RE: Oldies but goodies

James,

Funny you should mention a Compaq portable XT - I have a 1984 model with DOS
3.1, 640K memory, 10 MB hard drive, still works perfectly.  It has
WordPerfect 5.1 on it, and I always make sure I keep a copy of my resume on
5 1/4 inch diskette, just in case I don't have anything else working to
update it. ;)  It also still has an old copy of Typing Tutor on it, I'm
thinking of making my kids use it this summer to learn to type PROPERLY.
Heck, I think it still has a working copy of RCW/3X on it, just in case I
need to dial in to the past (note relevance to Midrange-L, even if
tenuous!).

And guess what - the little slide tabs that hold the keyboard to the main
unit aren't broken and STILL WORK!

Granted that emergency resume service isn't exactly a heavy lifter
application, but there's also that little gratification of knowing that
whenever the newer junk crashes or breaks, I can pull this out of the closet
and KNOW that it will boot right up, and I can run the ancient GWBASIC
example games like DONKEY.BAS and forget today...

Dave Shaw
Spartan International, Inc.
Spartanburg, SC
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-----Original Message-----
From: James W. Kilgore [mailto:eMail@James-W-Kilgore.com]

Here's a little homework, tomorrow take a look around and see if you can
spot a server or desktop machine that is -still- doing it's job once it
has reached voting age.  Let's take some stats on brand name.  You've
got a PDPII that's been humming right along for 25 years or a Compaq
portable XT (about the size and weight of a portable sewing machine)
with a 5250 emulation card in it that you lug around with you to every
client, tell us about it. ;-)

1982 ... DOS 1.0 ... 8mhz processors ...  Any other stories of machines
still doing their job that are old enough to get a drivers license?
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