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Hold old is the oldest piece of computer hardware that you regularly use?
| 0% | 3 votes |
| 2% | 8 votes |
| 3% | 13 votes |
| 15% | 61 votes |
| 41% | 165 votes |
| 16% | 65 votes |
| 18% | 72 votes |
| 1% | 6 votes |
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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Hold old is the oldest piece of computer hardware that you regularly use?
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 2) by Jerry Smith on Saturday October 10 2015, @06:44PM
Still have my performa 5320 :)
The oldest in the collection.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday October 10 2015, @08:20PM
I still use my c64.
Some day, I will complete Ultima 4. The last time I tried one of the disks went bad. I have replacements, but I am running against the clock.
Hmm i also taught my cockatiel some of the music from "Master of the Lamps", which came out in 1983. The disk still works fine, as does the c64 hardware. That makes the game disk at least 32 years old. Uh
i have to go sob in a corner now
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 14 2015, @06:05PM
While there is something to be said for playing using original disks / systems. GOG.com is doing a a great job at preserving some of the best games out there and making them easily workable on newer hardware. Though, most of that last bit goes to DOSBox for the DOS games.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday October 25 2015, @08:24PM
I agree; I have been using MAME for a lot of the older games, but I still have the original c64 and have added modestly to it over the years, so I still try to use it now and then.
I could probably write a post here on it, but it would take some effort to get that working properly again. I used to connect to telnet bbs's with it via an rs232 adapter and a null modem cable to a PC that acted as gateway for it--ATDT and the IP address would get me places; there was no DNS lookup. I know there are ethernet adapters for the c64 computers now, but that's a bit hard core and would interrupt the nostolgia by inserting too many new memories into that chain of thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:46PM
On my desk...
I-Opener, all in one. CPU Winchip C6 300, 128MB, 17GB w/ 640x480 VESA lcd display. 1x USB1.1, NO Diskette or CD-Rom (No Space). (1999)
On network...
FedEX World, custom box that ran WinNT 3 for FedEx terminals in shipping offices. 486sx25, 12MB, 278MB, Diskette but not CD=Rom (no space). installed two ISA 10baseT NICs, works as my backup firewall. (~1994).
K6-2 400, 768MB, 10GB IDE hard drive. was wife's machine with then early ATI RAGE video card, that had TV tuner built in. Now is firewall for home. Disk sequels for the last 7 years. Cut cardboard to fill space between frame and shell of short tower case, much quieter.. (~1998)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bziman on Saturday October 10 2015, @08:11PM
Well, the car I drive most often is more than ten years old, and it has plenty of computer hardware in it... but I'm not sure that counts. My smart phone and my laptop are both well over five years old. I have lots of much older hardware, but not in "regular use".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 11 2015, @06:47PM
Bingo. ( tho not every day, but several times a month, on nice days )
30 Years here. Soon after "real" computers started appearing in cars on a regular basis.
(Score: 4, Touché) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 13 2015, @03:20AM
My brain is forty years old.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 23 2015, @01:01PM
Brains aren't hardware, they're wetware.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Friday October 23 2015, @03:54PM
They harden as you age...
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @06:06PM
How old are your banks' or employer's oldest computer hardware? http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/04/rbs-it-failure-computer-systems [theguardian.com]
http://serverfault.com/questions/143322/what-is-the-oldest-hardware-still-in-production-use-how-is-it-kept-running [serverfault.com]
I still use some Windows XP machines regularly and they run fine. With Microsoft doing malicious/stupid stuff with their updates the lack of updates from Microsoft is becoming a feature not a bug. Get malware you say? If you know what you're doing the odds are the malware writers would stop supporting XP first.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Monday October 19 2015, @07:29PM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 23 2015, @01:07PM
My car is an '04. I have an old Dell tower about ten years old, not sure because someone gave it to me (it was broken, I had to fix it). I have an HP the same age that recently bit the dust, literally - it got full of cat hair. I'd have to completely disassemble it to get it to work again and it just isn't worth the effort. I've had this Acer notebook about five years, my phone 3 or 4. Newest gear is a Seagate network drive I bought a few months ago.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @11:31PM
I connect to the internet by deep spiritual meditation, you insensitive clo(~$(^K7+++NO CHAKRA
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Sunday October 11 2015, @12:01AM
The PC with which I earn my living, and am typing this from, is almost 6 years old. The 23" monitor doesn't have DisplayPort or HDMI, but it displays just fine. The other monitors (I have 4) are garage sale finds, none worth more than a few dollars. The AMD CPU is one of the last good AMD's (Phenom II X4 Black Edition), although the motherboard is only about 2.5 years old. The hard drives are 4 and 5 years old, and show no signs of problems. I got a new GPU recently because it was time for something better than a HD5450. Peripherals are newer, but the system is still fairly old for a "daily driver" type. Maybe next year a new PC will be possible, but for now this one works and does its job well.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 11 2015, @11:43PM
That is almost exactly what my newest system is. HP branded AMD Phenom II X4 945 with a Radeon 5450. It's no high end gaming machine, but it's still plenty fast enough for reasonable performance on web surfing, and if I want to game, it can do it. I haven't bought a new machine in some time, just don't see a pressing need. The biggest problem I've had are 2 premature hard drive failures. The WD Caviar Green that the computer came with failed in just 9 months. I replaced it with a Caviar Black and that failed after 4 years. The other problem I've had could be related. Sometimes the machine fails to detect the SATA interface during cold boot. Will just hang at that point in the BIOS tests. More often it gets through the BIOS, GRUB comes up and loads and boots the kernel, but then the kernel can't find the hard drive and drops to an initramfs prompt. I've been working around the problem by power cycling the machine until it boots properly. And it doesn't happen that often, maybe one in six boots. But I've wondered if whatever is going on during boot is shortening the life of my hard drives.
As I've found, a 12 year old 2 GHz 32bit Pentium 4 really doesn't cut it anymore. It can run the latest browsers, but at a somewhat painful slowness.
(Score: 3, Funny) by shortscreen on Sunday October 11 2015, @01:06AM
I have a 486 that I still use for a particular purpose. I have older stuff that still works (8-bit micros, etc.) but I rarely use any of it these days.
My newest hardware is five years old. My highest-spec hardware is seven years old. My favorite hardware is 12 years old.
On a related note, I find the noise from old HDDs to be somewhat entertaining (and more informative than a mere activity indicator light). Now that they are quiet, the drone of the PSU or CPU fan that most systems have is more annoying. (I like how fans, like lawn mowers, invariably have a little sticker on them that says "QUIET")
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday October 11 2015, @01:21AM
The PC is an old dual core Dell from... no idea - it was used.
The hard drives are new, especially the SSD I added for the OS - big improvement.
The video card is also used, from somewhere else - someone gave me a box full of old video cards.
The monitors are both about seven to ten years old and still fine.
My printer is a recycled via Craigslist Brother all in one laser which I expect will last me at least a decade.
But, hold on, my mouse is only a couple of years old!
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday October 12 2015, @01:59PM
Also, my brain is a creative computer, almost 4 decades old :)
(Score: 2) by danmars on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:32PM
My mouse is definitely the oldest I use regularly. It's a Logitech MX510 bought in 2004 or so. It feels comfortable and I don't like the inertia of batteries, so I've never "upgraded".
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 16 2015, @07:22AM
Peripherals for he win. My mouse is from 2001, my free keyboard from 2002, my speakers from 98 or 99.
I'm still bummed that my HP-48G (93 or 94) died recently.
And as of today, my primary motherboard is about -1 week old. Need to find the receipt and RMA it after only 3 months, the 3.3V regulator is crapping out.
(Score: 5, Funny) by mendax on Sunday October 11 2015, @04:59AM
I have a 40-50 year old Kmart manual typewriter. Does that count? I still have ribbons for it and I know where to get more. Possession of this typewriter means I could live off the grid in a cabin in Montana like the Unibomber and write my manifesto.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @09:56AM
Well, I don't know about your typewriter, but the manual typewriters I know were quite limited in their computation ability.
Well, you could add in unary system; for example, to add 3 and 4, you'd type I 3 times, and then again 4 types, to get the unary representation of 7 (IIIIIII).
Thanks to the backspace key and whiteout, also subtraction was possible.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday October 18 2015, @03:52AM
On my old mechanical typewriter ( Old-style black Corona ), there is no numeric "1". To get it, one has to type a lower case "L".
I can still get ribbons for the thing. But not the spools the ribbon comes on. The spools are metal, and its quite easy to wind the new ribbon onto the old spool.
I hardly ever use the old thing anymore, but its good for embossing thin aluminum nameplates.
Its one of those things that I should throw away, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Its the machine my mother went through college with.
It lasted longer than she did.
It got me through College as well... ( In the 60's ).
Not once in its entire life has it failed to operate.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:13PM
IIRC the unabomber manifesto was a manuscript, and they caught the guy because somebody recognized his handwriting. Each typewriter has its own mechanical fingerprint, HP got caught fingerprinting printed pages with tiny yellow dots, the newspaper clippings are soooo 80s, so I suggest you go full steampunk, get a ruler and write your manifesto in clean looking morse code.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mendax on Tuesday October 13 2015, @08:06PM
Allow me to be anal. The Unibomber typed his manifesto. He had a typewriter in his cabin in Montana, which he used it to type the manifesto.
Allow me to be more anal. The East German government required every typewriter in the country to be registered. Part of that registration was recording its typeface, which also captured the typewriter's quirks, its fingerprints. So they had the Unibomber dead to rights.
Allow me to be even more anal. HP would have trouble fingerprinting my pages with tiny yellow dots when I use a black-and-white laser printer.
And now allow me to completely open the sphincter. If a person wants to write and not be identified, a few things can be done. One, he can use a laptop running on the battery booted with Tails in a room lined with foil to keep the government from listening to its electron emanations, run the text back and forth from English to Japanese and back through Google translate a couple times to thoroughly mangle the style and, perhaps, the content, and then make sure to print it out one someone else's printer but make sure they don't know that you did it. Oh, and when handling the pages and the envelope, make sure to wear a rubber suit to make sure no fingerprints or stray DNA appear on the pages.
Of course, the ultimate steampunk method of writing is to write it left-handed (or right-handed if a southpaw) with a feather quill on some good rag paper with oak gall ink.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 14 2015, @02:06AM
run the text back and forth from English to Japanese and back through Google translate a couple times
I'm sure it's impossible that the queries (and your IP trace) would get routed through Google and stored somewhere...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday October 14 2015, @02:27AM
Make sure you use Tails and let Tor do the anonymizing for you.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by WillR on Tuesday October 20 2015, @06:42PM
Oh, and when handling the pages and the envelope, make sure to wear a rubber suit to make sure no fingerprints or stray DNA appear on the pages.
Or, you know, put the text on pastebin (use tor!) and use an anonymous remailer to mail the journalists of your choosing the link...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @08:30PM
Is that you in the picture?
http://gizmodo.com/5990200/look-at-this-idiot-using-his-typewriter-in-a-starbucks [gizmodo.com]
(Score: 1) by riT-k0MA on Sunday October 11 2015, @07:16AM
I've hooked up a pair of Acoustic Research AR28s speakers to my PC (through an amp). They stopped manufacturing them in the early '80's.
The speakers are massive, dwarfing my 24" monitors (vertically aligned), but the amazing sound that comes out of them makes it worth it.
(Score: 1) by Webweasel on Monday October 12 2015, @12:30PM
I guess my 1967 Celestion Ditton speakers count then.
Hmm will have to go look for some more on ebay.. and a cheap amp, one of the Cambridge audios would do.
There's nothing better than a good sized driver, it makes a world of difference even at tiny volumes.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 1) by riT-k0MA on Monday October 12 2015, @12:50PM
That old-school sound engineering is awesome. It makes a recording of an acoustic guitar actually sound like an acoustic guitar.
Most modern day speakers just don't have enough mass in their drivers to produce a decent sound anymore.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Wednesday October 14 2015, @03:35PM
I have ditton 44's made in the 70's, kick drums sound amazing on them :) I picked them up from a charity shop 6 years ago for a whopping 25GBP :) thinking one of the drives at least would be poorly but no they worked as they should :D
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 11 2015, @09:05AM
There are two TRS-80 machines still lying about, as well as a C64. I have loads of floppy and hard drives, CD and DVD drives that are well over ten years old. But, "regularly use"? I dont' guess I use much that is over ten years old, regularly. The oldest bit of hardware that is actually plugged into a machine that is normally powered on, is a DVD writer, circa 2003 or so. But, I just don't use it, because it's much slower than the SATA burner mounted right underneath it. Right beneath those DVD drives, I have a card reader, probably bought about the same time. But, the only card I still own is in my cell phone, and I can plug that into a USB port directly, without removing it from the phone.
I guess one measure of obsolescence is whether you actually use an item.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday October 12 2015, @06:40PM
I actually did a benchmark test on the speed of a 1.4 MB floppy drive the other day. It was about 6.7 IOPS.
Which, I believe, is light years faster than a 1541 disk drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @04:27PM
Floppy drives, eh? How floppy?
http://fatphil.org/images/how_floppy.jpg [fatphil.org]
FatPhil - on his phone whilst on a boat and not logged in (and yes, that is the other place, clearly I couldn't take a new photo for this thread)
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Sunday October 11 2015, @06:22PM
I regularly use a 9 year old laptop, 5 year old desktop, 2.5 year old Surface Pro, and then an always-on UDOO hooked up to a 2003 15" monitor. And they work great... And I really want to justify getting a Surface Book. :/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @01:33AM
Bad enough that some of us have to post here sans computer hardware, but to make that one of the options on a poll! Insensitive clods for making us contradict ourselves! Have you no shame, huh?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 12 2015, @06:29AM
I've decided not to count my pocket calculator as computer, otherwise the last option would be appropriate.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Subsentient on Monday October 12 2015, @09:38AM
Old PowerspecPC (MicroCenter house brand I believe) from 2001.
Pentium 4, x86-32, 512MB Rambus RAM, 80GB PATA aka IDE HDD.
100mb/s NIC.
Runs Fedora 22 x86-32. Hosts my main site [universe2.us].
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Monday October 12 2015, @12:56PM
What a waste of resources
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @05:03PM
As in electric?
(Score: 2) by danomac on Monday October 19 2015, @07:27PM
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 19 2015, @07:38PM
Your normal heating is electricity based and then not storage based?
Electric based heating is usually far less efficient than oil or gas heating, and if you do go for electric then you'd normally have a dual-rate meter, store the power during off-peak and then release it during peak times.
And is this heat generated in the room you spend 24/7 in? And you never open the window during the summer to cool down? Do you even have insulation? You really should look at a more efficient way of heating your house.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Monday October 19 2015, @08:15PM
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 19 2015, @08:37PM
Where I live heating oil tends to be cheaper then electricity. YMMV, especially if you have lots of hydro or nuclear power around. If you really need electric heat on 24/7 in the location you store your machines, and genuinely would leave a 1KW heater on if you didn't have those machine, by all means use them. Personally I'd find the fan noise far too annoying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @06:18PM
I hate to put out of commission perfectly working gears, but I had not a shred of hesitation dumping the P4 space heaters.
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Monday October 12 2015, @12:12PM
...just did a quick spot check of my kit and then my calendar and realised that the HTPC (an ASRock Vision 3D 137D [asrock.com]) was bought five years ago and isn't remotely in need of an upgrade (it had it's HDD replaced with a 30GB OCZ SSD when purchased and hasn't had a single upgrade since). Still pulls 20-25W watching a 1080p video and 15-20W at idle. Imagine it would probably struggle with 4k H.265 but I imagine I'm at least five years away from getting a TV screen that would need it. One of my main monitors is a Dell 2407 WFP-HC [tftcentral.co.uk] which, although a power hog by modern standards, is still vastly better than most monitors of today and that's from 2007.
Oldest bit of kit I have still in constant use is an old Pioneer DVD-ROM drive from 2001 which was kitted out with an RPC1 firmware aeons ago and still rips DVDs like a champ. Just wondered why I was still using it, or even how, as it's PATA rather than SATA, just popped the cover off and spotted a ye olde PATA -> SATA converter I'd forgotten I was using.
Surprised not to see any comments about people using an IBM Model M which I think'll be at least 20yrs old by now.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:09PM
Just came to say, those monitors are amazing. I want them. I had two of them around 2007 at a job, in portrait mode, side by side. It was glorious.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Wednesday October 14 2015, @01:52PM
Yup, it's still glorious to behold. I miss PVA panels - the two IPS U2211H that were meant to replace my 2407 WFP-HC just don't have the glorious colour and contrast I've come to expect. IPS is streets ahead of anything TN (especially for any screen bigger than 17") but I've seen nothing since that's got the punch of a PVA. An utter joy for photo work.
I'd be interested if you know if you've come across anything half as nice in your subsequent travels...? Don't think brick'n'mortar stores are interested in selling monitors any more and even if they were they inevitably have the colour saturation cranked up to make caucasian flesh tones look like oompa-loompas with a bad fake tan.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:22PM
I actually haven't come across anything like them. I also like that they're 16:10 instead of 16:9. The extra real estate is very nice. I have 4 monitors right now, a 23" 16:9 flanked by two 4:3 19's and a 16:9 19" above it. I saw a 2407 WFP at a pawn shop for $100 last year and had to use tons of self control not to buy it (I was a bit short on cash). My ultimate setup would use 3 or 4 of those.
To the old days: http://puu.sh/k62LE/77ef66cb29.jpg [puu.sh]
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @02:41PM
2011 MacBook Air 11". Upgraded at purchase to 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Started at Lion, now upgraded to Yosemite; El Capitan keeps failing to upgrade, and there are no useful error logs.
This machine looks and feels dated, with its huge bezels and crappy TN screen, but it's still going strong, and the original battery is still in the green.
I also have a Sun Ultra 27 Quad core Xeon running OpenBSD. From early 2010 or so. With an AMD Video card swap, it powers my 27" IPS display perfectly and still runs quickly enough for everyday computing. If you would have asked a year ago, I would have said my oldest daily use hardware was a Model M keyboard, but I retired that for a WASD mechanical keyboard (no number pad!) earlier this year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12 2015, @10:01PM
I have a 350MHz (Pentium II) Compaq Deskpro I got used mainly because it had an 80mm CPU fan. (At the time I was frustrated with 40mmm 486 CPU fans failing within 2 years). It has a has a Promise ATA 100 controller card, 384MB of RAM (PC100, PC133 does not work), and 2 20GB disks. I am fairly sure it is from around the turn of the century.
I use it mainly for e-mail, but also log in remotely and have Asterisk installed on it. One of the hard-disks have started whining on occasion, I hope it is not he one with the bulk of my data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:19AM
s/t
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:25AM
It's half-open intervals.
[3,5) means "the range from 3 to 5, including 3, excluding 5".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @04:11PM
Still have a Psion 5mx in daily use. Still unequalled by so-called smart phones. The physical keyboard is fantastic and the built in applications are incredibly well designed - I wish they could be cloned and run on a smartphone. As you can get a Psion emulator that runs on WINE, it may be possible to run an emulated Psion on a smartphone.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday October 19 2015, @10:03AM
Not sure about the 5, but there's a DOS emulator for the 3a. You can modify the config file to give it a 640x480 screen and the apps all work fine at that resolution. It works fine in DOSBox. I still sometimes use the spreadsheet (though getting data out of it is a pain), because it's got the best keyboard-only interface of any spreadsheet that I've used. DOSBox works fine on Android, but I wouldn't want to try using a Psion emulator on a device that only had an on-screen keyboard.
I still have fond memories of the Series 3 that I saved up for as a teenager, along with the 256KB flash SSD that cost £30. Somewhat less fond memories of discovering (the week before I got the cable that allowed me to back up the device) that you could enter control characters into the dialog for setting the password, but you couldn't enter them into the lock screen, meaning that there was no way of unlocking the device without a factory reset.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday October 22 2015, @07:11PM
I only got rid of the Series II (quite recently, after 23 years of daily use) because the capacitor that backs up data during the annual battery changing had lost its ability to do so. The Series 3 display just failed from old age - probably because its ribbon cable had to bend with the hinge.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday October 23 2015, @08:30AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @04:47PM
I said for me "This resource is no longer valid. Please return to the beginning and try again."
Also, I noticed that the title was something strange like "What should I bludgeon first" or something. (no kidding either)
Some of you smart people should look into this. Love SN and love you!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:32PM
Great for low res gaming, low quality videos.
Less good for photo retouching because it masks defects and saturates more, so when you're back to LCD you have to redo all the work.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:22PM
The poll didn't specify a full system, so these still count I think...
Right on fifteen years later, I'm still using the same first-gen Sound Blaster Audigy discrete sound card because the old bastard refuses to die. It's outlived four separate PCs so far. At least it's had plenty of time to get good Linux support, unlike the various onboard chips that always seem to do weird shit in Linux.
I'm also using a 10/100 PCI ethernet card that's even older than that, though I know precisely how old. Originally, I was using it alongside the motherboard's gigabit ethernet to have a direct PC-to-PC connection to a laptop, separate from the general LAN connection, for network audio (via JACK) and keyboard/mouse sharing (via synergy). It was a workaround for issues I had in the past with some routers not playing nicely with JACK's raw audio; this setup was more convenient than having the router reboot itself and had the benefit of also avoiding stuttering when also transferring files at full link speed.
At least, that's what I did until recently when the onboard ethernet completely died on me, so now that '90s-era 10/100 NIC is what's letting me type this comment because the newer (though not "new" anymore) hardware crapped out.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Myrddin Wyllt on Wednesday October 14 2015, @02:08AM
An Olivetti ANK27 keyboard from the nineteen eighties, 'rescued' from work around 1996 when the 286 it belonged to was justifiably skipped.
It still has the best action I've found in a keyboard (Model M's included) , and has been my daily driver though about five or six systems.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday October 16 2015, @07:51PM
Yeah, my keyboard is a PS/2 keyboard originally from an Aptiva running Windows 95. If it finally gives up the ghost I can switch to the lightly-used spare I snagged from an Aptiva that ran Windows 98. Also still in use is a Belkin 4 port KVM from the same era.
If you don't count peripherals I have a Pentium 4 I use at least twice a month that was built... ehhhh... I want to say summer of 2001.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday October 14 2015, @03:17PM
Surely the more interesting question is:
How old is the youngest piece of computer equipment you use?
Probably best with logarithmic scale: 1-3-10-30 kind of thing.
Lets see how many people are using machines over 3 years old to vote.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:21AM
That would probably be my cell-phone, which I do not use for browsing soylent news.
My recently-upgraded computer is approaching 10 years old. I just don't trust most of the newer ones. (That, and have limited funds.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:38PM
HP
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @06:56PM
I picked 5 - 10 years then looked down at the 20+ year old ti-82 that is ever-present on my desktop. Hmmmmmm?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tramii on Friday October 16 2015, @09:23PM
... when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
(Score: 2) by tadas on Saturday October 17 2015, @10:48PM
It was pretty high end for the time - 512 mb RAM and a 100GB drive
I've currently got Haiku running on it, which is pretty useless. May go for something like Puppy when I have time to play.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday October 18 2015, @09:17AM
Bought a brand new PC around two years ago after my 2 year laptop stopped working. Upgraded GPU this february to GTX 970. I don't think I will need another upgrade in next 2 years.
But my office laptop is 3 years old :)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 19 2015, @12:18AM
MacPro 1,1 (2006) running Yosemite via Pike's boot.efi
(Score: 1) by OrugTor on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:46PM
Why on earth are people posting about 2-year-old hardware?
Anyway, my 2001 Vaio is going strong. I don't want a new computer because I doubt it would support Submarine Titans. Dealbreaker.
(Score: 2) by WillAdams on Wednesday October 21 2015, @12:57AM
The sad thing is I despair of finding a replacement machine w/ a daylight viewable display.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @05:18PM
They exist, but are a niche product.
I have been meaning to install the 10" version in my Lemote laptop (low storage temperature range worries me though)
Pixel Qi is dead (but its low-power displays are not) [liliputing.com]
(Score: 1) by necrophage on Wednesday October 21 2015, @05:41PM
I am still using a WANG keyboard. It appears to be a branded IBM old "click key" type. This came from a WANG word processing computer that had an 8086 processor I think. The insides had some huge "breadboards" that plugged into a long back plane. The cards were for the processer, perhaps memory, a separate video card etc. I later bought an XT mother board, desoldered the 256k of memory chips and used them to bring up my XT system up to 512K !!!. The keyboard still work to this moment.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday October 25 2015, @08:18PM
Do you have an adapter of some kind?
I have several of these keyboards of which you speak. There is a speaker in them as well and perhaps 5 LEDs that light up in a self test when I am operating my WANG...
Anyway these keyboards did not fit a traditional x86 of any kind. They were so heavy I refused to throw them away because they seemed so.. durable. Perhaps their time for a triumphant return is upon us?
(Score: 1) by termigator on Saturday October 24 2015, @04:06PM
Still use as a router. IIRC, got back in 97 or 98.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @10:34PM
Change it already
(Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:35PM
Ancient D-link 8 port router - 10Mbit is plenty fast for what it is connected to... It's companion died about 6 months ago so it is slated for an update.
Next up is a 3 year old computer (turned server) - if the router doesn't count.
Most tech in the house lags about a year (Finally picked up some closed out Nexus 6 phones to try Fi) At closeout they are a good price, IMO.
:)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:25PM
I think the oldest thing I've got in use is eight years old -- an old laptop (Dell Vostro) that I'm using for a server. My backup server/steambox is a desktop around the same age though, could be a year older even. Oldest thing I've got that still runs is an early 90s, 133MHz Gateway, but that hasn't been booted in many years. Currently its in my parents' garage actually. If it was in my apartment I would probably be using it for *something*... :)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 28 2015, @03:15PM
Actually...if 'computer hardware' is 'hardware that attaches to computers' rather than 'hardware which is a computer' then my oldest hardware is significantly older than myself -- a mid-70s IBM Model M. My media center also has a record player that I think is from the late 80s. But I wouldn't really consider either of those "computer hardware"...
(Score: 1) by necrophage on Wednesday October 28 2015, @07:49PM
My "WANG" keyboard is most likely a branded IBM "M" I think is the type. I have a few of these and look the same except in the upper left cornet instead of "IBM" in a recessed oval there is "WANG." The original computer came in brown steel case and the keyboard was attached with a coiled cable just like the IBM "M" keyboards. This was about 20 years ago and once I realized that it couldn't run DOS I desoldered the ram chips for my XT motherboard. I don't have these lights you mention, unless they are the "Num lock, Caps lock, Scroll lock" that do flash when I boot up. There is a speaker as well but I don't think I have ever heard any sounds from it. My coiled cable connects with a removable rectangular plug to the keyboard and the old PS/2 plug for the computer. I use a PS/2 to USB adaptor to connect to my modern system. It is quite heavy. My son likes to boast "It could stop a bullet."
Thank you for the interest,
Necrophage