3 ms·

> ... unreliable ... I'm sure that machine will still power on after in 20 years. Try that with today's flimsy throwaway junk.

chillacy 8y ago
Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? If anything we need more biodegradable parts, and bottles that last 10 years not 500 years.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? I can't think of any modern machines that will be unusable in 5 years. Even my smartphone is 7 years old and still perfectly fine. Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 (it has since been donated to a computer museum).
  - japanoise 8y ago
    >Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 Please don't take this as sneering -because I'm genuinely interested in late 70s micros!- but what did you use the system 3 for? Can you tell me about it as a computer? It's not a computer I know much about and I'm interested in what you would've used it for, especially recently.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      It was a z80-based CP/M machine. I got it as payment for a software project I did for someone. I used it for recreational/hobby activities. I forget the system clock speed, but I think it was around 2 MHz. The thing was made of steel, weighed over 100lbs, and contained 4 8-inch floppy drives (combined capacity for all four was about 2.5 megs, I think, but it may have been 5). The one I had contained an insane 512 megs of RAM. If I remember correctly, the one I had was purchased new for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 (1979, which is about $35,000 today). This was, at the time, serious hardware. It even did high-resolution graphics that would (barely) still be considered high-resolution today. Turning it on literally made my lights dim momentarily and sounded like a jet engine spooling up. It was glorious. Nothing about it is practical in today's terms, of course. I had fun doing things like writing compilers and software to use it as the coordinator for a crazy project I was engaging in at the time: I had networked 10 Kaypro IIs together with it and was using the entire combined system as a single multi-CPU computing machine. What I mostly did with it, though, was to experiment with hardware. The System III was an S-100 bus machine, and did not even have a motherboard as we think of them these days. It had a backplane that you installed cards into to provide all functionality. This made it really fun and easy to experiment with changes that would, in a modern machine, have required altering the motherboard.

chillacy 8y ago

Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? If anything we need more biodegradable parts, and bottles that last 10 years not 500 years.

JohnFen 8y ago
> Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? I can't think of any modern machines that will be unusable in 5 years. Even my smartphone is 7 years old and still perfectly fine. Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 (it has since been donated to a computer museum).
- japanoise 8y ago
  >Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 Please don't take this as sneering -because I'm genuinely interested in late 70s micros!- but what did you use the system 3 for? Can you tell me about it as a computer? It's not a computer I know much about and I'm interested in what you would've used it for, especially recently.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    It was a z80-based CP/M machine. I got it as payment for a software project I did for someone. I used it for recreational/hobby activities. I forget the system clock speed, but I think it was around 2 MHz. The thing was made of steel, weighed over 100lbs, and contained 4 8-inch floppy drives (combined capacity for all four was about 2.5 megs, I think, but it may have been 5). The one I had contained an insane 512 megs of RAM. If I remember correctly, the one I had was purchased new for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 (1979, which is about $35,000 today). This was, at the time, serious hardware. It even did high-resolution graphics that would (barely) still be considered high-resolution today. Turning it on literally made my lights dim momentarily and sounded like a jet engine spooling up. It was glorious. Nothing about it is practical in today's terms, of course. I had fun doing things like writing compilers and software to use it as the coordinator for a crazy project I was engaging in at the time: I had networked 10 Kaypro IIs together with it and was using the entire combined system as a single multi-CPU computing machine. What I mostly did with it, though, was to experiment with hardware. The System III was an S-100 bus machine, and did not even have a motherboard as we think of them these days. It had a backplane that you installed cards into to provide all functionality. This made it really fun and easy to experiment with changes that would, in a modern machine, have required altering the motherboard.