What's the oldest computer you still use.

I'd like to know what the oldest computer you still use around the house/workplace to do a task and what's it's specs. Anyone that's read my posts know I don't like it much when older systems are retired...mostly because I find they are some of the most reliable systems around lol. I just had to retire a 486DX33 because it had a proprietary case and there wasn't really a way to salvage that PS/2.

The oldest computer in use right now is an 80286@20MHz dated 1983. It is used to manage my home-made backup battery and generator system and controls engine speed in regards to current demands and estimates hours of fuel left, oil changes, fuel getting old stuff like that. Runs DOS 4.0 with 8MB of ram and an old 100MB HDD and connects to the generator and sensors with the serial ports. I haven't restarted that machine in 8 months 23 days according to the timer I wrote into the program.

The oldest computer I use at least once a week now is gonna be a P133 system with 192 Megs simm EDO memory, 8HDDs on PCI raid controllers for storage, sits in a closet doing nothing but routing stuff over the network.

The oldest I know of is one I built for my sister-in-laws baby sitting kids. An HP Vectra500 with a pentium processor @200mhz its still overclocked to around 240mhz. I maxed out the EdO Ram. I think its got 128mg don't really remember. It has a trident video card and a 1gig hdd. Running WIN98. I gave it a 56k modem but its not being used.

The oldest I have available to me is a P3 1000 that I am using folding. I am contemplating pulling it out of the Gateway case and putting a EPoX Socket A board in there as I will get two and a half times more speed and I don't want to but a yet another case.

I still have the first machine I ever built. From 1998.

AMD K6-266 with 256 megs ram, 8 gig HDD, 2 gig HDD, 2 gig SCSI HDD, floppy, CD reader, SCSI Burner, 2 paralell ports, SCSI adaptor, zip 100 (now deceased ).

I use it for my scanner and web cam at the moment. Runs Windows ME like a top when I fire it up though.

A 486DX2-50 is the first machine I ever built and I beat quake on it using a VESA video card @320x240 like 3 FPS but it ran. My first decent computer(at the time) was a k6-2 350. Oc'd to 495(wouldn't break 500 barier even with 3.3V) ran it at 3.1V safe maximum was 2.7v on that 2.2v core. Ran great till it died by erroring all the time even at 166MHz and 2.7v. That's when I retired it. It took about 6 months to die to that point. such a slow painful death. I overheated the hell out of it too but it ran like a trooper 24-7 for about a year and a half. With what I know now I'm suprised it even lasted that long. The RivaTNT it had died not too long after the processor, probably for the same reason lol.

i gave away all my old pc's lol ... oldest one i have now is the one in my siggy until october/nov

Mine goes back to Nov 4, 1995 but only the case and power supply are original.

P1 233MMX
64 Megs of Non EDO memory.

It originally was 486 DX4-100

Memory, by the way, cost $1200.

I'm still using it but I want to built a whole new rig. Everything in this box is original with exception of some of the ram, lite-on burner and vid card.

Foxxconn mid tower TU124 ATX with 350 Apex PS
MSI K7N2L Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700 (1.47Hz)
2 gig Ram (Samsung/Crucial)
Western Digital 40 gig, 7200 rpm HD
Asus 52x CD-ROM
Lite-on CD-RW
Nvidia GeForce FX5200
Mitsumi floppy
WinXP home

I still use a Sony PCG-N505VE notebook, 10.4" display, 300 MHz Celeron, 128M ram (I upgrade from 64megs a couple years ago) and Win 98SE.

I'm about to get a fresnel lens for the display. Its native resolution of 1024 x 768 or something like that on a small screen size is more than my old eyes can see well anymore.

The oldest computer I still use is mine; about 2 1/2 years old. Still have a fujitsu drive in it from 1998 that I use for Linux try-outs.

I'm a little worried that the 286 is gonna succumb to silicone degredation soon :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DKJones96

I'm a little worried that the 286 is gonna succumb to silicone degredation soon :(

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I cerainly hope not. :t

A 286, hmmmn...... is that still considered a computer?:r

That 20MHz 286 will be hard to beat for age. That goes back nearly to the original PC/AT, doesn't it?

That depends on your definition of computer. If your talking gaming it'd probably take the 286 a day or so to render one frame of these new 3d games. especially with it's 16MB physical memory limit. There are palm pilots that process way faster then this thing but you can't beat it's reliability. My g/f spilled a glass of water IN the case all over the motherboard a couple years ago and it ran fine till I shut it down to dry it off and it doesn't pull much of anything for power to run the system.

And yeah it does date back pretty far. This processor is so old it has a clock DEVIDER to the system bus. Devides by 2.

Could you imagine how a system today would run with a bus clock ratio of 1:1...

I am planning on replacing that thing soon tho. I'm still working on the mainboard design but i'm working on getting a couple 68000 series processors running flash memory and socketed sensor expansion slots to make the generator fuel injected. With that I'll be able to customize how it runs entirely...Now what to do with a system that weighs 30 pounds, is 20MHz and takes 4.5 cycles to complete one instruction...

..Now what to do with a system that weighs 30 pounds, is 20MHz and takes 4.5 cycles to complete one instruction...

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Donate it to a computer museum? ;)

Ive got a Ppro 200 with 192 MB EDO in it and a pair of hard drives and another pair of cd drives. I was using it for a server and still do now and again, turned it off when it got hot outside a few months ago.

Ive got another dual Ppro 200 server that I am in the process of refurbing to use for the same deal.

There are a couple of 486 lappies in the house. I am also in the process of refurbing about 30 dell desktops rigs with PII 233's in them for our company to donate out to daycares, thet work great for the kids. A clean install of 98 with a bunch of games is only 477 MB on the drive.