Old hardware, does it do its thing?

[george]

A "quick survey", just for the fun of it.

Looking at all of the IT stuff gathered over the years(what is left of it )
Many of us are IT nerds& IT hardware junkies and also keeping up with the latest stuff while seeing or trying to see if older stuff still can handle it (IT).


What is the oldest IT stuff you still use at a daily, weekly or monthly basis?

-Computer, network hardware, computer component, mobile/cell item with Internet support
-Keyboards&mice and like are not included
-Two items, max.

-need be 9 years and older

-home or family use, not commercial

Name the component or item and estimated mfd year and year it began service in your use and if you like, post a picture.
Perhaps a short description of its history & today's purpose of the item. DD etc.

[george]

Perhaps a 9 year limit is too high here?

Anyway, here goes mine :

WiFi router, Buffalo WHR3-G54 (image show AG54, Japan version)
Bought in Singapore late 2003, IIRC. EU&US launch came later. Was in use together with a DSL modem for some three years, at our previous house.

Was then replaced by a faster DSL/WiFi router.

It sat in the closet for a few years, then I found that dd-wrt had support for this and gave it a go, works like a charm.
Now serves as a WiFi client bridge in my workshop/garage. It is not powered on 24/7, but in use weekly.

The other item, a s939 flagship by MSI, K8N Neo2-54G Platinum, also bought in Singapore late 2004, right after it came out.
Tried it a bit at first but had other computer stuff running at that time. Did not attend full service until yr2005.

It served until 2009, Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, passive Zalman cooler and a modded BIOS from lejabeach site,
at that time used a laptop and we moved to a new house in 2011.
It sat on the shelf until about a year ago, then I rebuilt my old s939 system, now running as a workshop driver, weekly usage.

[ShrimpBrime]

Oh gosh, I don't have anything IT related from that long ago. Not in use for sure. But this thread sparked my curiosity. did some digging and learned that the Internet was workable back in the 1960s by ARPANET and TCP/IP was implemented in 1983. According to Wiki, Advanced Research Projects Agency Network was the initial inventor to the internet used today.

Hmm, the oldest running hardware at my house used on a daily to weekly basis is no older than socket AM2/+. The Opteron 1389 was released in June 2009 and is K10 Suzuka C2 stepping. 4 cores at 2.9Ghz OC'ed to 3.3Ghz on stock air. It has both DDR2 and DDR3 IMCs, but is running on DDR2.

Do have some older hardware but does not meet criteria for this thread. Have been running socket 462 lately, but will never use it more often than to bench with.

[Bones]

Sadly I don't have anything that's old setup except for benching and even that isn't very old right now.
All the rest that is, just laying around wherever.

[george]

Think AM2 was released May 2006, then AM2+ came when? Q1 yr2008. AM3 Q1 yr2009.

[ShrimpBrime]

Yes those dates look accurate. Funny it's been 10 years since the AM3 release date. It'll fade away in a couple of years and then become vintage

[zila1]

Hmmm, the oldest thing I could find stashed away in the closet is a Linksys Cable/DSL Router BEFRS41 ver. 2 with a LNE100TX 10/100 pci adapter. These are from the days when I had 3meg DSL. They are not in use as they can't keep up with the newer equipment here. They have Windows 98 and Windows XP support on the boxes. Back when LinkSYS was good stuff.

I had a socket A rig on the internet back then. Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird.

[ShrimpBrime]

We never had a computer at our house when I was growing up. I didn't get into that until I bought my first phone line and was moved out and into my early 20s. Started with dial up modems and got comcastic in the early 2000's. Back when 12mb was the fastest speed available and cost a couple of limbs every month lol.

[zila1]

I remember when I ordered dial-up for the house. My folks thru a fit. You couldn't use the phone when I was on the internet and they hated the sound of dial-up modems. Then..........somehow.........a naked girl got on the computer screen. Mom and Dad tripped out man........ROFLMAO

[Vinster]

I still have a functional Compaq Deskpro Pentium III 1Ghz PC, I forget how much Ram and HDD space is in there... But it was enough to run Windows XP.

This I think is the oldest PC gear I still own that is actually functional. I have some Old NIC/Modem/Video Cards in a bin, but don't know if they work or not.

Vin

[obscureparadox]

I have an old Sandy Bridge i7 laptop which is about 8 years old now. Not quite 9 but still plenty good enough for what I need it to do, just had to put an SSD in there and replace the battery a couple of times over the years

[george]

^ an i7 laptop, that is plenty good for many things even today, with an SSD. Came to think of it since you mentioned. Stretching the criteria a bit.

This I am typing on now, Sony Vaio VGN-SR59VG, was given to me some 5 years back (BIOS date 08/05/2009). I updated it from W7 x64 Pro to W10 x64 Pro.

Came with 4GB, P8700, 500GB HDD. Since then got a spare battery and a 240GB SSD. Runs really good and a great display&convenient size. Monthly use.

[cbjaust]

My server is circa 2009
DFI LANParty DK 790FXB-M2RSH
Phenom II X4 940

2 kits of G.Skill F2-8800CL5D-4GPI for 8GB

Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550W PSU

Board and CPU released in 2009, RAM is dates week 9 of 2009 but I have another kit the same from 2008 and the PSU is also from 2009 at the latest (I have three of these, from Jan 2007, Nov 2007 and Mar 2009)
Radeon HD 5670 released in 2010 doesn't quite make the cut.
Ditto the hard drives - a modern Samsung 850 PRO 256GB and 5 3TB or larger 7200rpm hard drives for the array the oldest of which were purchased in 2014.

All in a Silverstone SST-LC13-E case I bought second hand in 2008

I've been meaning to get the DFI board out of there for a while and I'm doing that now. The new server will be a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 with my Phenom II 1100T and 2x4GB kits of G.Skill Sniper PC3-12800 with 5 4TB Toshiba 7200rpm drives and reusing the case, PSU and VGA Card.

So in two year's time I can mention it again in the 9 year old thread daily hardware thread

[george]

Made an "upgrade" on my workshop WiFi client bridge : Buffalo AirStation HighPower N600 Gigabit Dual Band WZR-600DHP

Had this one for many years, it has been sitting cold for a long time after I shifted to different 4G/LTE equipment, but now decided to see if it will still carry. Running DD-WRT.

Think it is from around year 2010.

[antinomy]

Using a Sandy bridge laptop (Samsung NP350U2B) on a daily basis. The model was on the market on 2011. Still, a very nice thingie, it was $400 back then and kinda has hardware on par with $1000 ultrabooks from it's age (except the plastic case).

[Vinster]

I was doing some cleaning and found a Zip-Drive and a few disk... I'll have to wrangle that old compact as the drive uses a parallel port... lol

I got that thing in college.. so ~1998... I wonder if there is still any data on the disks or if they have bit rotted out...

Vin

[george]

Using a Sandy bridge laptop (Samsung NP350U2B) on a daily basis.

Looks like a very handy laptop. I guess the battery has been replaced a couple of times?

I was doing some cleaning and found a Zip-Drive and a few disk.

Can't recall I have ever actually used a ZIP drive. A friend of mine used these as a backup media some twenty years ago...

[Vinster]

Feb 24, 2022 9:03:13 GMT -5 george said:

Can't recall I have ever actually used a ZIP drive. A friend of mine used these as a backup media some twenty years ago...

I had almost bought an internal unit. Those used an HDD interface... they were short lived with their 100MB capacity and USB HDD's coming out a few years later.

Vin

[george]

with ref to my WiFi client hardware post previously, I just happened to bump into this vid

[dr4g00n]

My daily laptop, a Dell N5110 from 2011, started using it a few years ago after I fixed it.
Originally an i3 2330M + iGPU, I've upgraded it with an i7 2760QM + GT525M (= GT550M with OC). Still not quick but it can do some stuff.

[eidairman1]

I was on my Athlon XP Rig from 2003-2014, Upgraded to FX 8350. Hoping to upgrade to TR using most of the parts in my FX Rig.

[austin86]

Oh boy, so for the last 10 years I worked for a non profit that has had some rather old tech. Our office phone system is so old that it was used as props in 80s sitcoms. Its 100% analog but kinda digital. You can program names into the phones and what not, the VM is also stored on very old type of solid state storage. Its also 100% susceptible to old school phreaking.
The data lines in the building I work in are cat4, not 5.
Up until a few years ago are stores did not have POS and dot matrix printers were all over the finance dpt. And our staff? Well most did not know what a smart phone was until around 2015 when we started to give our executives cells.
When I started working there I helped put a end to a way to big sneakernet that still used floppy for some things. We had a file system but it was local to one building and running windows server 2000 with file date stamps going as far back as 1978. Going off the files I founds on the server at some point in the the early 2000s a tape server was put out of use and it's data moved to the win2k server, yes tape, not backup tapes, reel to reel tape. And back in 2012 when I started, yeah a lot of system were still running windows 9x or dos in one case, straight up dos.

Until a year a go we used a dos base app that was so old not even dos box knew what to do with it. It was some odd bit of finance software we used when selling donated cars and a few other things.

[george]

Seems blue ray has fallen off the map over here.

[george]

hmm, the wzr-600 "threw a fit" a few months ago. Tinkered a bit, it was a no go, the house main router was at fault. Anyhow, today bravely began from scratch with the WZR-600&dd-wrt, yup, it still runs