I was aware of various programs that allow you to run other OS, I think I briefly used one many years ago, but gave it up when I had no real need for it. The same applies now.; I do not have a desperate need to run the DOS programs, and if I was so minded I could rig up the older Pentium, which has Windows XP installed on it.
I could get round the monitor issue by picking up an old flat screen monitor, a really old and small one.
But thanks for the info, and maybe somebody else might want to try running virtual machines.
I have a KIM-1 from 1976, but lost the ASR-35 Teletype tape punch terminal in a storage locker fiasco about 30 years ago. Still usable via the keypad & 7-segment display readouts if you speak hex.
Oldest is a Commodore VIC-20 with a 16K expansion cartridge from my teens in the early 80s. My guess it would probably still power on if the power supply is good. My other is an Amiga 500 from 1991 or so. It might power on, but no idea if the boot floppies are still good.
I’ve got a Commodore PET 2001 (with the cassette drive and the Chiclet keyboard) that I salvaged from a junkpile. it runs, but the input or output is busted, so i can’t read and write anything to the cassette tape.
Once piece of trivia I remember from the old Commodore days.
If you only muck around with software, you can fairly easily make a computer so that it can’t boot, but it’s usually very difficult to actually break the computer. But the Commodore Pet is one of the few computers that I know how to physically destroy just with software. If you repeatedly write to the same video address over and over in a tight loop, you will overheat the chip and break it.
I never actually tried to break one. It was more of just a warning not to repeatedly write to the same chip over and over in video ram with any of your programs.
I remember that Chiclet keyboard. It’s not a fond memory.
I don’t remember if the Pet’s cassette worked the same way as the Vic-20 and the C64. I think they did. It was absolute stupidity on Commodore’s part since it would store the program twice, and it’s error checking was that if either copy didn’t agree with the other then it failed the load. So basically it was twice as slow and half as reliable. A truly horrible design.
My oldest functioning computer-like device is a Compaq iPaq Pocket PC (3600 series), purchased around 2001. Unfortunately, I flipped the battery disconnect switch when I put it in storage, which had the effect of wiping the memory. I still have a couple of pieces of software that I used with it, including a mobile version of SimCity 2000; when I got my final Pocket PC phone in 2008 (HTC with a slide-out keyboard), I had no trouble installing that game on it.
As far as actual computers, it would be an Apple IIGS if my parents hadn’t sold it to some relatives who kept it in their basement for a few years; they never understood how to use it, and supposedly donated it somewhere. (I say “supposedly” because one of these relatives is a borderline hoarder who keeps everything – she has at least five CRT televisions in storage, for example.) I still have the Windows XP-based Dell laptop that I purchased while I was in college in 2005; I haven’t turned it on in years, but it probably still works. Currently, my oldest operating computer is an HP Pavilion that was purchased back in 2010. It originally shipped with Windows 7, but the hard drive failed, so I replaced that with a laughably small hard drive pulled from an even older HP (purchased somewhere around 2004). Amazingly, that drive still worked, so I installed Ubuntu on it just to see if I could get it to work. It’s still running today; I have it connected to a TV upstairs.
I’m writing this on a mid-2009 MacBook pro, so I can tell you you’ve got a good shot.
Apple has stopped with the OS upgrades (still have security updates), and I suspect that support will be withdrawn in a year or so, at which point this becomes my new Linux laptop.
We have a Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop from 2006 that still gets used as a portable DVD player. There’s another laptop several years older, but it hasn’t been used in over a decade.
I have a working Commodore 64 that was purchased new in 1983. Also a Mac Plus from about 1887. A power Mac G3 from around 2000. An iMac from 2003. A Macbook pro from 2007. Typing this on a Mac Mini from 2014.
No, my family does not every get rid of computers, why do you ask?
I’ve moved around too much in the past 20 years to have kept the old ones. I did have a Compaq Portable that released all of its magic smoke a few years ago. It was red smoke that changed to gray, so definitely magic.
I still keep an IBM Thinkpad with I believe XP, but not SP3. It’s the newest thing that will run the software needed to manage my phone system.
I have a Sony Vaio TX from 2006 in a drawer, it still works and it was an awesome machine as I traveled a lot.
I used to have a Convergent Technologies Workslate from 1983 , my dad worked for them in Europe and I kept it as a bit of history. Alas it went missing but was a cool idea for a traveling business tool, the execution lacked a little.
I got my wife a Sony Vaio circa 1999. Too long a story but I needed a new portable quickly to take to a convention, saw the cute little thing and knew my wife would love it, so I bought that instead of somehow renting a temporary machine. It was probably smaller than yours, probably smaller than a 10"x10" footprint, and so thin there was no integral floppy/cd/dvd drive.
