My oldest working piece of electric hardware is an Opaque Projector I built in elementary school, from scratch. I used to use it to project postcards and the like. Not only does it stil work, it still uses the same light bulbs I put in it originally!
I also still have a Commodore 2001 Pet computer with the little “Chiclet” keyboard and cassette player tape drive. Someone was throwing it out, and I rescued it. It still works.
I have a rare and difficult-to-find Applied Engineering 40 MHz '030 accelerator board for the Macintosh SE, which also provides it with 16 MB RAM (it natively maxes out at 4 MB); I also have a somewhat rare SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter for the same machine, which enables me to put it on my local area network, letting me have an actual System 6 machine that I can remote into from a modern MacOS X computer. The SE itself is more replaceable (they made a lot of them).
I have an old, stainless steel electric drill that belonged to my grandfather. It is very much like the one pictured here. Mine still has the original cord and 2-prong plug. It still works well and still gets used on occasion.
I have a key chain I fashioned from the Motorola 6809 CPU of the first computer I owned, a Radio Shack Color Computer.
I have older electronics, but the one I treasure most is a 2010-vintage digital camera. It’s one of those cameras that’s about the size of a cigarette pack, but it has 8x optical zoom which I find handy, and a number of other useful features, and I’m closing in on 10,000 pictures taken with it.
I still have my Hondo Flying V which is from the early 80’s (I think) - got it in 88.
I also have a Harmony Rocket H54. I think it’s from the early 60’s. Got it 25’ish years ago. Those gold foils scream.
Both work, but both need electrical work (soldering, pots cleaned, etc).
My alarm clock is a GE clock radio, which I bought in my last year of grad school (so, sometime in late 1988 or early 1989). It’s 30 years old now, and still works perfectly. The radio tuner hasn’t been moved off of WBBM Newsradio in at least a decade, and maybe longer.
At some point, I’m sure it’ll finally die, and I’ll be very sad.
Woot, baby. I’d like to see the Harmony.
The gear on mine is all spiffy and clean. Last time I broke it out all I needed to do was tune it up - replace the strings, effectively - and play. One of the pickups was replaced at some point before I bought it - in 1992 - but otherwise it’s all original.
There are some (horrible) photos of it in the Ongoing Guitar thread:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17819300&postcount=3731
One thing that makes The Dope so charming is how many of us have tube testers. I also have old signal generator, etc.
But I’ve been dumping a lot of my old electronics over the last several years. E.g., bye-bye to my Heathkit VTVM. I just don’t work on electronics like I used to.
Ditto a lot of my old computer gear. It was fun knowing that my original XT-clone PC was still in working condition in the basement, complete with amber CRT, but stuff has to go sometime. Ditto my Sinclair ZX81.
The oldest, in terms of my/family possession are two AA6 AM/SW radios that my father built from kits during WWII in electronics school. (Factory built radios were banned during the war for production purposes, but you could still get kits. So these were useful.) They still work. I used to do a lot of SW DXing on them years ago but now SW is dying so what’s the point?
The oldest thing I still use regularly are my Smaller Advent speakers from the 70s. Replaced the woofers years ago and they still work fine.
Just yesterday I was working outside listening to MP3s on my T.Sonic 310 (1GB) “gumstick” player which is close to 15 years old. Replaced the battery a bit ago.
Both of these have unfortunately died, but I would be using them today if I could. (I still own both corpses.):
Sony F707 digital camera. A bit outdated by today’s standards (5 MP sensor, memory limit 128 MB Memory Sticks, essentially no video support) but great glass and great CCD, and I really loved the swivel-body construction for taking photos at awkward angles. I’d love to have modern electronics in the same chassis. Bought it in 2002 for a thousand bucks, used it for around 10-12 years until it suffered a bad fall.
Sony PRS 350 ebook reader. Electronic ink, reads epubs and CBR/CBZ (with a firmware hack.) Screen was 3 inches wide and even though it had massive bezels by today’s standards it was just small enough to fit in a shirt or jacket pocket. (That was a 5" diagonal 3:4 screen–for that width on modern devices it takes a 6.1 inch 9:16 screen or a 6.7 inch 9:18 screen.) Ran for 2 or 3 weeks of reading before the battery runs out. Had built-in the full Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford American Dictionary, and to-from dictionaries for English to French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch, all accessible at the tap of a word in the text that you are reading. (I have only just recently configured my phone ebook reader, Moon+, to bring up separate apps of the Oxford Dictionary of English and Merriam Webster dictionaries, which isn’t nearly as smooth as the function on the PRS 350, and takes up over 250 MB of space for the two dictionaries.) Bought in 2010, used heavily until around 2016 when the USB charging/data port broke. Another device I’d like to have with updated hardware and a trimmer case.
When I was eleven or twelve years old, my dad called me into his workshop one day and I had a quick lesson in how to solder. I wondered what was going on.
Then for my birthday I got a Heathkit AM radio kit. He and I put it together and I got a lot of use out of it. It’s still sitting in my garage, ready to leap into action at the twist of a knob.
My Pioneer PL-115D turntable that I bought around 40 years ago. Still works perfectly, still gets used.
I wish I still had my Sansui 8080db receiver that I stupidly sold for a pittance at a garage sale.
mmm
I have an old tube driven Packard Bell receiver and separate speaker enclosure - solid wood cabinetry and old tweed covered fronts. It still fires up, needing a little time to warm up and to allow the tubes to get glowing.
Also have a Roland 300s synth, late 80s vintage - plywood base and weighted keys. A bear to lug around due to size and weight.
Oldest electronic device I have that still gets occasional use would be my TI-35 Plus scientific calculator, which I bought in high school in the late 1980’s. Mine looks like this, except that one looks like it comes with a hard plastic shell cover. Mine had a vinyl wallet-style cover, though that had been tossed long ago. Also, the ink on most of the buttons has worn off, but I still know what they are. It got heavy use through high school and a college aerospace engineering degree, where it was supplemented (but not replaced) by an HP-48GX. It’s still on my desk at home and gets pulled out whenever I need a basic calculator. Not only that, but it still has the original batteries!
Another one that is dear to me would be my old Apple IIe, because I probably would not have the career I have today had we not owned it. It’s still set up at my parent’s house, and it still works. I fired it up this past Christmas to show my kids what computers were like when I was their age.
Oh, yes, calculators.
My oldest one is my TI-30. The first “budget” scientific calculator at $25 in 1976. (About $110 today.)
It still works although it needs a 9V battery since the original rechargeable rotted.
I also have kept my later calculators. One old TI though has crappy buttons that don’t work right. It’s been well over 20 years since I last bought a scientific calculator. (I buy an occasional “credit card” calculator for Mrs. FtG’s coupon box when she needs a replacement.)
(I also have a slide rule that’s been in the family since about 1960.)
I’ve got an old indigo Gameboy Advance. I’ve got at least of couple of games for it, but the only one I can find, because it’s what’s stuck in it right now, and it’s really the only game I ever played on it, is “Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel.” It’s sitting in my desk drawer at the office right now. I play with it at lunch when I’m waiting for the microwave or similar scenarios. Sometimes at meetings with the sound turned off, because meetings are stupid.
My mother recently foisted upon me a box of old stuff that belonged to my siblings and myself. Among other stuff was a Little Professor calculator circa 1978 or so. I play with it from time to time.
