Oh, calculators? I have an hp12c i bought in the 80s that i still sometimes use. I’ve only had to change the batteries once or twice in all those years
I have some slide rules, too, but i don’t think that counts. Also, i got the good ones after i got the calculator.
I beg to differ. In the later versions of Rockwell PLC’s with multiple languages in the same program (Ladder/Sequential Function Charts). That’s spaghetti squared.
Huh, I’ve never seen different languages combined except for ladder diagrams and instruction sets.
Maybe it’s time for an upgrade. Rockwell has a new product line for your consideration:
Stranger
My first job was writing modem code in x86 assembly on a 186EB. We counted clock cycles, tracked flag changes, and argued about whether the caller or callee saves registers. Good memories.
As for the OP, I’m not sentimental. I aggressively purge old stuff – so maybe 2013.
My keyboard on my primary PC at work is PS/2. It’s just a cheap Belkin that I happen to like.
Zazzle.com, online shirt and graphic design company, that is still selling my vintage graphic printed designs from the 90’s and giving me a percentage of every sale.
At work we are dealing with a mainframe-based system designed in the early 80s. It is an insurance database originally converted from microfiche records. We need terminal emulators to access it.
We tried migrating it to the web but that didn’t work. Everyone involved in developing it passed away so it’s a challenge to move it to anything else.
So I think that counts. I have to support it regularly (from the user end) as an IT guy.
A database? You can’t just write some interface application to the terminal emulator to scrape it and rebuild in a more transferable format? It has to cost a fortune to maintain that system!
Many years ago when my undergrad university dumped their IBM 8100 series mainframe for Unix servers, some geniuses decided to redirect the hardware from disposal and set it up in an apartment; I gather they were planning on using it as some kind of a render box for ray-tracing but discovered that aside from the enormous amount of energy it required to run and for cooling, it was extraordinarily expensive to just source equipment to keep it running and ended up turning it into some kind of art exhibit that nobody wanted. I’m pretty sure my 2005 G4 Powerbook had more computing power than that entire system and certainly more storage.
Stranger
I have some original Xbox disks that I have played in the past couple of years (some games are still playable on the Xbox One). E.g. Jade Empire from 2005.
If moving a box around from time to time counts for ‘engage with’ then I have several CPU, memory, and peripheral circuit boards from 8080, Z80, and 6502 processors from the mid-70s. Also a TI9900 CPU chip, I got rid of the entire CPU I built not long after completing it. I may not still have it but I did have an RCA 1802 COSMAC chip from back then.
The oldest thing I frequently engage with is a Logitech “PREMIUM OPTICAL Wheel Mouse”. At probably 25 years old, it’s not by any means the oldest thing I own or have at work, but it’s still connected to my desktop at work, and I use it occasionally when the trackpad is being annoying. That mouse has probably been plugged in and turned on continuously for its entire life, even if it’s low mileage.
Yea… There where too many legal issues, as I mentioned in another thread.
Well, if you include electronic calculators, I have a working TI-30. Probably bought in 1977. The original NiCad battery went away long ago. I use a regular 9 volt battery and it also works off the original charger. Hmmm, LEDs, nice.
But I don’t use mine nearly as much as YouTuber Fran Blanche.
My next calculator, some TI model, had a primitive looping function and memory that allowed me to solve equations using things like Newton-Raphson. It’s disc buttons were just crap. But the next one, a Casio FX-4000P, released in 1986, is more reasonably programable and is still my #1 calculator and is in the desk drawer next to me. (Along with a small plastic slide rule. My good slide rule, with holster, is too large and is several feet further away. It would date from c1962.)
Nothing fancy or really impressive, just a Windows XP desktop I use (offline) for backup Quicken bookkeeping, check-writing, and storing some old photo files. The monitor screen’s old enough to be almost square instead of stretched rectangular.
I used my XP computer way past its support date by remote desktop into a Win10 machine for internet access.
Since I’ve got two Win10 desktops, a Win10 laptop, and a Win11 laptop, the XP doesn’t need to have Internet access; any files that need tranferring to and from can ride on a thumb drive. I also have an offline Win7 all-in-one that’s just for old file storage (mostly photos) at this point.
I have an old Vector Mechanics textbook that I’ve been gradually working my way through. I use my old HP 15c calculator that I bought in college in the '80s. Inside the back cover of the book is a 5.25" floppy disk.
I’ve got an old USB drive from a long time ago, maybe from the mid 2000’s, about the time my kid was born. It runs surprisingly well and error free, better than the more recent (and higher capacity) drives I own. So I found myself using it this past year to transfer lecture files to the podium PCs in classrooms. I often forget it, then find it blinking in the dark during after hours. YANK!
Still works great.
My HP-15C batteries died a few years ago and I pulled them out so they wouldn’t corrode. Looks like it would cost $6 to replace them. I still have the original manuals. There’s an “Owners Handbook” and an “Advanced Functions Handbook”. Pages of “code”. I wrote a “Find where the derivative is zero” routine once.
I have to challenge the reference to City of Detroit v One 1947 Two Door Fleetmaster Sedan as well as analysis of hypothecation of “ontologically and jurisprudentially distinct categories such as automobiles and real property” reliant upon the British method of “meets and bounds”. The Socratic sufferings of “Seventeen Ball-Bearings, More or Less” is well established to be in breach of the 1907 Hague Convention and the proceeding lieber Code (General Orders No. 100 , April 24, 1863). The subsequent pantoplasmic reconfiguration is really an ancillary issue to be resolved by the International Criminal Court to the expected satisfaction of exactly no one.
Stranger