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posted by on Monday February 15 2016, @04:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the exemplary-mtbf dept.

The can of worms we opened when we learned of the server switched off after eighteen years and ten months' service is still wriggling, as a reader has contacted us to tell of nearly 30-year-old laptops still in service.

Reader "Holrum" says he has "a couple dozen Toshiba T1000 laptops from the mid [1980s] still fully functional (including floppy drives)".

The T1000 was introduced in 1987. [...] The machine was one of the very first computers to use a clamshell form factor. [...] It also offered a rather archaic LCD display, as illustrated.

[...]The machine ran MS-DOS 2.11 on a ROM [and] came with a colossal 512kB of RAM [...] and a single 3.5-inch floppy drive.

Holrum says the T1000s are taken offline every few years for just the few minutes required to replace the NiCad batteries and give them a clean before they are returned to duty as process monitoring terminals.

Previous: Beat This: Server Retired After 18 Years and 10 Months


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by fnj on Monday February 15 2016, @09:10PM

    by fnj (1654) on Monday February 15 2016, @09:10PM (#304869)

    All the laptops I've owned and most I've seen, have AC adapters rated at about 65 watts. And their average power consumption is generally about 10-20 watts. So your estimate of total average power consumption is probably at least three times what it should be, and maybe six times. So it isn't 1440 watts; it's closer to 360 watts.

    A lot of gaming PCs have 1000 watt supplies or even 1500 watts. Of course they aren't averaging 100% power, either, but at worst the 24 Toshibas are not using substantially more power than a gaming PC.

    Of course 24 Beaglebones (Raspberry Pi's as a poor substitute if you MUST) only use an average of about 24 watts altogether. You could run over 300 of them for the power you suck down with either the array of Toshibas, or a gaming PC.

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