Oldest Working PC?

From: Joe R. <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Fri Jan 16 11:03:56 2004

   I used to work for Martin Marietta's Aerospace division. When the
defense work slowed to a trickle in the early 1990s and they were laying
off hundreds of people I switched over to the Data Systems division. One of
the jobs that I did there was to go around and inspect company PCs for
unauthorized software. As part of that process we had to inventory all of
the computers, SW, peripherals, etc. Based on what we found and the user
requirements, MM replaced thousands of various brand and vintage PCs with
new 386s. One day, I inspected an upper level manager's computer and I
found an original IBM PC with either 64 or 256k of RAM and one floppy drive
and no hard drive. It was an IBM model 5150 with serial number 000023!!!!
We couldn't even run our virus checker and inventoring SW on it. The only
thing that the manager used it for was to connect to the E-mail system
(IRMA IIRC). He had DOS 2.0 IIRC and the IBM IRMA SW and that was all. We
tried to upgrade him to a 386 with Windows but he was adament and refused
to switch to the new system and kept his old PC. It's probably still there.

   Joe

At 08:59 AM 1/16/04 -0600, you wrote:
>>From The Register: "Intel and HP find oldest working PC"
>(http://www.theregister.com/content/67/34933.html)
>
>"Dutch company PHI DATA yesterday received a ? 18,000 prize from Intel, HP
>and Dutch IT weekly Computable for still owning and operating a vintage IBM
>5160 (Intel 8088) computer from 1983. PHI Data uses the IBM to test matrix
>printers. It is now officialy the oldest obsolete-yet-active PC in the Low
>Countries."
><snip>
>"When Dell ran a contest in the USA back in 1999 for the oldest
>small-business PC still in use, the winner was the Altair 8800b. Still
>running a 1960 Digital PDP-1 to do your maths? Let us know."
>
>I suspect that a number on this list can do better.
>
>Bob
>
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Received on Fri Jan 16 2004 - 11:03:56 GMT

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