Old Technology Never Dies

landbeforetimelover · **on:** July 05, 2008, 09:47:56 PM

You won't believe who just came through my door.......an 80-year-old man with a monster of a computer. He said that the geek squad couldn't do it. Oh, god it's huge! 5 feet tall at least. It has windows 3.1 on it. He must have paid a pretty penny for it though. 100mhz processor, 16mb ram, and a 80mb hard disk.

It has a regular 3.5inch floppy drive and a 5.25inch floppy drive. He said that they couldn't upgrade it to windows 95 at bestbuy.

Well, I took the thing apart and it had a place for a CD drive! This is the oldest piece of technology I've ever worked with. I charged him $5 to put a CD drive in. The drivers were a total B**** to find in windows 3.1 but I finally got it working. Then I upgraded it to windows 98 instead of 95. Boy, he was happy! I also found out that the board could handle a max of a 500mhz processor and 1gb of ram. Yes, a gigabyte!!! He said he paid over $35,000 for it when he got it. Well, I don't have a gig of that really old Single Inline Memory Module (SIMM) ram. I only have chips up to 128mb, but the thing had 8 slots! I could upgrade the thing to a gig! Here's a picture of some old ram that look remarkably similar to the ones I popped in:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/13330254...861c6b5.jpg?v=0

After installing a gig of ram (Jeeze windows 3.1 would have flown on that!!!

) I decide to upgrade the processor. I put in a 550mhz processor with a lot of goop. It is 50mhz over the max the board can handle, but with a little tweaking of the DIP switches, I got the whole 550mhz to recognize. With that done, I looked in a really OLD computer repair book I had and it said the board could handle up to a 9gb hard drive. Incredibly I have one so I pop it in. Now, it's running windows 98 still, but it far exceeds the requirements for xp so I upgrade it to that.

When he leaves, his specs are as follows:

550mhz PIII processor

1gb of ram (60ns. At this time, ram isn't measured in mhz.)

9gb hard drive

Windows XP professional SP3

That was the oldest upgrade I've ever done. Cost the old man $180 for all that. He would have been better off buying a new computer, but he refused. I never knew this, but windows XP has drivers for those 5.25inch floppy drives!

Ptyra · **Reply #1 on:** July 05, 2008, 11:44:08 PM

Lol, that's pretty funny XD !

pokeplayer984 · **Reply #2 on:** July 06, 2008, 01:30:14 AM

Wow! You out-performed the famous known Geek Squad? Now I'm really recommending you to everyone I can.

I didn't think stuff like that still existed, but man, that old guy sure held on to a computer that could go for a pretty penny at big time auctions. I think you're lucky you didn't give him a heart attack when you were done.

Mumbling · **Reply #3 on:** July 06, 2008, 01:44:38 AM

Haha cool!

You know this computer belongs in a museum :^.^:

Kor · **Reply #4 on:** July 06, 2008, 03:39:09 AM

I'm glad things went ok for him. But won't putting in a faster process or mess up the motherboard or something, or would underclocking it have worked? As long as he is happy that is the key, and he has a far better computer then he had when he went in.

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #5 on:** July 06, 2008, 03:39:24 AM

Not anymore. It is half-decent now if I do say so myself. I kept all of the old parts, but they really are useless. An 80mb hard drive. I have over 100 times that much space on my little flash drive.

Kor · **Reply #6 on:** July 06, 2008, 03:52:15 AM

Not much one could do with an 80mb hard drive unless it was used to store only text, or something like that.

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #7 on:** July 06, 2008, 05:01:36 AM

Quote

won't putting in a faster process or mess up the motherboard or something, or would underclocking it have worked?

Ya know, I could have explained it better a long time ago when I was 11 and going for the A+ certification exam, but since then I've lost almost all of the irrelevant information that the practice exams taught me. I do know however that the maximums that are set by the manufacturers do have a bit of leeway, somewhere between 5 and 20 percent. That's why overclocking is possible and why you can put 2.5gb of ram into a computer that can supposedly only handle 2gb. I think the board has a maximum of 500mhz because of how much power is required to power that processor. For example, in the creation of that motherboard, there was the 100mhz processor costing $1,900 and the 500mhz processor costing over $20,000. They both use, lets say 13 volts. Well, the newer 550mhz processor requires more energy than the 500 and 100mhz processors from 1991, but only by a very small amount. I'd say the 550 would use something like 13.3 volts as opposed to 13. The socket was only made to output 13 volts but it's being forced to output 13.3, which puts a small strain on the board. Normally I wouldn't do this but this was the only processor I had and the computer is so old he'd be lucky to be able to use it for 5 more years. The strain on the CPU socket reduced the existing life of the motherboard from 5 years to 3 years. Not a big deal since to upgrade his computer again he'd have to buy a new motherboard anyways. Sorry if I explained this wrong, but I'm going off of memories that are almost 6 years old and for someone as young as I am, 6 years is like 1/3 of my lifetime.

I remember reading a lot about older technology, but only technology as old as the original pentium processors, which were getting old as I was learning about them. My knowledge is confined from 1997 and above. Since I was born in 1991, I got into this really young as you can tell.

I still have some older technology. I have one IBM computer from 1989 that has a 66mhz processor, 4mb of ram, and a 20mb hard drive.

I don't really have time to mess with those kinds of computers anymore though. Learning about them would really be a waste of my time.

Kor · **Reply #8 on:** July 06, 2008, 06:10:31 AM

Looking at old Technology can be interesting, especially if you are old enough to remember when it was new and comparing it to what folks have nowadays. If you think some computers from 1990 is old, I wonder what you'd think of the type of computers NASA used to go to the moon.

Petrie. · **Reply #9 on:** July 06, 2008, 06:45:29 AM

I bet this guy used this computer for one thing only--writing documents and reading email. If that's all you do, what more would you need? Keeps you in touch with family and all.

Nice story. I bet the computer has sentimental value and that's why he wanted to keep it. The oldest computer I remember having in the house was about three feet tall...an old 266mhz Gateway.

Kor · **Reply #10 on:** July 06, 2008, 01:43:14 PM

The first computer I had, and I still have it, is a tandy 1000ex that is I think 4. something mhz, with no hard drive, just a 5.25 inch floppy drive.