What to buy?

No, I buy just about all computer kit from Ebay or other commercial auctions. You find some items are badly described, or being sold by some vendor that usually sells in a different market, say machine tool, factory clearance, or it's sold as untested. So long as the item is complete and it's supported by the photo's, it should be safe to buy, but expect to have to clean, service it and configure it yourself. The key is to stick to the high end kit, since this is better built to start with and has a longer design life.

For example, I bought the following at auction a week or so ago, again at scrap prices:

Some of it's a bit ancient, but there's some really usefull stuff as well. Some items will get refurbished and sold on, others will be kept for the lab here...

Regards,

Chris

Probably right and yet another example of how hp buys up and dumbs down good brands. Compaq were arguably the best pc class hardware builder in the business with support to match. They just bought out 3com as well, a company I worked for in the mid 90's and respect for the quality of their kit. I guess they won't be long for this world either.

Hp did tha same thing with what was left of Digital / Dec. The fastest processor (Alpha) on the planet gets canned because of hp politics and nih factor :-(...

Regards,

Chris

I confess to have been quite interested when the machine arrived with a

64 bit coa on the case, but not only won't the apps run, 64 bit Xp is far more expensive as well. Just having to upgrade from w2k to xp was irritating enough, but vista, with all it's drm and police state lockdowns was a no no from the start. It took them years to even get all the common drivers together.

From what i've heard, 7 is just vista with a nice wrapper / summer frock, but ymmv.

I expect to get 5 years from a pc before replacement and that's bought s/hand. If the original kit still gets the job done, why would I ever want to "upgrade" in the first place ?. If it ain't broke etc.

Like lemmings to the edge, some people just have to have the very latest, even when they are paying through the nose for no real improvement :-)...

Regards,

Chris

That could be a serious problem in a production environment where many PC-controlled machines are used for decades. Presses, heat applicators, die bonders, lasers, and so on. They will not budget another $100k+ just because Bill Gates' folks want them to. I've had people say that the ISA-bus was dead and when showing them some production machinery and the PC next to it that was quite eye-popping for them.

How do DOS apps fare in Windows 7?

Keep a stack of XP licenses :-)

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Regards, Joerg

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I think of Win 7 as what Vista should have been... it's basically Vista after some reasonably sane people finally took a look at what people really wanted and what hardware they'd expect to run it on. So yeah, not really that many new features or anything, but much better thought-out.

I figure PCs should get 2-4 years of service, but I'm also starting with PCs that provide pretty high "bang for the buck" to begin with (e.g., today, those would be machines in the

When I tried to set it up initially, it complained as the machine only had 1GB but for my machine, DDR2 is dirt cheap and I already had another

4 GB sat waiting to go into the machine.

Ahh, yes, I forgot the keyboards, pretty much all the last lot have had the lettering worn off them now. All the cordless keyboards that were ordered with the last lot have gone in the bin as well but they were Logitech not Dell.

--
Clint Sharp

These sound like cases where Chris's "if it ain't broke..." philosophy should apply... I wouldn't be upgrading production machines unless it was clear there really will be some tangible improvement (e.g., the machine won't crash as often, perhaps, or be faster, or whatever).

Same fate as 16-bit Windows apps: There is no more support for them. You can use a virtual machine (including "XP Mode" in Win7) or -- probably better still -- use DOSBox:

(...works on Macs and Linux boxes too).

Absolutely, despite Microsoft's wishes, I don't think XP is going to die any time soon. Nor should it!

---Joel

Just had it a couple weeks ago. President of a very old client called, a test station of early 90's vintage had gone down. Line stop situation, not good at all. As usual it was the PC, the motherboard must have thought that >15 years was enough. The great news is that you can easily buy ISA motherboards, brand new ones.

So far (up to XP) I never had a need for DOSBox. All the DOS apps simply ran. Even the really, really old ones where you had to fix the old Borland runtime bug before they'd work on any fast PC.

It might have been their last useful OS for quite a while. But I won't judge Win 7 before I've seen it. The fact that native support for old apps is gone does not bode well though.

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Regards, Joerg

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I've got a few that need DOSBox. Mostly for device reasons; graphics and rudimentary sound (SoundBlaster) are mapped okay, but that's about it (no AWE32 support, let's say). The other reason is speed: NTVDM goes *too fast* for some! Speed shouldn't matter, but some writers were less scrupulous, so for example, the mouse is polled so often that turn rate is reduced to nil in Descent, a game basically written for the Pentium.

Fortunately, most games have a small but dedicated fanbase with enough programmers to write ports for all the operating systems. I quite happily play Doom in Win32 style with prBoom. They often look better, too, like the OpenGL jDoom. And they have fewer bugs, except for the ones specifically written to reproduce the old experience _exactly_ (like Chocolate Doom).

Tim

--
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Even 5 years ago there were still places doing PDP-11 support -- sometimes having re-engineered, e.g., option card boards from scratch and using modern FPGAs -- but I'm not sure if they're still around.

Microsoft has never had the "backwards compatibility will last forever" business model that, e.g., IBM has with System/360 introduced in 1964 (although even there, my understanding is that older System/360 software is sometimes running under a virtual machine today rather than natively -- it's just that IBM has had virtual machine technology deployed for decades now with VM/CMS and whatnot so no one even notices, whereas with PCs it's become the Hot New Thing just a handful of years ago). When it comes right down to it I think a certain amount of their business model *is* planned obsolescence... and as a company primarily selling software (unlike IBM, which primary sells services these days) -- and with a voracious appetite for cashflow (given their size) -- I can kinda see their thinking. And keep in mind that the mainstream Windows world of 32-bit applications began with Windows 95 in...

1995, so that's 14 years that customers have had to get their software ported before 16-bit and DOS support was pulled, after all. (And it'll certainly be another 5+ years before XP licenses become scarce, I imagine.)

Note that Apple isn't really that much better in this regard.

There is, of course, Linux... the OS is all open-source; no one will ever be able to tell you you can't use it anymore! Maybe that $100k is better spent on porting apps to Linux than buying copies of Win7?

---Joel

14 years is nothing in production. You can still buy the old PC-DOS if you really need it. Probably comes with a cloth-covered binder :-)

Thing is, the $100k ain't in the budget. Which is why the old PC needs to be resurrected or replaced by one of similar technology if it ever croaks, like in the case of my client. Except now they have an CD writer in there ... woohoo!

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Ok, games is a whole different ballgame. That requires precise timing and all that. I use mostly productivity software that just doesn't come in any version more modern than early 90's. It's amazing. 15 years ago I'd enter some values, start the program, get a coffee, come back and it was almost done. Now I enter the values ... flash ... zzzp ... done.

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Regards, Joerg

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Well, it depends on the product, right? -- Try to find a 14-year-old cell phone or video game console or TV that's still being manufactured today!

Software of course can live much longer since the cost of replication is close to zero.

---Joel

Exactly. But Microsoft doesn't seem to understand it either. If they screw up backward compatibility people who otherwise would have plunked down $200 to get new features stick with an old version. Because it doesn't have the compatibility problems.

The worst that can happen in a business after a HW or SW upgrade is when some important application no longer works. So, sometimes it's better not to upgrade. Don't touch a running system :-)

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Here is an example, introduced in 1955 and still in production:

But I ment production machines. I've seen machines in full use that were obviously converted from leather belt drive to electric motor, probably when electricity became available because the electric motors were already rather classic.

But in order to be legit you must buy a licensed copy. I was surprised that MS-Works 6.0 was still available (8.5 behaves buggy).

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Nice.

I would imagine on production machines sometimes some little part that originally cost, e.g., $0.39 breaks and, being no longer available commercially, requires hundreds of dollars of custom machining to replicate to get the line going again.

But I take your point... Microsoft dropping backwards compatibility may well backfire, garnering fewer new sales than if they'd left it in.

Tried 9.0? :-) There's a free-as-in-beer version that displays little advertisements in a window next to the work area! (The ad-free version, at $35, still seems quite cheap.)

---Joel

AIUI, HP bought Q for their service arm (which Q bought from DEC).

The fact that no money was being made on it didn't enter into it at all, huh?

[...]

That's why a machine shop with talented tool & die makers is crucial. You just make the part there. This is how whole fleets of vintage aircraft such as the DC-3 remain in service. If you need a piston for one of its Pratt&Whitney radial engines you can even buy a new one:

Beats me why they do not understand that.

Nah, 6.0 works just fine, almost as good as the two DOS versions I also have. In software it's often "older = better".

9.0 is under $20 now, probably dropping because of plans to discontinue this product line: 6.0 also runs around $18 now:

Most people have no clue what this cheap SW offers. I run my whole biz bookkeeping on it, as databases. Income and expense journal, billing, travel, mileage, parts stock, and so on. Essentialy 8.5 is ok, it's just that sometimes the copy and paste function fails when using the keyboard

9which I always do).

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Regards, Joerg

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Thats probably a fan or a loose screw in the case causing the case to resonate. Harddrives don't vibrate, they start to make squeeling noises when the bearings wear out after being on for about 10 to 12 years.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
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                     "If it doesn\'t fit, use a bigger hammer!"
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