An old computer
 

So I acquired this desktop from a friend. Looking at the outside, it at least had usb ports, so it couldn't be that old. Popping the hood (man, was it dusty inside - I'll bet whoever owned it never took the cover off and vacuumed it) I saw a modern heatsink/fan combo, so that gave me encouragement.

Powered it up. It turns out it's a Gigabyte mobo, with a 1 GHz Duron cpu, and everything seemed OK. This would make a nice backup/internet computer. Now let's see what the OS is.

The splash screen came up, and it was loaded with XP Pro. Great! Lots of possibilities with that in there.

Once it started, I brought up the system information pane. Now, I'm used to seeing XP with Service Pack 3, or at least SP2. I do recall seeing one or two computers with SP1.

This one was SP Nothing. That's right - no Service Pack had ever been applied to this machine.

As I stepped back to look further, I noticed thare was no on-board RJ-45 connector, and no NIC. All it had was a modem.

Apparently, whoever owned it had just set it up years ago, used dialup for maybe email, and played a couple of games. I think I have the computer owned by the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes. :)

Nah, the little old lady in tennis shoes that lived across the street had a W98 box. It did have a NIC, though, she had the low tier cable internet.

There is not much on the hard drive, either. No Office (any version), no Adobe reader, nuthin'.

I found a set of games he/she had put in, and they were trial versions. On one of them it said the last usage was 4131 days ago - over 11 years ago!

The thing is, the case is a non-descript one with no manufacturer's logo on it. It appears to have been put together from parts (nothing wrong with that) and then abandonded after trying it out. I remember reading somewhere that at the time (a dozen years ago?) well over half of all computers pruchased wound up gathering dust in closets because people didn't use them. Maybe this was one of them. It certainly has enough dust to qualify.

I bet the owner is still paying $24.99/month for the AOL account they used to use on this :D

Do you need an ISA NIC?:p

I remembered being grandfathered at $9.99/month as one of the first 5000 AOL users. :eek:

No. :)

It was made a (relatively) long time ago, but it still uses PCI, AGP, DDR memory, USB (albeit 1.1) and so on. While certainly not up to snuff according to 2013 standards, it's still probably more than adequate to handle my cable internet, play movies and the like.

I have found out, though, that it's been sitting and deteriorating (software-wise) for so long that it struggles to get booted and gives me a message about having to overcome a serious error to get there. I think I'll just grab the COA key and do a fresh install and be done with it.

Assuming I can get it.

I tried to load the little utility that finds the key, and it can't read my thumb drive. I may have to resort to a floppy (if the drive still works).

Ah, I love a challenge!

A what...?:confused:

If all you want it for is web surfing and playing movies, consider installing Linux. Linux is more parsimonious with system resources, so a lower spec computer will perform noticeably better under Linux. It's also a modern and secure operating system.

If you have no experience with Linux or think it might be too hard core, look at Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use. It "just works".

www.ubuntu.com

I have no problem with Linux. My last gig involved a lot of operating between Win7/WinXP/Linux/QNX/Busybox, so I had to get into the bowels of the OS from time to time.

I remember installing Slackware about 15 years go. Of course, then it was on a '386 and no X-windows, but I'm a command line junkie anyhow.

I do have a couple of odd computers laying around (can't have too many computers, I allus say) and I've been thinking about installing some X-nix just to play with. What the heck - get 3 or 4 going and network them all together and let them conspire among themselves to take over the world (Forbin Project anyone?) :)

Heh, excellent. Ubuntu and Mint are my favorite distros for desktops. Mint is based on Ubuntu but keeps the Gnome desktop manager. Ubuntu went with Unity a couple years ago, which many people don't like.

DSL (Damn Small Linux)
Puppy Linux

These have a very small memory footprint.:cool:

This

My suggestion would be to use Jolicloud/Joli OS. I loaded it on an old Netbook and I am quite happy with it.

i built a lot of computers from parts(before the sum of the parts became more expensive than the parts in a box).

those no name boxes had lots of slots, and usually a huge power supply. stuff now is cheapest that might work.

Well, if you're going to keep it on XP, you should be able to find a disk with the service packs somewhere. Installing SP2 or 3, defragging the HDD, and adding a good anti-virus/firewall combo, would be the minimum I'd recommend.

You can also easily get a copy of OpenOffice so you'll have some basic wp and spreadsheet capability, and of course install either Firefox or Chrome to get you a modern browser (I think IE 9 is the latest that will work on XP).

Actually, IE8 is the last version that works on XP. I also have Chrome available. Currently using MSE for anti-virus, but I hear that's getting a little long in the tooth.

And, of course, I have MS Office I can load, and I have various XP cd's to use to bring it up to current levels - the problem is getting the COA off it. I have software to do that, but I can't get it in. There's a problem with the existing install, so I'll work around that.

Nothing wrong with XP. Since I've found I don't use/need any of the whiz-bang stuff with either Vista or Win8, XP gets the job done.

Recently installed Libre Office, and like that a whole lot better.

I second the suggestion of Linux. My favorite flavor is ArchLinux. Nothing beats the absolute control of that distro. Installation leaves you with nothing but a prompt and an extremely basic environment. Everything else is installed at your request by package manager (or by hand).

I found my old Windows 3.1 install disks not too long ago. I think it should make this baby fly.

It turns out I might have a good use for it.

I've found a guy who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. He can't leave the house, has issues with space and touching, and has attempted suicide at least once. I visited him at his house (there are several other people living there, usually with one problem or another) and he's a fairly bright guy; just can't interact socially.

Someone broke in and trashed his computer, which he needs for email, form-filling and other interactions with various governmental agencies, and sometimes a little gaming. Naturally he has no money to buy another one.

I told him the computer would probably not be suitable for gaming (I don't waste my time with that, either, so I don't have any powerhouse 'puters laying around) but we could handle the rest OK.

So, I'll be beavering away this weekend getting it all up to snuff, loading software, and so on. Probably install it next week. He has super high speed wireless available (G? N?) so things should zip right along.

Now that I think of it, something like that is a very good use of older computers. The dirty little secret of computer manufacturers is that hardware sold several years ago is still fine for running most business applications, so replacement has slowed down a lot.

Of course, if businesses were willing to pay for their employees playing first person shooter games, streaming videos, and other general folderol, the market would still be robust. I suppose.

Suggestion: If you have an older computer or two laying around, it wouldn't hurt to find some non-profit who would be more than willing to take it off your hands and get it someone where it would do a world of good. Think of it as time off for good behavior in Purgatory. :)

You've never tried Gentoo, then (which is itself a bit less control-freak-y than Linux From Scratch.)

Mind, there are plenty of reasons to prefer Arch over Gentoo -- I run both on different systems, as well as a some Fedora and CentOS and [ick] Oracle Enterprise Linux at work -- but if for a minimal default and a do-it-yourself approach to things, Gentoo is the pinnacle before it ceases to be a distribution. :)

I actually have used Gentoo. The first ever Linux distro I used (circa 2003, I think...) was Gentoo, because I wanted to really get the feel for Linux and how everything worked. It took about a week to compile it on the ancient AMD K6 based system I was using it for at the time. (and it took me several tries just to get to that point, having had only extremely limited *nix experience) :D

Arch is a step back from the Gentoo level of control. It gives me almost as much control, but it's quite a bit less work from the user required to get it running and keep it running. I think it's in kind of a sweet spot that way.

I use Ubuntu when I set up systems for other people since it's very user-friendly.

Heh, that's drinking from the firehose. I moved to Gentoo around the same time because the upgrade from RedHat 7.x to 8.0 screwed up so many things that I decided to give up on binary distributions, but I'd been using Linux since the very end of 1993, back when downloading SLS floppies was the easiest way to install.

I'm inclined to agree that it's a sweet spot, and it has one of the best communities around it -- I run it on a number of older systems where the overhead of keeping Gentoo up to date would be too slow, and I've .

I've tried a variety of things on giveaway laptops, and haven't had much luck converting others to Linux. Ubuntu with the newer Unity build tends to play well for Mac users, while KDE (either Kubuntu or the Fedora KDE spin) tends to be an easier transition for Windows users. The Fedora XFCE spin seems to be the best option for really old laptops.

or get him a Mac Plus , I think I did more with that when I first started than I do with my stuff now !

and think how small MacPaint etc was.....

OK....I doubt a Mac Plus would run anything but AOL 1 so you could not even do simple emails......but then I am sure some are still using them....

I appreciate all the input (and when/if I load some xNIX, it's to practice getting around the system, writing scripts, etc. I really don't care much for applications - they're just ways of exercising the hardware, which is what I'm really interested in). But ...

The purpose of the thread was to emphasize the oldness of the computer installation; to wit: WinXP with no service packs installed. Have you ever seen one that virgin? And with various games that haven't been played in eleven years? Or that only had a modem?

At the end of the day, it has a 1 GHz Duron cpu and a mobo that allowed overclocking (it was apparently custom-built). As far as horsepower goes, it was able to play dvd's, Youtube videos, etc. with no stuttering or hesitation (once I got the wireless-G card installed).

So, he's happy. It'll never keep up with World of Warcraft or whatever the hot game(s) is/are these days, but I presume that'll come later.

This reminds me of a computer I was asked to work on a couple years ago. It was October 2010, and they showed me to a computer running Windows 95. 80486 processor, 16 MB of RAM, and a 512 MB hard drive. The thing ran like it was straight out of the box. Apparently they only used it for bookkeeping, and then only once a month or so.

They didn't really have any problems with it, just wanted me to check on it while I was there looking at another computer. They had told me they had this computer, and that it was older ("probably 6 or 7 years old"). I guess time flies.

I made some backups for them on floppies (only option available), and left them with the thing still running. As far as I know, they're still using it.

I had to take some screenshots, because it was just unbelievable. Here they are (not resized - they were, of course, running at 640x480). I felt that the only appropriate way to remove their information was in paint, badly.

http://imgur.com/a/ccBbN

Ouch. That hard drive is nearly full. They're gonna have problems with it pretty soon, because when Windows 95 runs out of swap space on the hard drive, it will come to a screeching halt and start whining like a teenager going to a family wedding.

Yeah ... probably an MFM drive. Good luck in finding one of them, although I did sell a pair of ST-225's a couple of weeks ago. 20 MB. Wow!.

I also unloaded a bunch of ESDI drives, but they were in the 300-600MB category.

I don't know if any of them worked. Wonder what these people are doing with them; the bidding was rather spirited.

Hmmm. I've got some old 486 processors and mobo's laying around. Strangely, people buy the processors, but they really get bidding when they're coupled with a working motherboard. Can there be that many museums around? :)

Edit:I remember now: it was three ST-225's.

Have you tried Linux Mint? It's basically Ubuntu with Gnome. The UI feels a lot like Windows Vista. The only downside is you can't upgrade it in place like you can with Ubuntu - you have to wipe away the OS and install the new version from scratch.

Wow! I thought I had a good one when I went to a client the other day and saw them still using Netscape Navigator.

sadly
 

sadly, they still have something like 4 million users who have DU accounts, and it generates over 70% of AOL's profit.

I have a feeling many of those user are actually deceased.

There are a lot of embedded systems we see running everything from factory machinery to POS systems, to ATMs (can you say OS/2 Warp) that use these old components. Most aren't Internet connected so no one ever worried about service packs or end of life on software and often it is far cheaper to source parts than forklift out these old systems. We just had someone asking for 80MB yes, "MB" drives for an HP system. Apparently these things are the size of a file cabinet drawer and run on 220V, at least they aren't water cooled...

Actually, I'd suggest a Mac Mini circa 2005-2007 earliest generation of Intel-based product, running 10.6 or 10.7 of the Mac OS. For $100-150 ebay prices, you can get a perfectly useful OS-X platform (which is very similar to a Linux OS but with a bunch of user-friendliness layered on top) and 1 GB of RAM is perfectly sufficient to run as a more than decent web browser.

As I personally just transitioned to the Mac ecosystem (one of Microsoft's overnight involuntary upgrades that trashed my system and forced me to do a total re-build was the last straw that prompted this), I am in the process of moving my elderly mom to just such a platform since I need to support her (actually, I went a little more upscale, getting her a nice used 2 GB Core2Duo based Mac Mini for about $220 on the 'bay). I' actually using it right now as I am configuring it for her to be as similar to the MS Win 7 desktop that she is used to. And the thing is more than competent as an internet computer for any non-power user.

Yeah, I took that screenshot before I cleared out their temporary files. I can't remember exactly how much it cleared up, but it was somewhere around 20% of the hard drive. I'm pretty sure that was the first time their temporary internet files had ever been cleared.

For a real antique, I am flying home with one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_PX-8_Geneva
http://www.vintage-computer.com/imag...evarunning.jpg

Was my dad's, then a hand-me down I used in my first couple of years of high school, before getting a 286 laptop running DOS/Windows 3.x ... has sat unused in storage at my mom's for about 22-23 years.

Mine is quite the bit worse for wear; the RAMdisk/modem module is missing as are several keys. When I get in, will post a picture for comparison and when time permits, I will be checking through my junk box for a 6V AC adapter to see if it still runs at all.

Amazing battery life; ran 6-8 hours on the internal battery pack (4 nicads, very similar to what you'd see on some of the chunkier cordless phone handsets a few years ago.)

Three of my old computers which I now wish I'd kept:

The Thinkpad 701C with the "butterfly keyboard" (I continue to be surprised that no one has resurrected that. It was a rock-solid keyboard):

http://gameraya.fc2web.com/tp/images/tp701c.jpg

Commodore SX-64. The "portable" [sic!] version of the C64

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/sx64.jpg

Tandy 102. Was very useful for downloading DUATS wx and forecasts in its day; I even figured out how to null-cable it to my PC to move old Commodore 64 documents in ascii format.

http://www.electronixandmore.com/mis...s/tandy102.jpg

I love all the memories posted in this thread! The first computer in my household was a Kaypro 2X, bought in 1985 (Similar to this ad):

http://www.computercloset.org/KayproII-Ad.jpg

One of my earliest memories is going to a computer store in Manhattan with my dad, and him lugging this "portable" (!) computer down the street to our car. Weighed about 40 pounds, and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500 (it was discounted by the point we bought it, as it was an older model).

My dad worked from home and edited many documents on it, and when he needed to collaborate with others on a project, he would send and receive the 5 1/4" floppy disks in the mail. (Or he could have used the 300 bps modem, but few people had email or BBS access in the 80s!)

We used this computer until 1993, when we upgraded to a Mac with the Prodigy online service and a 2400 bps modem. It sat in our garage until 2001, when sadly it went in the dumpster as my parents downsized from a 4-bedroom house to a small Manhattan apartment.

If I hadn't been away at college at the time, I would have saved the Kaypro as an "antique." It worked perfectly until the end, as far as I know.

My Dad gave me permission to "find a good home" for his four Kaypro 4s two years ago. Those things were rock solid.

Possibly need to replace the lithium button battery (usually a CR2032) that powers the battery-backed CMOS memory?

I've redisovered one of my oldest computer in my brother's basement storage this week, a 25 years old Amstrad PPC640 - it still boot up to MS-DOS 3.1 and use 3.5" FDD. With a 9" mono screen, it's heavy but graphics wasn't too bad hooked up to a 13" RGB amber monitor - used it for Lotus 1-2-3, Words and Condor 3 to manage membership & donor mailing lists (before dBase 3.) It was a decent setup then to access BBS and to log into Eassy Sabre (pre-Travelocity) then to do bookings and to access OAG online,modem was ok @ 2,400 bps in those days. GEnie online access was cheap and never part of the AOL generation.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tradPPC640.jpg

The heavier tasks were done on networked Altos terminals as mainframes & were king in those days (mid 1980's) - finances were done on the IBM 370's into the mid 1990's. Anyone else remember those 11" disks used for the Wangwriter systems - some of my earliest government grants were written & saved on those diskettes, kept one for memories & another one has the resume from 1981 ... :cool: the old days.

I still use one of these on a daily basis:

http://unixpc.taronga.com/3b1.gif

http://oldcomputers.net/att-unix-pc.html