Oldest computer on the internet?

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Fri Dec 17 13:20:01 2004

On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 13:43 -0500, Ashley Carder wrote:
> > Does anyone know what the oldest documented functional computer is that is
> > connected to the internet?
> ..... and is accessible by others via telnet, etc?

'connected' in what sense? Various possibilities spring to mind:

1) Original hardware with period components forming a network interface
such as Ethernet,

2) Original hardware with modern components forming a network interface
such as Ethernet,

3) Original hardware as a parasite system hanging from something else
(via serial or parallel say) with the 'something else' doing a lot of
the work,

4) Original hardware using original serial interface and dial-up via an
acoustic coupler...


Likely there's all sort of variations. Personally I like the 4th one...
but both 1 and 4 seem 'pure' solutions in that they aren't replying on
components that weren't around at the time (with the exception of the
Internet itself and Ethernet maybe!)

The telnet restriction's something of a shame. I mean someone could
maybe bodge some sort of interface onto our 1950's Marconi so it could
be 'seen' from the 'net in some fashion, but they're not going to be
able to run a Unix-like OS on it!

And by "documented" do you mean used in a real-world corporate sense, or
simply "known about" by people?

cheers

Jules
Received on Fri Dec 17 2004 - 13:20:01 GMT