Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

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FlyingPenguin
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Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Heh. Not surprising there's a niche manufacturer of Win98 PCs to support companies using old automation hardware that won't run on newer hardware or OSes.

Up until a couple of years ago, I had a few clients that still used old Win98 boxes I had to keep nursing along. I'd even scavenge for old hardware at flea markets just to have spare parts to keep them running.

I had a golf course that used (and may still!) a Win 98 box to control a wireless irrigation system, that used an ISA card to interface to the big transmitter. It all worked off touch tones broadcast over regular 2 meter band radio. Same company used an old Win95 box to print laminated security badges.

I know Exec's old employer used a lot of old PCs for lab automation.

Everything looks brand new, including the Win98 serial sticker.

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Executioner
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Re: Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

Post by Executioner »

Yeah I used a Win98 box to run a Supermicrometer to store measured data. I even created the Excel sheets that would automate it by recording the data directly to Excel, then having Excel look at another Excel table to confirm if the value was within tolerance or not.

Most of the other hardware machines in the company were using Windows XP. The company really struggled to switch to Windows 7 when they were forced, but several machines would not run on anything but XP, and the manufacture of the hardware was no longer in business.
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Pugsley
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Re: Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

Post by Pugsley »

Still have machines that I work on running NT or even 2 that I know of are still running 95. Industry is strange like that.
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reno
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Re: Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

Post by reno »

still remember up to like 10 years ago. we had a friend who company was using the old pin wheel printer that used the old green paper that you have to rip the edges off . he used it to run everything for the company including printing invoices . never forget the first time we open un the computer that was running windows 75 . how it keep going with all the dust bunny's in it was a mystery to me . the dust bunny's were so thick in it .reminded me of a furnace filter you find in todays home . those white pleated type most people use . had to use my shop vac to clean it first then compressed air cans . to this day we dont know how the cpu fan was cooling the cpu in the machine . don't remember if it was a old packer bell or e-machine . if remember correctly it was a 386 computer with like 8 mg of ram in it. the computer was used to keep inventory of there plastic dome skylights division and employee payroll program for there roofing company. they refused to upgrade because the payroll program was old school and not avail any more.
also they have to pay and learn to upgrade to peachtree or quickbook . the owners sister was who used the computer and didn't want to have to start learning a new program .
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Pugsley
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Re: Why Pay $1000 for a 25 year old PC?

Post by Pugsley »

Im still sitting on a stack of P1 233mmx CPUs that are popular in industry. I can almost trade them in for spanking new CPUs.
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