Old Computers

T

time

Storage? I am Storage!
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Today, someone asked me to check an old computer before they pass it on to a friend ("They just want to surf the Internet").

When I picked up the keyboard, I noticed the 5-pin DIN plug ...

The back of the box reveals a single 5-pin socket - not a PS2 in sight, and sure enough, there's a serial mouse. USB was science-fiction when this baby came into the world.

Curious, I plugged it all in and checked the BIOS: 1996. It's a Cyrix P166 on an HX motherboard with 32MB RAM.

A blast from the past! I went back through my records, and verified that I supplied this antique in 1997, with some parts re-used from 1996. That's a genuine 10-year-old-plus computer with a 10-year-old hard disk drive (Seagate 2.5GB, supplemented with an IBM 15GB 75GXP a couple of years later)! It even has a tape drive, but the floppy drive has met its maker.

I don't know if anyone here even remembers ARK Logic, but they supplied the chipset on the graphics card, ESS the chipset on the sound card. MSI made the motherboard, CNet the network card.

Apart from the floppy, it all works. Takes a couple of minutes to boot into Windows 98, but then loads Word 2000 with aplomb. Amazingly, everything feels reasonably responsive (considering the puny amount of RAM).

So what have we achieved in the last decade?
 
F

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
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time said:
So what have we achieved in the last decade?
Click to expand...
Bloat & eye candy.

Seriously, back in 1984 my Zenith Z-151 dual-floppy would go from power switch to A: prompt in 4 seconds. I had WordStar and Lotus 1-2-3 for productivity, TurboPascal for programming, and actually useful utilities like SideKick, SuperKey, Norton, Copy2PC (with Option Board), and PathMinder.

We've been moving backwards or at best treading water ever since.
 
P5-133XL

P5-133XL

Xmas '97
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I still use a Northgate Omni Key Ultra 5-pin DIN plug keyboards on my machines. I have yet to find a better keyboard: What use do I have for the useless Windows key. You can still get inexpensive PS/2 and USB converters.

That machine will be slow as molasses on the Internet. For most machines, the limiting factor is the Internet connection but with that machine I would suspect that the rendering of the page would be the limiter.
 
F

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
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I like the Windows key shortcuts. Win-L, Win-M (or D), Win-F, and just Win itself instead of Ctrl-Esc. Sure, it's not functionality that you can't get with other key or mouse combos, but it is quicker and I've come to appreciate it. Especially since I prefer to use the keyboard more than the mouse.

The main use is Win-L to lock. It's far easier to do one-handed than Ctrl-Alt-Del then L when leaving my cube at work. But I'll admit it took a big effort to give up my IBM clicky Model M keyboards.

Anyway, I agree the P166 will be dog slow at rendering today's web pages. There's little developer consideration given towards code & bandwidth efficiency in the vast majority of today's web sites.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I am omnipresent
Sniff.

My long-time router/firewall died last night. It's not on. It's not coming on.
It was an HP PA-RISC 9000/715 machine with OpenBSD on it, far and away the oldest computer I've kept in operation. It was 14 years old and I believe it ran continuously for its whole life; I doubt it went even two weeks of its life in an unpowered state.

I set up a Trendnet router for now but I am really sad to see that cool old box go. Not that it was anything special, just so different from all the other things I work with. It was also the last computer I had that used a SCSI hard disk.

:(
 
T

time

Storage? I am Storage!
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I'm sorry to hear that Mercutio. Being a non-PC, your HP would be a marvellous piece of engineering.

On my own little piece of antiquity, I used 98-Lite to trim the Windows 98 installation. It now uses 25MB memory before loading any apps. It's got Office 2k, which Liam's post points out is the most memory-efficient version by far, so you can load Word or Excel and still be under 32MB.

I also opened the case, and noted two things. The power supply is the original (now defunct manufacturer) Macase 250W! The back has some rust, but the Sunon fan still spins and it obviously works fine. The other is the also-original and tiny GlobalWin (SuperRed) 50mm fan; it's still quiet and effective.

They (in this case me) don't build 'em like they used to.

Sad that this is surely destined for the tip. :(
 
MaxBurn

MaxBurn

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A couple months ago I had to use some old software that was win95-98 only. Anyone play around with that warez win 99? I put that on a K62-450 with I think 512m ram in it and that thing positively flew. 99 comes with a lot of drivers etc preloaded so I was able to pop in a USB PCI card with USB mouse and keyboard and have that work with no drivers to load, also detected the vortex 2 sound card I think but it was a generic driver. The ATI xpert at work had generic rage drivers there too. With this thing zipping around to different tasks it really puts some stuff to shame. I had a very basic XP install on that thing too and for basic stuff and even some office 2007 work it isn't bad at all, power users wouldn't be happy but it moved at a decent pace.
 
L

LOST6200

Storage is cool
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May 30, 2005
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I hav keepin an old notebook qwith 98se forever in casethere is some needs to hav the olden days system. :) Battery is raptured, but it works fine on th AC.
 
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