What is the oldest/crappiest computer you've ever had

defender.project42

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Beat a 63mhz toshiba sattelite with 64mb memory.
Broke last year though...
now I've upgraded to 1.6ghz with 256mb memory. Seems a lot faster!
 

vv.bbcc19

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P3 1.33 Ghz
128MB RAM
40GB HDD
Floppy drive
CD Read only
Asus Mother Board + Intel Chipset
CRT Monitor-15 inch
Super slow but effective then.
 

vekou

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Pentium II with MMX Technology
32MB RAM
2GB HDD (not sure)
Floppy Drive
Standard keyboard & mouse
...and the thing that made it crappy: Windows 95 (Plus)


Seriously, it wasn't crappy and the oldest, back then it was the fastest and the best.
I'm not sure about the actual specs since I didn't care back then.
 
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essellar

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If you mean the most archeologically fascinating machine, well, I (and other here as well) had machines based on the 8080, Z80, the 6502, and the 6510, all with tiny memory spaces (my smallest was 5KB total -- 4K in ROM and 1KB in RAM) and running at a then-standard 1MHz. For some of us, that would be represented by a hobby board with a hex keypad (if you were lucky -- many had nothing put a panel of toggle switches) for input and a series of LEDs for output. If you wanted more, like a keyboard or alphanumeric output, you needed to build an interface. For others, that machine would have been a Radio Shack TRS-80, a Timex/Sinclair/BBC unit, an Apple ][, a Heathkit/Zenith, or a Commodore PET, VIC-20 or 64. They weren't good for much except gaming (including some great educational games, which is why the Apple ][ family made good inroads in schools) and spreadsheets (VisiCalc made a huge impact in the small-to-medium business space). Oh, and they were great for learning about the technology and programming.

If you mean the most out-of-date machine I ever used compared to the ambient technology, well that would be the 4MB 486SX25 "grey box" I was running while the rest of the world was running Windows 95 on Pentium II MMX technology with 16 or 32 MB and 10x faster clock speeds. Writing code on that machine was no slower than it is today, but compiling it could literally take days. And I do remember doing a ray-traced 3D rendering (800x600 pixels, 24-bit colour with shadows) that took more than two weeks. Computing required a little more patience in those days...
 

lmecmail20

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I have had a sinclair and after that an Olivetti pc1. In those times both of them great machines...but only in those time
 
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SierraAR

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It'd have to be the laptop I'm on now. It'd an HP from the '90s. The CD drive keeps popping out (And I mean the drive itself, not the disc tray), programs keep crashing, and there's no space to install anything XD
 

ReMiXeDg

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I just got a IBM ThinkPad 600e series. It's a pentuim 2 400mhz processor and 256mb RAM.

I have not installed an OS as I'm trying to figure out witch is the best OS to use on it.
 

kinley3

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Man I had a Packard Bell back in the day. I can't remember all the specs, but I do remember that the hard drive was 1 GB. I think that says quite enough :)
 

Darkmere

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lol the smallest Hard Drive I had was a 27 meg lol and that was huge for the time
 

cybrax

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Wel... not including the old DOS ones now holding up the bench in the garage..
and think mother still has my first ZX81 in the attic...

Finally parted company with Huey,Dewy and Lewy my trio of G3 iMac classics. They have now been split and recased and are living out thier remaining years as part of a IP cctv security system.

However still have a Toshiba lifebook that's still functional apart from the battery that can't hold a charge longer than five minutes.

As for hard drives, think I still have a 1gig on the shelf for emergencies.
 
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admael

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intel 100 MHz 486 running windows 95 I was only 8 i barely remember the specs
 

trakz94

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My first was at work, used to code the robotic PCB assembly tools. I remember getting xtree-gold and wow'ing at the graphical folder interface !

Amstrad PC1512

CPU: Intel 8086 @ 8 MHz
Usable RAM: 512K (PC1512), 640K (PC1640)
Built-in ROM: 16K
Graphics: MDA, CGA (PC1512), MDA, Hercules, CGA, EGA (PC1640)
Sound: PC beeper
Bundled Software: Amstrad-adapted MS-DOS 3.20, DR-DOSPlus 1.2 (similar to CP/M 86), GEM 2.0 (Graphics Environment Manager) and BASIC2 1.12.
 

essellar

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Did you know that you could play music (for some small value of the word "music") and speech using only the system beep "speaker"? We used a text-to-speech synthesizer on an XT-class machine (8086) in our ESL/adult literacy program back in the day. I was the tech guy -- it mostly involved networking computers using the parallel port and telephone wire, along with finding things on what passed for the internet back then (Gopher, Archie and Veronica) and communicating with the literacy world through terminal-mode email. I think I still remember the modem settings for each of the hosts, and which protocols I had to use for which tasks (X-modem, Y-modem, long-block Kermit). Things may have been TCP/IP on the main drag, but the connection points all used different settings.
 

Darkmere

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Oh yes ... remember the Original Duke Nukem not the 3d version but the old donkey kong arcade style one. They used the computer speaker beeps to make music. It was classic lol
 

SierraAR

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Ah, I also remember another crappy computer. It wasn't old, but it failed epically (And it was an HP). It had aseries of hardware malfunctions, including a wireless card that failed, a fan that stopped working, and a video card that melted onto the CPU. That was lovely.
 

krofunk

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800 MHz pIII
128 mb ram
8mb VRAM
28GB HDD
Windoze 98se

cutting edge as far as I was concerned lol
 

essellar

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800 MHz pIII
128 mb ram
8mb VRAM
28GB HDD
Windoze 98se

cutting edge as far as I was concerned lol

Except for the OS (substitute WinNT 4.0) that's about the same specs as a server I used to host about 400 applications and 1000-ish email accounts back in 2000. And now I need a multi-gigahertz, multi-core machine with 2 gigs of superfast RAM to use Eclipse on the desktop...
 

defender.project42

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Well, seems like you bet me.
Heck! the picaxe20x2 microprocessor that I was programming last year has specs about equal to some of those (8mhz, overclock to 16mhz, 512mb memory (both RAM and ROM))
 
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ka22bo68

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My first was the 286 without HDD just floppies, the longest PC class I've used was the classic Pentium 100. I was able to maximized its RAM to 128MB(32x4), 2x40G HDD, multi-boot to DOS, Win98, Win2000 and yes even WinXP(just to test if it will run and it did! dead slow). In one point in time I have to zip ms office, delete its folder then unzip corel and other Gtools just to do graphics then reveres the zipping/delete if i want to do office documents. Those were the days, my rant only was that I couldn't play Diablo.
 
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