Well here's something that the last time it was made was around 1993.
It's about as classic as you can get. I had an idea to get my old Rainbow
based FidoBBs (circa 1986) running again by hooking it up to the net via
DECServer200/MC and reverse Telneting into it.
I looked round for a copy of FIDO_DEC, found one but NUSQ would not unsqeeze
it. Finally I found my way to Tom Jennings (The guy who wrote Fido) website.
Total shock and horror!! All of the sources and backups had been trashed in
a computer crash around 1993. So most of what he had done from 1983 to 1993
was a heap of smoldering ruins.
The sources (or what's left of them) are freely available on his web site.
Rebuilding hardware is one thing but software, well that's another!
Regards
Rod Smallwood
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at
classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at
classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 24 November 2009 20:45
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Ten Year Rule
I was thinking recently, and I know that the general threshold for
discussion on this list is ten years, but is that enough?
As it stands, given the rule of a minimum of ten years, most early
Pentium III PeeCees are listworthy for discussion.
I have a similar problem looking on E-bay. Eay (at least the UK one) has
a category of #vintage computing'. I really have diffuclty classing 72
pin SIMMs and Pentium motherboards as 'vintage'...
I would really hate it if this list became a mostly old PC (or Mac) list.
IMHO there are better places to discuss such machines (no, I don't know
hwere said places are).
Another random thought... Some years ago I was a memer of a computer clu
which has a 'hardware and old systems SIG'. THose two interests were
grouped togther not just because there was one member who hacked hardware
and also ran old systems (I wonder who that was ;-)), but also because it
was successfully argued that if you wanted to run an old system you
pretty much has to know enough about hardware to fix it yourself, and
conversely an old system (even then) was something that you _could_ fix
properly (you know, with a soldering iron and 'scope...)
Perhaps the criterion for classicness should be that the machine is
treated at a much lower level than 'The DVD-ROM goes in here and then you
click here' sort of thing.
I have a Dell OptiPlex GX110 that could be discussed
here; the machine
is twelve years old, and if I am not mistaken, twelve is greater than
ten. (For those of you that live in alternate realities in which twelve
is *not* greater than ten, please disregard this whole email.) I also
12 (octal) = 10 (decimal) (Sorry couldn't resist, I spand far too much
time working in octal, and no I am not missing 2 fingers)
-tony