Work is using Athlon X2 systems, what ancient tech are you running?

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
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How are these still working? What sort of voodoo magic is this? Most importantly, why why why?

So picked up some work in a retail joint with a number of branches for some extra cash. Great! Except the till hardware is 15 years old and still running XP. The master server in the office is using a brand spanking new from 5 years ago i3 2100. Everything is like treacle yet still somehow works . . . . . what ancient tech are you still using?
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,134
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My work from home laptop dock setup is still using a pair of Altec Lansing ACS5 speakers. 1995 called... it wants its cheap speakers back :)
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
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Most office applications simply don't need much in the way of computing power so an X2 or older Core based system can still be usable.

I myself have an X2 6400+ system currently booting Free-NAS.
 

pete6032

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2010
8,045
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Two work laptops from 2013. WFH all of a sudden meant we had to get laptops for people at home. Glad I didn't get rid of them. Rather than recycling them I installed SSDs in them and gave them new lives.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,327
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www.anyf.ca
We are going to be getting "upgraded" to machines that only have 4GB of ram and a 500GB HDD. At least they went with an i5 this time instead of core2duo. I had to request that they at least give us 16GB and a SSD. I was testing one of the machines and omg I forgot how brutal it is to use a HDD as an OS drive with Windows. Windows loves to thrash the hard drive constantly no matter what you're doing so it makes the whole experience terrible.

Workplaces always manage to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to PCs. If they went a little more low end they'd be paying extra because of it being considered vintage.

As far as very ancient tech in the workplace I work in telecom. Almost everything in here is older than I am. :p Lot of it is super reliable though like the DMS100 which is why it's still in use everywhere. It's from the late 70's.
 
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sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
99,611
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Ah yes...the wonderful IBM Model M.
i have 4 of them(3 1991 models, and a 1995.)

Wouldn't mind getting my 2 older 1991 Model M's rebuilt, as I bought them back in 2007..they're not as wonderfully clicky as they were.

or just buy a new unicomp
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,451
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We use a database that was developed in 1998. The input interface was last updated at that time and looks like the author had spent literally hours learning perl before building it. The reports function was updated in 2018 but only because the vendor of the previous reports function refused to renew the license for the archaic software. The 1998 database is a recanned version of several early 1980s databases that had to be upgraded for Y2K compliance. There is a replacement database in alpha testing. I was voluntold to be a tester but the project dragged into field season so I missed out.
 

VashHT

Diamond Member
Feb 1, 2007
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We have a test fixture that uses a pentium 3 and windows 98 and one with an Athlon K7. I have an old P1 chip sitting on my desk that I took out of an old PC we were throwing out here. We had a P2 system with Win95 and a P1 system with 3.1 when I started here but those both died.

Edit: It was 2007 when I started working here for a bit of reference, could not believe they had an old P1 system running still.
 
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Svnla

Lifer
Nov 10, 2003
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Our desktops are decent, Intel i5 with 2.9 Ghz and 8 GB of RAM and Windows 10. I just need bigger monitors (30" would be nice). We could get new desktops by end of this year or early next year.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
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I have that CPU in an old gaming PC, along with an 8800 Ultra.


Nice! I had an original EVGA 8800-GTX myself. :)

Sadly the 8800 kicked the bucket in like 2012 though. It did however still carry a "lifetime" warranty ... most recent replacement is a GTX-1650.
 
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dasherHampton

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Jan 19, 2018
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Nice! I had an original EVGA 8800-GTX myself. :)

Sadly the 8800 kicked the bucket in like 2012 though. It did however still carry a "lifetime" warranty ... most recent replacement is a GTX-1650.

As far as I know the Ultra still works but I haven't powered on that PC in maybe 5-6 years. Ultra was pretty much just an overclocked 8800 GTX iirc. It was probably the best looking card ever (almost a work of art), ironically before any cases had glass panes. No one could actually see it.

Remember how much people freaked out when the info leaked that the Ultra's price might exceed $1000? Now every highest end card is $1000+.
 
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Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
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As far as I know the Ultra still works but I haven't powered on that PC in maybe 5-6 years. Ultra was pretty much just an overclocked 8800 GTX iirc. It was probably the best looking card ever (almost a work of art), ironically before any cases had glass panes. No one could actually see it.

Remember how much people freaked out when the info leaked that the Ultra's price might exceed $1000? Now every highest end card is $1000+.


Mine was plain old boring black (but shiny!) ... biggest jump in 3D performance I ever experienced aside from a Voodoo 1 though. (replaced an X1900-XTX)
 
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bigi

Platinum Member
Aug 8, 2001
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I have a bunch of older Desktops and laptops. It is quite amazing how those perform once upgraded to an SSD from those super slow HDDs.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,343
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The i3 2100 was discontinued like 8 years ago .. lol

Sadly, i've switched to smaller keyboards that fit better on a keyboard drawer, but, still have a handfull of Model Ms, and have the PS2 to USB adaptors to make them work. Running a Das 2 keyboard on one box, and a gigabyte branded cherry mx on another box. Not quite as good "feeling" as buckling springs, but more or less "good enough" IMO.

i still have some ancient old parts i need to get rid of, like 90s era generic sound card and ne2000 nics .. but, mostly just have modern parts inside my pcs.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
59,668
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This is my machine I bought myself, running debian...

Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
Address sizes: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s): 4
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 4
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 58
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3550 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Stepping: 9
CPU MHz: 3144.306
CPU max MHz: 3700.0000
CPU min MHz: 1600.0000
BogoMIPS: 6585.29
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 256K
L3 cache: 6144K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3

Next best machine is the secretary's C2Quad with win10. The other two are C2D XP systems.