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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 13th Apr 2015, 1:02 pm   #1
nigelr2000
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Default Old & still used 486

Made a service call to a customer this morning who runs a Garden Centre and specialises in breeding roses. Whilst sorting his laptop I asked what "happened to the that old 486 you used to have"? "I still use it for labels" he said. I was astounded and here it is all it does is print labels on a dot matrix printer and runs in DOS not even got windows on it. It's never let him down and does exactly what he wants it too so he sees no need to replace it.

Anyone else know of an old dinosaur still in daily use in a business environment ?
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Old 13th Apr 2015, 3:04 pm   #2
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

My old Compaq 486 still my my main computer - and in DOS programs: Works, JetStetter DTP Ormus II CAD... for business and pleasure. Never let me down (fingers crossed!!). I have a 586 in reserve. As for my "superfast" (huh!) internet Widows XP PC - a total pain in the posterior! Luddites Rool!
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Old 13th Apr 2015, 4:58 pm   #3
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Our lighting desk, a Zero 88 Sirius 500 uses a 486 motherboard with a Winchip processor, 32 meg of ram and a massive 500mB hard drive, it too isn't running windows but a proprietary operating system which is actually quite good.
We're hoping that the motherboard, hard drive (a SCSII drive) or the interface board (ISA slot) don't fail as it could be interesting trying to get replacements these days especially the interface board.
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Old 13th Apr 2015, 5:50 pm   #4
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

A company I do some work for have a little spray drying machine run off a 386 running DOS and a SCADA programme that I know from trying, will not run on anything faster than a 50 MHz machine.
I've been telling them for years that they are vulnerable, to no avail. I'm just waiting for it to fall over then I can sell them my 486-50 for a huge sum!

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Old 13th Apr 2015, 8:06 pm   #5
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

In work there are modern AF spectrum analysers - but I don't use them enough to learn how!

So...I use an OnoSokki CF900 dual channel FFT analyser. This will save onto 3.5" DD disks in a format which nothing else can read. So - instead - one can download one screen at a time via a GPIB cable into a GPIB board in a 486 running a DOS exe file. One then copies the files onto the A: drive, and then finds the machine with both A: drive and a USB port, whereupon the tiny (but very useful and right every time) time- or freq- domain data files can be copied onto ones stick in ASCII format, and thence to Matlab.

The main attraction is probably that no-one else can be bothered with all this, so this ends up as 'my' machine!
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Old 13th Apr 2015, 8:16 pm   #6
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Quote:
Originally Posted by ex seismic View Post
A company I do some work for have a little spray drying machine run off a 386 running DOS and a SCADA programme that I know from trying, will not run on anything faster than a 50 MHz machine.
It would be rather experimental, but the program may run in an emulator called DOSbox, which has a number of useful features, including the ability to reduce the emulated processor speed.

However, I've found older PCs generally very reliable. I've had more problems with modern(ish) machines than 286s, 486s and pentium machines. Things can get bad when they do go wrong however, a number of otherwise good manufacturers like Olivetti used weird shape motherboards and power supplies that were probably a pain to replace at the time, and are even worse now.
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 9:40 am   #7
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

We had an label engraving machine where I used to work, this was powered by a 386 running Dos. Although a newer machine was put in to service, the old one is still in use for some specific tasks.

I know they have a spare 386 machine in reserve, should it be needed.

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Old 14th Apr 2015, 12:26 pm   #8
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

I was still occasionally using a 486 DX2-66 until June 2014.

It ran dbase 4 which had a lot of student data recorded for the school I work in. It was also rather good for quickly printing labels.

In it's last 5 years we probably only fired it up a couple of times a year, mostly to get data to write references for students who left some time ago. But what finally killed it was a move to another building where we were instructed "No computers are to be moved. All new stuff". I pleaded my case to keep the old girl going, the BIOS was dated June 1993!

It did have Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on it, as well as Dos 6.2

Sadly I wasn't allowed to pack it up for the move....but somehow the two IDE hard drives survived and were passed onto my ex-colleague who wrote the dbase scripts back in 1996....

I did manage to move my desktop PC to the new building.....by putting it in a large crate with it's monitor and printer....padlocking the crate with 4 padlocks and sticking biohazard signs on it.....thus I am the only person in the school with a personalised PC
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 12:29 pm   #9
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

PCs of that era did seem to be much better made than more modern ones, but of course they were comparably a lot more expensive when new. IBM PC-AT computers cost thousands new back in the 80s for example.

Things ran at more sedate speeds and didn't need big heatsinks and fans to keep everything cool, so the ageing effect of heat on capacitors and other parts was much less. They will probably keep going for many more years yet.

Probably the main trouble area as they age will be hard disks, because they are mechanical. Any DOS or Windows IDE/ATA hard disk could be backed up by temporarily connecting it as a slave to a PC running something like Acronis TrueImage, which in turn can be restored to another hard disk should the worst happen. If the replacement disk is bigger it can be partitioned just to the size needed/supported and the rest ignored.
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 1:06 pm   #10
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gulliver View Post
"No computers are to be moved. All new stuff".
Nice to know my tax money is being spent wisely. What a bizarre policy.

I haven't seen one in use for a very long time, I'm afraid. Newer models are now freely available for literally nothing, so unless there is good reason to retain them, most are quickly superseded by newer, secondhand machines.
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 2:52 pm   #11
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

The place I used to work for used to use '286 and even XT machines, running MS-DOS and QBasic, to run the end-of-line test equipment (connected via a 32-bit I/O card that fit in an 8-bit ISA slot). Some of these clunkers even had only 5.25 inch floppy disks. Which wasn't really a problem, because they only had to do one thing. As for the ones which had HDDs, most of them had the pre-IDE sort, that used a 34-way and a 20-way cable

As these died off they were scrapped and replaced with newer ones. Towards the end we had 80386, 80486 and even some Pentium machines running end of line tests; and we were just about to switch to a "new" standard test hardware / software stack based on Visual BASIC on Windows 95 / 98 (this was 2002). There were also computers of similar ages controlling production-line equipment.

I remember replacing a '286 machine on a boiler control test rig with a '486 and suffering divide-by-zero errors, due to a particularly ill-conceived software timing loop. Fortunately there was room on disk for a copy of the old test program alongside the one I modified to work properly -- I cared more about the growing stack of untested boards, and the knowledge that somewhere down the A38 was a warehouse full of gas boilers missing motherboards, than I did about following procedure to the letter, so I altered the program and then put in a change request for the work I'd already done! Negative quantities on time sheets, anyone? (No, we didn't fill those in properly, either.)

As an aside, QBasic actually ran slightly slower on a Pentium than on a similar-speed 80486 .....
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 3:27 pm   #12
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Back in the mid 1980s when were developing OrmusCAD for 'Facilities Management' everything was on 5-1/4" floppies on an 80xx/AT; one of our clients, BOC, then decided in the late 1990s to go the AutoCad route on a mainframe (IBM system 36? - can't remember!). The engineers were gobsmaked at what a lil' 'ol DOS based CAD system could do in 1/4 the time and 1/4 the storage needs! So out came my 286 to copy BOC's 5-1/4 floppies; convert them to DXF (yeuk!) and re-copy onto 3-1/2 floppies... progress, eh?! I'm sticking to DOS!!
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 3:58 pm   #13
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

I've still got an ancient Toshiba 286-and-8Mb-RAM laptop somewhere "just in case" I need to reprogram a couple of 1980s-vintage 'Standard' two-way radios that are still in service: the reprogramming uses a serial-port cable and a DOS-only program with software timing-loops between writing each 32-bit word into the radios' flash-memory.

It's a decade since I last needed to do this though - truth is, if the radios fail or need reprogramming I'm almost certain to tell the user they're 'beyond support' and that it'll be easier/quicker/more-reliable to splash the cash on a new FeiDaxin/Baofeng/Wouxun which can be programmed with a smartphone and comes with a warranty.

Old stuff may be fun to play with but I'd rather not have to wrangle it in a business environment.
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Old 14th Apr 2015, 5:07 pm   #14
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Quote:
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As an aside, QBasic actually ran slightly slower on a Pentium than on a similar-speed 80486 .....
Yes I think it was generally accepted that a top end 486DX was faster than early Pentuims.
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Old 15th Apr 2015, 9:52 am   #15
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

I have a Compaq Aero 486 33 MHz colour sub-notebook which I use occasionally for amateur packet radio. It runs BayCom under DOS 6.22 admirably, and works straight off 12 volts which makes it very convenient for portable operation in the car or caravan.
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Old 15th Apr 2015, 11:55 am   #16
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Originally Posted by Nickthedentist View Post
What a bizarre policy.
Politics.

Rather than having all our IT service and procurement in-house, we now have a contract with A Large Company. Said Large Company wanted all new stuff. It has, of course, been chaos. For half a term my "illegal" PC was the only thing reliable in our department. Thankfully we still have our own IT staff who acknowledge that mine is probably the most secure PC in the building and turn a blind eye.

486 machines were probably the zenith of PC build quality and were a huge improvement over 386's and below. The first pentiums really weren't much faster, if at all. I remember having a Dell System 425 s/l which I overclocked to 33MHz. It had the video card on the motherboard with (for the time) a large 2Mb of video RAM and 4MB of system RAM. It out performed pentium 60 systems in most benchmark tests and as a gaming machine. Though I was using it for my university work, churning cubic splines to approximate solutions to simultaneious differential equations overnight.
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Old 15th Apr 2015, 7:33 pm   #17
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Still use a 486-25 as my main development computer, but mostly now used during the test and calibration phase. Did a couple of hours yesterday calibrating some metrology equipment I make.

Did go to update it with a Pentium in the 1990s sometime, can't remember, with all new Windows software, programmers, PCB layout etc. What a disaster, none of it seemed to work RELIABLY. There is little point in shipping product to Australia if you are not 101% sure it is correct. After some months it was skipped and the DOS stuff brought back, and been here ever since. Same disc drive since I increased the size to 540MB in 1992 as well.

Lasted better than the laptop I bought in 1998. Trouble is the screen hinges crack and then the screen cables fracture. On my fourth ebay replacement but never see them now.
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Old 15th Apr 2015, 8:24 pm   #18
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

Biggest problem with 'antique' computers in a real-world production environment is - when it fails [which it must], how long will it take to source a replacement?
If indeed you can still get spares for your antique.

New hardware's dirt-cheap; billed-in-15-minute-units professional staff-time's horribly expensive, specially when you have clients breathing down your neck wondering where this morning's commits are. £1000/year-per-laptop for 24x7x3655 2-hour onsite fix-or-replace response is a bargain when it's 06:00 and you've got a noisy Queen's Counsel on the phone wondering why her laptop's died and she's in court at 10:00
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Old 15th Apr 2015, 10:42 pm   #19
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Default Re: Old & still used 486

I use a 486 DX 40 to run DOS and an ISA multifrequency video card. It was my first home built PC and has an impressive 170MB hard drive...all of which work flawlessly. I use it to run test cards on weird CRT monitors in the day job. It never fails to boot.
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Old 16th Apr 2015, 9:41 am   #20
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Yes, I can't argue with the statement that modern hardware is cheap, but it is the software where the problems reside.

I can't be alone in wondering why, after an upgrade which is now done automatically, something that used to work now doesn't. The days of time wasted after upgrading the Mac getting the printer to work again seems to happen every time. But things move, or no longer work as they used to, or should. I still can't work out how I search for EITHER file names or file contents, instead I get an enourmous list of everything.

It is, in the end, more efficient for me to keep the old 486 running than change. And they are not difficult to find, I have anough spares to last several lifetimes judging by the reliablity of the one I use. Others will have different requirements to balance.
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