Oldest computer still in current use

At 01:00 05/11/2003 -0400, you wrote: [snip] ^^^^^^^^^^ & ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Was the pun intended? The term is "moot point" -- to be "mute" is to be unable to speak/make sounds, which does tie into the original quote, which IIRC is "If a tree falls in the woods, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a _sound_. Sound is merely a disturbance in a medium (in this instance, air) within an audible range. The fact that the tree disturbed the medium is all that matters, so the answer is "yes..." ... Which is why I had a notebook in college which had a much more thought-provoking quote: "If a tree falls in the woods, and no-one is around to hear it, does anybody give a shit?" ;-) Define "Normal" -- If you can't define "normal" to us, and can accept or dismiss anything any way you like, then we cannot give you a logical answer to your original question and the entire discussion up to this point is moot. ("Mute? Unless you're using text-to-speech software, I doubt you're hearing this... ;-) So, does that leave the gubbermint out? A different poster had postulated (and I'm paraphrasing - I don't have the original...) " The gubbermint has so much money that they replace everything every few years. " Bzzt! Anyone who has actually done time in the military (read: gubbermint) knows that there's *still* Civil-war surplus floating around... ... Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little - but the government still uses a *lot* of commo gear designed/built from the late 50's -> the '70s, and they're still using crypto gear that I was trained on in the late 80s... and if I could pass messages over 40Mhz FM with the little [unnamed computer -- If I told you, I'd have to kill you... ;-) ] beastie, I could prolly get it connected to the Internet *somehow*... ;-) Granted, you couldn't *read* the messages; they're encrypted, after all... And when I worked at EDS back in '89, and we had *lots* of big-iron capable of 100+MIPS (insane, back then... My shiny new '386SX was rated for 2.8 or so) - the gubbermint contracted sites were still working with 2-3 MIPS machines for daily business... and prolly still are. My SWAG's would be that your best bets are: a) the gubbermint, and b) older CNC/punch/cutting machines -- I still get a few calls to work on computerized CNCs & Punches which were built back in the late '70s, and I'm in a small town... there's prolly still quite a few of 'em around being useful... Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger