Quick Poll, how old is your computer.

[Bazzer Smith]

When a decent MB/cpu combo comes around I jump on it. Every 6mos -1 yr
theres a clearance of a pretty good combo as prices are cut so its
nuts to keep using some ancient system. I think its torture to use
anything older than a 1 yr unless you are one of those users with
really modest needs. However there are times when a 2-3 yr system can
still be decent if certain things dont change much.

My main system is a 3800 X2 dual core which was upgraded from a 3000
AMD 64 I bought last yearand Im still using the same motherboard after
selling my CPU. Right now is a great time with prices really falling
on both AMDs and INTELs this month - to upgrade.

My other systems though were getting really old. The 2nd and 3rd
systems are the ones that tend to be OLD. I had an Athlon 1 gig whch I
was using for years as a 2nd system. I upgraded it to a 1600 all last
year and then sold that and upgraded to a 2800 sempron which I bought
for two systems. The other one replaced a 1.4 Tbird which was in use
for the last couple of years for a person who mainly just used it for
the net and word processing etc. Since you can get a combo sempron and
MB for $60-70 now its kind silly not to upgrade unless you are on a
really tight budget. I aslo have another 3200 AMD 64 system since I
got that on a killer deal. You find so many great deals the last 2
years its hard to justify not upgrading unless you REALLY dont care
much about PCs and are a real light user. I got a 9600 though a weird
variant with only 64 megs for someone for $22 the last month.

Yes but be honest, what are you going to use those old systems for?
Yea a 1 gig system would be OK for a lot of stuff, but basically
switching it on is a waste of electricity!!!

 

[paulmd]

Yes but be honest, what are you going to use those old systems for?
Yea a 1 gig system would be OK for a lot of stuff, but basically
switching it on is a waste of electricity!!!

Anything in the pentium 1 class is a perfecly good Internet/Word
processing machine. I should point out that the power consumption on
computers has risen over recent years, with better performing chips.
THe indirect evidence to this is the monster heat sinks we see on new
machines. Meaning that the 1 gig machine will waste less juice than the
latest p4. You'd have to run a statistical analysis to prove this, but
I suspect it's true.

As long as you have no need for the latest games, or whatever
mulitmedia stuff. There's no super pressing reason to replace a working
older system.

 

[Dark Warrior_]

This is you main computer.
I am particularly interested if anyone (truthfully) has a main
computer 10 years or more old. (relates to an earlier post).

To start the ball rolling my computer is in its first year ( ~3 months
old).

hard one to answer. as I build and upgrade my pcs.

the last one I built from scratch was 1year and a half years. but been
upgrading graphic / memory / hdd / sound over time (mb and cpu stayed the
same (3ghz)). the last upgrade was apx 3 months ago for sound, uppered
graphic from 5900fx to 6600 6 months or more .

 

[kony]

It would be utterly pointless repairing my old system now if it failed,
waste of time and money. (you can buy MP3 players with more memory!!!).

Not necessarily, old parts can be cheap or free. It'd take
more time to set up an entire new box in many situations,
and IF the role of the system doesn't require higher
performance, an entire new replacement system is almost
certain to cost a lot more than repairing the present one.

This is within the context of it being a secondary or
tertiary system, such that there is another to do the jobs
needing higher performance.

I think I have to conclude that computers are now disposable items,
if my new system failed I would probably just buy a new one!!
( I certaintly would pay to have it repaired, I would expect to do
that myself anway).
I think the truth is old systems only have a value as scrap metal,
as indeed is the case now.

Perhaps to you, but many people would be glad to get one
that worked. Put up a note on the local college campus
bulletin board, someone might easily pay the $20 or so a
repair part might cost so at least it doesn't clutter a
landfill just yet, gets the most use possible before
becoming trash.

 

[philo]

Why would it matter and how would you expect to get a good
sample of user's systems by polling in only a computer
hardware newsgroup?

What I mean is, for someone's main system we'd expect that
to be far newer than 10 years old in this group, but perhaps
more interesting would be the oldest system they use at
least once a year and what they use it for.

I keep a few older machines around just for the heck of it;

A Kaypro
a few 8088's
a 286, 386 and 486

i fire them up every once in a while just for the heck of it.

my 286 has a memory expansion card and had the full 16 megs of ram

the 386 has win95 on a 40 meg drive...
it was a fun project getting win95 on that 40 meg *uncompressed* drive!

 

[Sjouke Burry]

Right behind me is my first AT 80486 33MHz (Dutch Fl 7059. ~3500$)
bought 06-08-1991.(including Fortran compiler and 80 MB disk)

Also still in use :ARC 310 RISC computer about 4 years older.

Also still in use2 200 MHz(about 1998).

In front of me: 2.7GHz celeron,80 and 200 GB Hd for this here
Internet stuff. (from 30-06-2004)

Rescued from the trash 3 BBC B, An XT(2 floppys) and assorted
186/286/386/486/586 for play,nostalgy and spare parts.

 

[meow2222]

Anything in the pentium 1 class is a perfecly good Internet/Word
processing machine. I should point out that the power consumption on
computers has risen over recent years, with better performing chips.
THe indirect evidence to this is the monster heat sinks we see on new
machines. Meaning that the 1 gig machine will waste less juice than the
latest p4. You'd have to run a statistical analysis to prove this, but
I suspect it's true.

As long as you have no need for the latest games, or whatever
mulitmedia stuff. There's no super pressing reason to replace a working
older system.

this seems a lot more realistic than some of the comments. It all
depends on the software, I've seen quite powerful machines run like a
slug, next to a P1 running several times as fast. Unfortunately most
users dont know enough to pick their software with a little care, and
end up with all sorts of leaden garbage on their machines. As it
progressively slows down they think a new faster one is the answer.
Such users, which are most people, are missing whats really going on.

This machine is late 90s, and performs as well on the net as the newer
ones I also use.


NT

 

[meow2222]

As far as the net is concerned any system over about 5 year old
is not worth repairing.

Might be true in America, but the US is a pretty small percentage of
the world.

NT

 

[Bazzer Smith]

Might be true in America, but the US is a pretty small percentage of
the world.

Well I am in the UK, my 8 year old system was problematic for 2-3
years, I could not cope well with video and some java stuff.
But wherever you live you essentially live everywhere, one click
takes you to a different continent.

 

[Bazzer Smith]

I keep a few older machines around just for the heck of it;

A Kaypro
a few 8088's
a 286, 386 and 486

i fire them up every once in a while just for the heck of it.

my 286 has a memory expansion card and had the full 16 megs of ram

the 386 has win95 on a 40 meg drive...
it was a fun project getting win95 on that 40 meg *uncompressed* drive!

Wow 8088 lol!!! Thats 8 bit isn't it, not much more than a Z80
(lovely processor), take me back a bit.
Well maybe not full 8 bit but only 40 legs!!
Must have ripped along at 4.77MHz!!
My current machine is 377 times faster!!
Do you do much video work on it?

 

[Bazzer Smith]

this seems a lot more realistic than some of the comments. It all
depends on the software, I've seen quite powerful machines run like a
slug, next to a P1 running several times as fast. Unfortunately most
users dont know enough to pick their software with a little care, and
end up with all sorts of leaden garbage on their machines. As it
progressively slows down they think a new faster one is the answer.
Such users, which are most people, are missing whats really going on.

This machine is late 90s, and performs as well on the net as the newer
ones I also use.

Unfortunately much of the content on the net forces you to upgrade,
on my old machine if someone had a video clip to share my PC
couldn't cope with it cos it was .wmv, it was fine with mgeg though
but they wouldn't make an mpeg just for me!!

 

[paulmd]

Unfortunately much of the content on the net forces you to upgrade,
on my old machine if someone had a video clip to share my PC
couldn't cope with it cos it was .wmv, it was fine with mgeg though
but they wouldn't make an mpeg just for me!!

Ah, Windows Media and other bloatware. That may force an upgrade.

But try here anyway: http://www.videolan.org/

 

[JohnS]

Unfortunately much of the content on the net forces you to upgrade,
on my old machine if someone had a video clip to share my PC
couldn't cope with it cos it was .wmv, it was fine with mgeg though
but they wouldn't make an mpeg just for me!!

The people in this group including myself have said old machines are
perfectly OK for surfing the net etc. But even in those circumstances
as long as you dont live in some remote region newer non-cutting edge
hardware can be pretty cheap.

There are lots of other issues besides just plain raw performance. If
you are running Win98 and buy a newer cheap printer you might not find
drivers for it and many other devices. So then you decide to upgrade
to WIN XP and find out the machine you have is too wimpy to even run
it in general. Old machines running 133 memory ---- in some places in
can be hard to get. For instance PC133 mem disappeared from most
places in my region while 2100 DDR was actually rebated down to FREE
after rebate. Now 2100-2700 often goes for a bit or a lot more than
3200 or even DDR2 when its on sale.

Zillions of areas like that where you have to buy more memory for the
old machine, buy new peripherals or drivers are made for a new OS etc
---- that may impact whether its better just to upgrade or not. Given
that as I mentioned in the US at least there FRYs specials and the
sempron 2800-3100 is getting lower and lower and theres another real
hot cheapo combo the Pent 805D with MB ---- sometimes it just makes
sense to upgrade. Like my neighbors and some other people I know are
real light users but they do buy new printers and scanners and other
peripherals or need to get some software for this and that and
sometimes theres too many hassles with old hardware vs the small cost
of upgrading even though they dont need the raw performance increase
of a new CPU or graphics card.

Ive posted though my 1 gig Athlon was surprisingly OK with WIN XP for
net and word processing and light usage but I decided to anyway cause
the cost is relatively cheap now to upgrade and my nephew likes to
play some games on it and I can use it to compress and uncompress
files and I wont be so restricted in usage while my other system may
be tied up. To me its not so much cost as long a you are talking about
DIY and buying the really cheap bargain hardware like the sempron 2800
now. Im definitely not talking about persuading some widow to shell
out $800 on a dual core system from her 1 gig athlon --- who only uses
email etc. The main issue is most people like that dont know ANYTHING
about hardware or PCs so when they go to a PC store they get talked
into spending $500 to 1000 on a system they dont need.

 

[Poly-poly man]

This is you main computer.
I am particularly interested if anyone (truthfully) has a main
computer 10 years or more old. (relates to an earlier post).

To start the ball rolling my computer is in its first year ( ~3 months old).

I have a pc/xt from 1980.

Maybe not my _MAIN_ computer, but...

My major computer is from about 99, has a coppermine 600 in it.

I have better computers, but not as my Main.

Onething I have found is that you can get a Gateway from about 98 in the
trash. I have 5 now.

poly-p man

 

[philo]

Wow 8088 lol!!! Thats 8 bit isn't it, not much more than a Z80
(lovely processor), take me back a bit.
Well maybe not full 8 bit but only 40 legs!!
Must have ripped along at 4.77MHz!!
My current machine is 377 times faster!!
Do you do much video work on it?

the 8088 is 16 bit at 4.77 mhz
i have three of them:
the original IBM XT
an IBM Eduquest
and the Compaq "Sewing machine" (two floppies and no HD) Runs Dos3.3 only!



the IBM's can run any 16bit version of DOS (AFAIK)
also can run windows up to version 3.0

btw: the company i work for manufactures indutrial battery chargers
and still has one in current production with a Z-80 based control unit...
it was designed in the early 80's and no need was seen to change anything...
it's a battery charger after all

 

[pjdd]

This is you main computer.
I am particularly interested if anyone (truthfully) has a main
computer 10 years or more old. (relates to an earlier post).

To start the ball rolling my computer is in its first year ( ~3 months old).

I still have an Amiga A500 of 1985 vintage and an A1200 from
1993. Although I seldom use them anymore, I just don't have
the heart to put them away. My brother's printing press
still uses a 100MHz P1 that I assembled for him in '95. My
daughter doesn't complain about her 450MHz P3 that I threw
together from old parts, and which she uses mainly for
playing mp3s and elementary C++. I use a 2-year old Athlon
XP 2600+ while my son plays games on a new A64.

My first PC was a 200MHz P1, O/C to 266, built entirely from
salvaged parts. I assembled the CD-ROM drive from three
damaged ones. The HDD was a merger of one with fried
electronics and one with a damaged platter. It didn't have a
case for the first few months and I used it with the
motherboard propped up against a wall. The PSU was a
repaired dead unit, with the CD drive lying on top of it. At
first, I just placed the HDD on the CD drive, but vibration
from the CD drive sometimes caused errors, so I inserted
plastic foam between them (worked great). The sound card was
an ISA type with a built-in amplifier, connected to a pair
of speakers that I built back in the '70s. The gfx card was
a SiS 6215 with 0.5MB VRAM. I desoldered the RAM chips from
another gfx card and inserted them into the expansion RAM
sockets, getting a whopping 1MB video card.

 

[paulmd]

I still have an Amiga A500 of 1985 vintage and an A1200 from
1993. Although I seldom use them anymore, I just don't have
the heart to put them away. My brother's printing press
still uses a 100MHz P1 that I assembled for him in '95. My
daughter doesn't complain about her 450MHz P3 that I threw
together from old parts, and which she uses mainly for
playing mp3s and elementary C++. I use a 2-year old Athlon
XP 2600+ while my son plays games on a new A64.

My first PC was a 200MHz P1, O/C to 266, built entirely from
salvaged parts. I assembled the CD-ROM drive from three
damaged ones. The HDD was a merger of one with fried
electronics and one with a damaged platter. It didn't have a
case for the first few months and I used it with the
motherboard propped up against a wall. The PSU was a
repaired dead unit, with the CD drive lying on top of it. At
first, I just placed the HDD on the CD drive, but vibration
from the CD drive sometimes caused errors, so I inserted
plastic foam between them (worked great). The sound card was
an ISA type with a built-in amplifier, connected to a pair
of speakers that I built back in the '70s. The gfx card was
a SiS 6215 with 0.5MB VRAM. I desoldered the RAM chips from
another gfx card and inserted them into the expansion RAM
sockets, getting a whopping 1MB video card

I don't know whether to congradulate you for getting this monster
working, or have you taken in for psychiatric evaluation for trying!

 

[philo]

<snip>


The gfx card was

a SiS 6215 with 0.5MB VRAM. I desoldered the RAM chips from
another gfx card and inserted them into the expansion RAM
sockets, getting a whopping 1MB video card.

I did just the opposite...
I had a video card with two, 1 meg video chips in sockets.

the card did not work at all...but rather than waste it...
i removed the video ram and it worked...
turned out only one chip was bad...so i put the good one in
and thus saved one more obsolete item from the recycle bin

 

[meow2222]

Unfortunately much of the content on the net forces you to upgrade,
on my old machine if someone had a video clip to share my PC
couldn't cope with it cos it was .wmv, it was fine with mgeg though
but they wouldn't make an mpeg just for me!!

This isnt really true, except in the case of dvds. Even a P1 can play
the vid formats, mp3s and so on that have emerged since the P1 days. If
its still running W95 it would need some more codecs of course, but
they dont require any more hardware resources.


NT

 

[meow2222]

Yes but be honest, what are you going to use those old systems for?
Yea a 1 gig system would be OK for a lot of stuff, but basically
switching it on is a waste of electricity!!!

A 1GHz system is good for everything.

NT