TubeNet

Who has the oldest, still in use, working computer?

I have a Toshiba Satellite 400Mhz laptop that my kids use with a enormous 4GB hard drive.

I have an abacus. Used to own a Commodore Vic 20 that I bought new.

Regular use? A Durango F-85, circa 1977. I have an Altair 8800 in storage that worked the last time I had it out about 15 years ago. Caps probably need reforming now, though. Bunches of old pre-IBM PC equipment, a a lot of post-PC, including original XT and AT models.

My wife has an IBM Thinkpad with a PII-266Mhz, 256MB RAM running Slackware Linux. I have a Toshiba Satelite with an AMD 475MHz CPU and 320MB of RAM running Slackware Linux. Both machines work pretty well.

Up until February, my computer was a 233 MHz Pentium (Pentium I, that is) Gateway. It ran most things relatively well, albeit slowly. TubeNet pages, however, would never load correctly, and never looked right. But, it certainly got me through college, and for email, AIM, mp3's, etc., there's nothing wrong with it. Kind of like the '89 Honda I used to drive - nothing fancy, but that thing will go on forever, and will get you where you need to go.

Quite a staggering difference though to get a new computer that is 13 times faster. I never realized how much time I wasted every day waiting for my computer to do things.

bort wrote:I never realized how much time I wasted every day waiting for my computer to do things.

Don't waste it- drink!

Still have Vic20, C64, AND Plus-4 (which, I think, was Commodore's first computer that did memory bank shifting). Lots of carts for them. Got 16K memory expansion for Vic20 to use with word processor hand-typed in from Compute! magazine printed machine language program. Still have monitor, floppy drive, tape drives. One of the neatest carts for C64 was The Final Cartridge which did a memory dump to floppy as a way to get around copy protected floppies. You loaded the floppy, and the program would begin running at the point it was interrupted and dumped by the cartridge.

Also have two electric rotary calculators that do multiplication and division -- maybe -- if the gears aren't all gummed up now. Division is quite entertaining to watch.

Never had any Atari stuff. I worked at a store in the late 70's (Team Electronics) that sold the original Apple. 16K model was about $1,195; 64K model was about $1,695. They could do just about nothing useful, but I still sold them!

I still have a WORKING Packard-Bell 486 DX2 (25MHz x two) processor) with a whopping 240 meg hard drive. I kept it around in case I ever needed to read a 5 1/4 floppy. I think it has 20 megs of ram. I bought it years ago just to run AutoCad. The price was about $2,300 in '87 or '88.
The one just before the Packard-Bell was a Commodore Plus 4. It had four built-in software programs. I remember writing code for hours just to put together a mailing list generator.

I still have my old Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1! Bought it in 1977 with paper route money. I learned BASIC programming on it, and even ran a "matchmaker" program on it as a fundraiser for the cheerleaders in Junior High. I have the "deluxe" model with 16KB of ram instead of 4 (yes, that's K).

What fun programming on this thing was - only three error messages - WHAT? for a syntax error in the code, HOW? for an illegal function (usually division by zero), and SORRY if you ran out of memory.

You could do basic graphics (Pong, anyone?) - but the basic display rectangle was about 1/8 the size of a postage stamp.

Thanks for bringing some nice memories back...

I just ran across my Pickett slide rule from 1972. It still works fine.

SplatterTone wrote:Still have Vic20, C64, AND Plus-4

Lost my C-64, but my Plus/4 still rus. Great little spread sheet program, and the database was good for media lists (VHS, cassettes, LPs). But the 1541 drive died, so no stoage

My Atari 1040STe still runs, but I need to get a new SCSI adapter for the HD. A real pain to run from floppy.

Does my Atari 2600 count? Still works, and the games are fun, 20+ years later.

FWIW, I've got an Atari Jaguar too. Still need to get the CD unit though.

While uncompetitive with Chuck's museum or a vintage Trash 80, I do still have a working Kaypro II buried in storage somewhere. The oldest computer still in use, until a lightning storm took it out three weeks ago, was a Windows 3.1 box from about 15 years ago. That was the computer I used for MIDI stuff, but the processor in my keyboard controller died several years ago and I haven't fixed it (anybody know where I can get a new processor board for a Fatar Studio 90?).

The first desktop computer I owned on which i attempted real work was a TI-99-4A. The failure of that experiment led to the Kaypro, which was my first real computer.

Rick "who bought the Kaypro when the IBM experiment looked like it would fail" Denney

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:What fun programming on this thing was - only three error messages - WHAT? for a syntax error in the code, HOW? for an illegal function (usually division by zero), and SORRY if you ran out of memory.

I entered the Intel BASIC interpreter into the Altair through the sense switches on the front of the system. The DRAMs weren't all that stable, either. Eventually, I got a modem scavenged out of a TI Silent 700 and hooked up a cassette recorder for data transfer. Floppies came about a year and a half later.

I still do all of my copy work and drill writing on a Mac IIsi (pre-PowerPC pizzabox) and use a Mac SE as a mail server.

I know it's not exactly a computer, but I use my original Nintendo machine everyday for relaxing. Yes, the one that came with Mario Brothers/Duckhunt. My wife got it for me for Christmas in 1989. It works great and through the years I have aquired almost every game made for it and the nifty carrying case for them. I think I go play Tetris!!!!

Chuck"who still hasn't beaten SuperMario Brothers 2, but can still get the extra lives in World 3-1 on SM1, and who will share that info if anyone still has the game"Jackson

Chuck(G) wrote:

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:What fun programming on this thing was - only three error messages - WHAT? for a syntax error in the code, HOW? for an illegal function (usually division by zero), and SORRY if you ran out of memory.

I entered the Intel BASIC interpreter into the Altair through the sense switches on the front of the system. The DRAMs weren't all that stable, either. Eventually, I got a modem scavenged out of a TI Silent 700 and hooked up a cassette recorder for data transfer. Floppies came about a year and a half later.

You did what?! I used to program Nova 1200's (used in an early traffic signal control system) using the register switches for bootup and to get the paper-tape reader started for loading software, but I can't imagine entering a serious program through register switches.

And I programmed a travel-time data acquisition system using an Epson HS-20, if I'm remembering that model correctly. It used a microcassette as the storage medium. It did tend to encourage code efficiency, heh, heh. I developed that system all over again for PC's about ten years later, in text-mode MS-DOS. That was one of the few software products that made enough money to buy me a tuba. I gave it all up when everything went to event-driven programming. I did one big package in object-oriented Pascal using an event-driven architecture, but decided that coupling that approach with the Windows GDI required more devotion to programming than I was prepared to show. But then I'm a traffic engineer, not a EE or programmer.

Then, of course, visual basic and similar environments made it easier again, but I haven't looked back.

Rick "unlike Chuck, committed to never having to learn assembly language" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:Rick "unlike Chuck, committed to never having to learn assembly language" Denney

Dear me, Rick, assembly language is easy memory-wise. I can still remember machine language opcodes from just about every system I've ever used, including an IBM 1620.

e.g. 16 xxxxx yyyyy - transmit field yyyyy immediate to address xxxxx--and remember to set the word flag or you'll have instant disaster.

Come to think of it, I can still remember how to clear memory in a 1620:

26 00009 00008 - transmit record, starting at location 8 to location 9. Essentially takes the 0 at location 8 and keeps pushing it along, wrapping core and eventually wiping the TR instruction itself out.

Chuck(G) wrote:

Rick Denney wrote:Rick "unlike Chuck, committed to never having to learn assembly language" Denney

Dear me, Rick, assembly language is easy memory-wise. I can still remember machine language opcodes from just about every system I've ever used, including an IBM 1620.

I'll second that. memory-wise (ie remembering the instructuions) it's easy. But a whole lot of "thinking" to break down what you need to fit the instruction set. Even worse, but lot's of fun, coming up with those neat tricks (like the clear memory you mentioned) to get thinks doe quickly.

I started with 6502 code, but mostly remember nmenoics (LDA #$5 not A9 05) but I never really got to use a macro assemble either:) Lot's of keeping notes on what address has what data or routine. I've probably got a notebook or two from a program around somewhere...

Later I learned 6800 (for microcontroller), and 68000 too, but never could grasp the x86 ISA. Sparc and Alpha looked interesting, but never had time to really learn Sparc, nor access to an Alpha

Chuck Jackson wrote:Chuck"who still hasn't beaten SuperMario Brothers 2, but can still get the extra lives in World 3-1 on SM1, and who will share that info if anyone still has the game"Jackson

World 3-1??? Only suckers play world 3-1!!! Warp to world 4-1 from 1-2, then warp to world 8-1 from 4-2. Haven't played 3-1 in ages.

My game was always Mike Tyson's punchout. I could spend countless hours ging through that game. just great.

Tim Murphy, for whom Nintendo carries a great deal of nostalgia, but still provides tons of fun.

TMurphy wrote:World 3-1??? Only suckers play world 3-1!!! Warp to world 4-1 from 1-2, then warp to world 8-1 from 4-2. Haven't played 3-1 in ages.

Warp-smorp!. Best time 1-1 to 8-4, no warps, 1 life

My best , that I remember, was ~ 45 minutes. Those damned Hammer Brothers give me fits