Ask HN: What is the oldest computer that you still use for production? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the oldest computer that you still use for production?

38 pointsjacquesm78 comments

Someone in a thread about Perl wrote: ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660670 ):

> I would not at all be surprised if some critical infrastructure that must run lest a bunch of people gets killed is written in PDP 9 assembler.

That piqued my curiosity, what is the oldest piece of gear that you've still got up and running?

I've checked my own stuff and it seems the oldest machine that is still in use is about 4 years old.

I don't care about things that you have lying around that 'might still boot' or that are kept for sentimental value, old gear that is still running production of some sort.

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I have an old Pentium II 300MHz PC from the late 90s with 128MB of memory. I'm not sure when exactly it was first purchased, since I first got it second hand off of someone else in 2003. I added a new ethernet card in 2003 when I got it, and the CD drive has been replaced since, but other than that it's the original hardware (including 15" CRT monitor). The hard drive died long ago, but it doesn't need one to do its job.

And yes, it is used in production, for one very special task:

I'm the author of Gargoyle Router firmware (www.gargoyle-router.com), an alternate firmware for wireless routers. I've recently started selling some small routers with my software installed, but loading each one individually takes some time -- about 10 minutes each. This 10+ year old system runs a customized version of Knoppix, which can be used to install my software onto a large number of routers simultaneously. It means I can flash as many routers as I want within 10 minutes, instead of having to wait for 10 minutes each. This multiplex install system has some other components as well, but this PC sits at the center of it.

It's far more convenient to have a separate PC (especially one with a monitor) for this, since that way I don't have to keep disconnecting/reconnecting the necessary ethernet cords. Also, it only draws power during the brief time it's turned on (when I'm actually doing an install), so the fact it has an inefficient power supply isn't really a problem. It's cheap and it works, which is what matters.

edit: It was 2003, not 2002 I first bought the system.

Have you thought about creating your own router out of an Hawkboard or something similar ? That's something I would be very interested in, but I'm on something else..

While I don't know much about old what old stuff might be run by 'proper' tech people, I do know a DJ in Bristol who still mixes everything on an Atari ST. He's moderately popular, too, but that could be more due to his being 'part of the furniture' than anything else - he's been at it so long that the cover to one of his first releases was painted by Banksy before that would have cost a small fortune!

15 years old. It runs Win 95 and is used to build a version of one of our products that stops shipping this summer. It uses a 3rd party control that cannot be installed elsewhere as the vendor has gone out of business and the product has an aggressive anti-copying mechanism.

It was the only machine remaining that could build the product (the others died or were upgraded by mistake over the years), and the replacement 32-bit product ended up being 5 years late.

Maybe you could write a paper about that, for the dailyWtf ? I'm sure it will be very interesting ! Please try it :)

Scary!

On an internship with the UK defense research agency my job involved the conversion of some ALGOL-68 simulation code into Java. I would be very surprised if the professor for whom I worked was not still hacking away at the ALGOL. No idea how old the machine he used was, but it would be quite happy in a museum...

The UK Defence Research Agency also produced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten15 - Ten15 served as an intermediate language for various compilers, but with several unique features, some of which have still to see the light of day in everyday systems.

UK Defence Research Agency's ALGOL 68RS (algol68toc) is available from sourceforge, It now generates C.

The interpreter Algol68G is also available, is easier to use, and a list snippets can be found at http://rosettacode.org/wiki/User:NevilleDNZ

To download Linux's Algol68 Compiler & Interpreter: * http://sourceforge.net/projects/algol68

I think you hold the record so far!

Our lab has an old 486 which still runs MS-DOS 6.2 as its primary OS. Why? Because it's got a bunch of proprietary hardware in its guts that runs our differential scanning calorimeter, for which there are no modern drivers and no replacement hardware exists. Sure we could buy a new DSC, but the damn thing still works...

My uncle, who is a radio engineer, still occasionally boots up his TRS-80 Model 4 (1983) because it's got some piece of software he hasn't been able to find a suitable replacement for.

It looks so out of place sitting on his desk next to his flatscreen.

Sounds like somebody's startup idea. Any idea what the software he needs is?

Recently I was onsite with a client doing a pet test when I came across a production server running NT 4.

It was a PBX, supplied by a vendor, and therefore unable to be administered or upgraded by the client without voiding the warranty. Amusingly, the company I was at had only existed for about two years; which means that at least sometime in the past two years, there is a company selling a PBX appliance that runs on NT 4 (I don't even know how they can get a license for it).

Off topic; port scanning it was like trying to remove yourself from a landmine that you stepped on. It required action-movie dexterity.

Telecoms people have old SPARC Sun hardware running in production.

Go to manufacturing and you'll find Windows 3.1.

On the other hand, we can't even seem to keep a Macbook for more than a year or so.

I have no idea how old the systems are behind this data point but it seems relevant nonetheless: there are apparently 200-300 billion lines of COBOL still in production: http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/content/how-should-gover...

This showed up here a while back and is also an interesting read: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/08/western-civilization...

Sometimes in all my eagerness to keep up and constantly re-educate myself on a daily basis I forget that there are still a lot of very, very old systems out there.

I did some work at the #3 retail grocer in the world and they have an improbable amount of cobol and cobol-apps running as of 2007. Some of these were running on old IBM mainframes from the 80s and perhaps even 70s, including some exciting IMS databases.

That's slightly less impressive when you remember that it takes about 1,000 lines of Cobol to write Hello, World.

According to Wikipedia, only 5 lines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobol#Hello.2C_world

The oldest computer I use on a regular basis is the ECU in my 1990 Honda Accord.

If that doesn't count (and I see no reason why it shouldn't!) then the oldest is probably a server which I think is about 6 years old now.

Embedded systems count. In that case my oldest is now 1993, from a relatively late Mini with an ECU in it. The ECU is just about the only part on that car that doesn't rust.

That should count. In that case I know of an old 1986 BMW ECU that I used for testing, in my days as an engineer at Bosch. I suppose it still exists there, since they still need to support old vehicles for their diagnostic devices.

The other day, I visited a lawyer, he was still using the first computer he ever bought. I think it's MS-Dos 5 or 4. His application runs when MS-Dos open and he still using it. He have a modern notebook, though. But only for browsing the net.

My Toshiba Satellite Pro has a Celeron 497 MHz processor which Intel produced in 1999. It has been used almost daily since then, upgraded to XP but with the same 10 gig HD.

I still follow 1500 stocks with Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (please, no codger jokes). I use a Python script to download daily Yahoo stock data and Lotus reads the resulting CSV data. Any changes to my stocks are written to a python database by Lotus also. As a wag said, if it works, don't fix it.

My primary desktop is 7-8 years old...? (p4 2g ram, win2003 server) It feels the same speed as my 1 year old Macbook. I mostly use it for programming, Photoshop, and video editing.

Edit: It's been running the whole time except for moves and maintenance.

I posted that comment, but I don't really expect any startup to have that old tech (except as a curiosity).

I was thinking more of big enterprise or same bank or a transportation company that has been around for so long that a lot of their tech was made by people who not only isn't there anymore but nobody currently there worked with.

Take the example from wired of a how many companies still use punch cards in 1999 (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/punchcards.html) or the related question I posted to stack overflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/750606/what-technologies-...) some time ago. There are some very interesting responses to that, though there is also a lot of fluff.

Up to about a year ago I still had a DNS server running that was first built in '98 or so, and plenty of people here work for 'the man' and must have all kinds of interesting legacy tech they still have to use.

Also, the people that use embedded systems might have an oldie kicking around doing something useful.

I work for a company in the insurance sector that has a few divisions that rely on mainframe programs from the 1970s. Most of the actual hardware has been replaced, so everything's now running on z/OS instead of OS/390, but I believe we have some tape-mounting robots that are at least from the early 90s.

Yea- I think the companies most likely to be running crazy old hardware are, strangely enough, the ones on the forefront of development and adoption when this tech was beginning.

They blurr the line a little- the oldest computers aren't always 'computers' per-say, but rather old tools that do a straightforward job, like a hammer or a wrench.

The oldest machine we have PIII that is used from time to time for floppy disk and tape drive acquisitions (like, once a month maybe)

The oldest machine in constant use is a Pentium 4 3.2GHz from '04 which is making rainbow tables in our cluster (it is one of my old machines which was sat on a shelf, every little helps)

The oldest I know of is with a relative of mine. He runs an accounting company, and they are using a 15 year old IBM minicomputer (a small mainframe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer ) for the accounting.

I asked him once why he didn't switch to PCs, he couldn't see any reason to do so - the minicomputer was rock solid, still running strong and had the software he needed.

I imagine the oldest machines still in production would be with companies that regard computers the way a factory would regard expensive machinery - switching costs are high, and there is no sense in switching when the old one still works.

And I guess they would be mainframe class computers rather than PCs.

Not hardware, but a mid 40s lady I help with PC things happily uses some 20+ year old DOS software for managing her small business. She even programmed some custom templates and reports. She struggles with the concept of windows and does not like using the mouse.

We retired our last OS/2 & NT 3.51 server this year but still have a few NT4 machines. These servers are part of integrated solutions that were EOL-ed long ago but were still functional enough to stay in production.

TRS-80 Model 100 laptop (with an RS-232 connection) for our security panel.

I might as well claim my trophy now. Where is it?

Edit: We also have several SPARC Classics running some pre-2.5.1 version that are doing phone switch stuff.

The model 100 was in a class of its own. Crazy battery life, a day of continuous use on a bunch of penlights.

Oh, and here is your trophy ;) :

    \  oldest /
     \   hw  /
      \     /
       \   /
       -----
        / \

Do check out the algol 68 reference in this thread though!

In my company we have three Pentium 2 boxes working as routers and one working as a internal gateway (with full connectivity redundancy), we use OpenBSD, pf and the carp interface.

I have a very early Via motherboard with flash drive running OpenBSD as a firewall for the business office on the internal network. I probably need to replace it eventually, but it works fine / still can be updated.

Yeah, our oldest stuff is routers as well, I believe we have some 8-9 years old. Nearly as old as the company!

Commodore 64

So 25-30 years old?

My last employer used it plus some custom hardware for checking wire harness assemblies.

Sun Blade 2000

I'm actually planning to put an SSD in it, but my co-workers say it's a waste of money. That may be true, but it'll be the coolest Blade 2000 out there.

How? I thought those only had FC and SCSI interfaces.

Good question..! I need to purchase an LSI HBA (PCI based), that allows me to plug in a SATA drive.

On a tangentially related note, a friend of mine is planning on putting an SSD into his PowerBook G4. Of course, those plans may be on hold as he claims to not use his computer much anymore, after getting an iPad.

Cheaper alternative to SSD: Compact Flash card with an adapter. I'm currently working on installing one into my iBook G4.

There's an idea! The last time I personally looked at CF cards was a few years ago. Back then, the theoretical max speed was "only" 66MB/s, which an SSD can easily top. However, it looks like the new theoretical max is 133MB/s, which is faster than many SSDs, especially after use without TRIM.

says the wikipedia page for CompactFlash

That'll be kind of difficult. There are hardly any PATA SSDs available.

There are adaptors. And he works at a Mac repair shop, so, he's got all the tools and supplies he needs available to him.

Neat! What is it doing ?

It runs Glassfish and ActiveMQ.

The company I work for has two fax servers for the handful of people in the world who still think it's amazing that you can send paper through the telephone. They're Gateway 2000s. Don't know the exact model, but they still have this logo on them:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Gateway_2000_L...

If by production you mean a mission-critical computer and not just a server in a datacenter, one of my previous companies has 486s with DOS still running machine tools (manufacturing equipment). It's amazing how long a computer can last when it cost a million bucks originally (with attached hardware, of course).

There are all sorts of proprietary systems running on old machines with Windows 3.11 at the university I used to work at, from the scoreboard in the football stadium to extremely expensive scanning electron microscopes.

Also, there's a 7-year-old Solaris machine which hosts the entire administrative database, with no fallback.

We have the same VME crate running the telescope drive motors that was put in when the place was built in the early 80s.

There are a lot of 1960s minicomputers running factories and power stations out there. Do you want to close down a major power plant to install a PC based replacement and hope that it works first time?

> Do you want to close down a major power plant to install a PC based replacement and hope that it works first time?

This will probably sound weird but I actually feel better with that 1960's stuff in there even if the PC based replacement would work the first time.

If only because I think that it wouldn't last. PCs are built using cheap components, even the industrial ones. It's very hard to even find a power supply that will last more than a few years. And anything with a 'regular' fan on it is immediately suspect.

i still use a SGI Octane2 for web related coding and some video work. it runs KDE3 ontop of IRIX, it also has gimp, inkscape, Illustrator 5.5 and Photoshop 3, Firefox 2 and runs jEdit (java). Pretty much all i need. It's still reasonably snappy. Farewell IRIX.

A Dell computer running Win 2K server w/ a Pentium 400MHz & 512MB RAM. Its an old server but has not crashed in years (I've rebooted for maintenance here and there, but thats it).

I think I've had it since since 2001 or 2002.

At my first job some extremely expensive piece of spectrometry equipment was controlled by a Compaq Deskpro 386 (c. 1986).

I left at the beginning of 2005 and it wouldn't surprise me if the Deskpro is still there.

That does not surprise me one bit, those old dekspros were nearly indestructible. I've seen one be pulled off a table in a warehouse by someone tripping over a cord, the case dented the concrete floor but the compaq never blinked. Amazing hardware. I think that's the line that really cemented the compaq = solid in people's heads. They also weighed quite a bit.

My parents started a PC software ISV in the early 80s, and they bought one of the first thousand Compaq Portables in 1983 (the very first PC clones!), that they would take with them to trade shows. The keyboard flipped up to form a lid that covered the screen and floppy drives, but it had a design flaw in that it was more of a boot than a lid — the screen was on the bottom, and eventually the CRT was broken by a Airport porter. The next portable my dad bought was the first Thinkpad with a color screen. It had a PS/2 architecture and he ran OS/2 on it much of the time.

Both computers were solid as hell.

He definitely had a habit of buying insanely expensive computers and then using them forever. He had an old Dell 386 that eventually got a huge SCSI enclosure that he used as his primary machine for close to ten years (my mom had a matching one that lasted even longer). When he got a 1-meter tall dual Pentium Pro tower from Micron, he just set it up at the the other end of his 12ft desk and kept using both. He kept using that thing for another 5 years until he got a dual P4 Xeon with Rambus memory, which then lasted another 8 years (he only replaced it last year!).

For PC hardware, in-house there's a 1.8GHz Athlon running Asterisk. Out in the field, I think our lowest end is a P4 2.2GHz.

Non-PC hardware? I don't know; embedded devices all kinda blur together for me.

About 2 months ago I retired an old gateway PC that has 32 meg of memory and is from about 1990. Until the, it was running OpenBSD/pf as one of my main firewalls. I am sure it still boots. It was taken out of service as that particular internet line is not longer in use.

And I have a windows box currently running win 2k that dates from the days of windows NT 3.5. It is in daily use.

Oh, i almost forgot the two HP200LX (dos) hand-helds that i have. One of them even has a lisp and a Turbo C compiler on it.

An EC2 instance that's been running for 48 days :)

At my brother's office. Pentium II, 128MB running running SBCL ~0.8x and Allegro Serve on Slackware 7.0 (still on a 2.2 kernel, IIRC)

What's Allegro Serve serving?

Phone log software for the receptionists. They take down messages, message details and any questions. He calls back clients, or gives the phone operators response "scripts" to answer those questions themselves. Except the script is fed back into the app, a long with a meaningful phrasing of the question, and next time a similar question comes up they have a canned answer.

This was my first web app, circa 2002, IIRC. If I did it today I would make it into a full blown knowledge management system with keyword lookups.

The whole thing must have been a few hundred lines of lousy newbie CL.

Up until the beginning of this year, one of my former clients used a PIII 1133MHz with 512MB of memory to serve two Java applications with, at peak days, ~20K daily hits and ~2K sales with a turnover of ~100K euro. The machines could easily handle twenty times that volume. There was a machine with similar specs available for failover.

We have an IBM RS/6000 43P circa 1996 still running, doing production email services. No hardwaree problems at all!

I wouldn't expect too many people here have old stuff because 1) it's a fairly young group and 2) startups get to start fresh. Of course there'll likely be a few exceptions, too, that might be interesting. edw519 probably has something that he has to feed paper tapes to regularly:-)

("Piqued my curiosity", BTW)

I think that the Linksys WRTG was what sounded the death-knell for lots of old hardware. It used to be the case that the oldest, cheapest box you had ended up as a router/firewall and since the thing never really needed to hit disk it would probably keep running until the PCBs turned to dust. I used to routinely use old 486 and first-gen Pentiums as cheap gateway boxes but now I will just flash a new bit of firmware into a wireless base station and toss the old hardware.

Agreed, though startups also like to cut costs, and old stuff can be free. A lot of the hackers I know who still hang around the fringes of academia have some crazy old hardware salvaged from university skips etc that still works and is used reliably - usually, to echo the thread above, as a router or similar.

I second that.. I'm trying to start my business with an old Dell bi-xeon server, one P3 733MHz and 3 other older computers. As far as they work fine, I use them to run web crawling, solr and hadoop.

They are very very helpful, and I plan to use them to the death before going live and have to spend any €€€. They are all in my kitchen, with a perfect Qnap NAS for the backups.

Old computers are not exactly 'free', as they use a lot more watt per flop than new computers.

> Piqued my curiosity

Fixed, thanks. That should teach me to go from hearing to writing without checking ;)

At an old job, maybe 5 years ago, we still had an old 286 full tower with a 1200baud modem (running an old x86 unix) which was used as a dial-up file server... I doubt it's still in use today.

A Windows 98 PC for sample transfer to an old Akai S950 (software doesn't work in Windows XP), and the same machine to run a HardSID ISA card (ISA is a pre-PCI PC device bus).

parts of my desktop are around 6 or 7 years old, but I gave it a refurbish about 4 years back

not currently using for production because after staying up all night updating and deleting old backups, I forgot to bring it where I was going :(

NES?

I do my FreeBSD testing on a 10 year old box.

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