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A recent story on the BBC posed a question to its readers. If it ain't broke: You share your oldest working gadgets. Folks wrote in with their favorite, longest-lasting devices.
Besides being curious about the latest tech devices and advancements, I've noticed our community also seems to have a number of thrifty folk who thrive on getting the most out of their gadgets.
I'll count myself among those in that category. I'll start with a Sharp EL-510S solar-powered, scientific calculator from the early 1980s. I also have a JVC stereo receiver from the mid 1980s that is still going strong. The computer I am currently using is a Dell Latitude Core 2 Duo from about 2009.
So how well has your stuff held up? What was been your best acquisition for long-term durability?
(Score: 5, Touché) by NCommander on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:40PM (6 children)
I'll start with the site's codebase!
*slaps soylentnews.org*
This bad boy is made of pure UTF-8 compatible spaghetti with a bit of IPv6 flavoring.
(Taco started development in 1998)
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:44PM (2 children)
Still works like a charm. You don't see any tigers, do you?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Funny) by NCommander on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
Nah, we have a handy buzzard that drives them off.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @08:36PM
Handy? AzumaHazuki said he was "handsy". Maybe both?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @03:31AM (1 child)
I'm not sure exactly how old the radio is, and it hasn't been plugged in in a few years (simply because I don't use an alarm and the radio has gone to shit.) But it was working when last plugged in. Any item that hasn't broken since the 1980s digitally I still have around somewhere, given different amounts of use depending on power and outlet availability.
My oldest running computer hardware is a 1992 era 486DX33, with a PCI DX33 and a VLB based DX4/100 all available too. They are all still in good operation, although a few of them need their clockchip batteries removed and replaced (The battery on top style, just like the SPARCs.) For that Matter I have two working SparcStation IPXs, although both hard disks are in questionable shape and they haven't run right with any linux newer than 2.2.19 (You could run them on 2.4/2.6 unlike the sun4m hardware, but they ran like shit.)
The most interesting hardware I have is a lunchbag full of HyperSparc-200mhz 512k CPUs, of which two are in one of the SS20s (sadly diskless and with only enough memory for one of them... 512 or 640/768 possible if I remember correctly.) But since I lost my single 13W3 video adapter, they haven't been powered up in a few years.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:08AM
I want to say part of the issue there was due to SILO becoming shittier. I found it harder to get "newer" kernels to boot because SILO would usually just self-destruct in new ways.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:23AM
My grandfather's lathe.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek