60% of the new price to send it back unfixed. Goodness, I can't think why they went out of business ...
I think that was the first color computer I ever used.

I had one of pizza box Sparc-10s for a while, but it didn't get enough use and someone bought it off of Ebay. That really surprised me.

I still have my ZX Spectrum 128K (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum) :)

I found a roll of punched tape when we were cleaning up my parent's attic. That had to date back to my high school days -- early '70s.

One of my colleagues has a slide rule framed on his office wall. I thought a nice sticker with "Break Glass in Case of EMP" would look nice.

Heh, the prof I work for is constantly complaining about how students these days don't even know what a slide rule is, much less how to use it. Though complaining about what the current generation of students has come to seems to be a common topic in the department. I like the sticker idea, though.

For hardware... we have a floor fan that's 32+ years old. ;)

The oldest things that I own are a French coin from 1882 and a book, The Lays of Ancient Rome, published in 1872. :)

Heh, the prof I work for is constantly complaining about how students these days don't even know what a slide rule is, much less how to use it. Though complaining about what the current generation of students has come to seems to be a common topic in the department. I like the sticker idea, though.

The one thing that we old folk have gained by learning to use a slide rule is estimation. You always have to know just about what the answer is _before_ you start the calculation. That helps to weed out the really bad answers where one forgot to convert to slugs, etc.

If only I'd held onto the Apple IIe I used to own. Good times.

I've got an N64!!!!!!!!!!:cool:

And a calculator that takes two whole seconds to figure out something like 57squared or the square root of 982. It's pretty gnarly. Don't even ask me about battery life (practically eats batteries for evey meal of the day), but it has a nifty cord and transformer to plug into wall sockets.:)

The one thing that we old folk have gained by learning to use a slide rule is estimation. You always have to know just about what the answer is _before_ you start the calculation. That helps to weed out the really bad answers where one forgot to convert to slugs, etc.

I'll give you that, and skill at estimation does seem to be one of the hardest things to teach to students without use of such an...ancient device. And one of the things us young folk suck at.

We've got a BBC computer that runs off tapes and an Amstrad that has green characters on a black screen, complete with dot matrix printer. My parents fail at binning things.

I'll give you that, and skill at estimation does seem to be one of the hardest things to teach to students without use of such an...ancient device. And one of the things us young folk suck at.
Where the hell were you when I was advising Grad students? All I got were complainers and whiners! That's not entirely true -- I got a couple apologists and one or two real researchers.

My adviser used to tell me about the days when he was at Cal-Tech. The grad students for von Karman would work at solving PDEs by hand. Every Friday night, they'd get together at his house and show them the latest iterations. Then he'd let them know if they were on the right track.

Numerical methods sure sucked then...Not sure if I wouldn't have been one of those whiners and complainers.

Where the hell were you when I was advising Grad students? All I got were complainers and whiners! That's not entirely true -- I got a couple apologists and one or two real researchers.

My adviser used to tell me about the days when he was at Cal-Tech. The grad students for von Karman would work at solving PDEs by hand. Every Friday night, they'd get together at his house and show them the latest iterations. Then he'd let them know if they were on the right track.

Numerical methods sure sucked then...Not sure if I wouldn't have been one of those whiners and complainers.

There's a good chance I was either still in diapers or learning how to walk. :p

Yeah, QM is a lot less of a pain when you can throw a 3d, time-dependent Schrodinger's Equation, with a really painful-looking potential function into Mathematica, come back the next morning, and have all of the solutions spelled out for you.

It probably makes you appreciate all of the poor sods who had to go and consult logarithmic tables instead of using calculators, huh?

Hell, the closest thing I have to what you described is in my research. Basically pulling data out of really bitchy data sets with even bitchier coordinate transforms and going "Hey...uhh...does this look right?"

There's a good chance I was either still in diapers or learning how to walk. :p

Yeah, QM is a lot less of a pain when you can throw a 3d, time-dependent Schrodinger's Equation, with a really painful-looking potential function into Mathematica, come back the next morning, and have all of the solutions spelled out for you.

I think you were a little past that point, probably starting high school. We're talking about '95 to '02. I didn't finish the degree until I got out of the Marines.

I love Mathematica.

On my orals, one of the questions was similar to that. I went to the board, set it up and told the committee "That's what I'd start with in Mathematica..."
The committee broke up into a discussion about how wonderful Mathematica was.

Of course, one of the other questions was "How many degrees of freedom does a point mass have?"

So maybe they really had some low expectations for me.

I think you were a little past that point, probably starting high school. We're talking about '95 to '02. I didn't finish the degree until I got out of the Marines.

I love Mathematica.

On my orals, one of the questions was similar to that. I went to the board, set it up and told the committee "That's what I'd start with in Mathematica..."
The committee broke up into a discussion about how wonderful Mathematica was.

Of course, one of the other questions was "How many degrees of freedom does a point mass have?"

So maybe they really had some low expectations for me.

I was a sophomore in high school when you got your doctorate.

Yeah, I love Mathematica and MathCAD. Our school offers it free for students, on a 1-semester license that you can renew any semester that you're still an enrolled student.

As far as expectations? Well, it definitely seems like the "older generation" of physicists expects less of the "newer generation." Last december my boss/prof and I were on our way up from the office to the department Christmas Party, and happened to get in the elevator with one of the adjuncts, who was tenured and had been at the school for a good long while. The adjunct looked at my boss, who got his PhD in 2k2, looks at how he's dressed, and says, "You know, when you've got a real job, you'll have to worry about these." and gestured to his good shoes.
The guy gets out of the elevator and my boss, before we leave to head to the room where the party is, goes, "I think that guy thought I was a grad student."

...I still make fun of him for it.

Can I possibly get away with saying 'my wife'?

I was back at my family home lately going through the attic when I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET CBM Model 4032.I found a plug and expecting a loud bang and lots of smoke switched it on.Well shit on me, didn't it only go and work.Anyone remember a programme called LOGO?

So whats the oldest piece of tech/computery stuff you own??

Ha.
Still ok but unused:
A Sinclair ZX Spectrum (16k)
A pre-Walkman-era Panasonic portable cassette recorder (about 1980 I guess)
...and countless ISA (not EISA!) cards from the early '90s

Still working fine:
A Philips hifi set (year 1975) and valve speakers - transistors suck!

I also had a 8088 Zenith laptop, but it spat its last bit a couple of years ago.

I'm looking for a Winchester RLL or SCSI streamer...

I'll give you that, and skill at estimation does seem to be one of the hardest things to teach to students without use of such an...ancient device. And one of the things us young folk suck at.
That's due to the way maths is taught nowadays. Times tables and the such can only really be learnt quickly and completely by rote. And rote learning has been considered since the late 80's a 'bad thing'.
Without a good working knowledge of your times tables, it's damn hard to guestimate anything or have some sort of idea as to where the answer will lie.

I still have my American Coleco Adam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:027_24a.jpg). :)

And it's even working.

It was (and still is) a beauty. It came with a special tape-drive and a printer.

It's a collectors item, it's rare that I meet someone who actually knows this old computer.

Present times, it's a kind of cult computer and some people are still actually using it. I know that they create all kind of interface devices to connect by instance modern harddrives with the ADAM.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam

Probably the old Tandy 2000... state of the ark tech... the era before cd drives. It stored somewhere but i have no idea where that would be a the present time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_2000

I love Mathematica.

You should be shot. I hate that program. Yes it may be handy, useful and simple but its the principle of the matter. Mathematica = enrolled in a maths subject = hate it.