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Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

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Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#31

Post by saruken »

peanut_worm wrote: post #12
PopAlongKid wrote: post #5

I'm currently typing this on a 2008 Sony VAIO FW series laptop, running Windows 10. It has a physical wifi switch, among other great features. (but very slow even with 6GB of RAM, I use it at the kitchen table mostly to read the news because I don't care much if it gets abused, and the battery is good for only about 10 minutes even at full charge), I have a Palm Pilot V along with charging cradle and data transfer ca…

Have you considered putting a Linux distro on your laptop? It would probably be much faster than Windows 10.

I had success running Slax on an Eee PC 901 a couple years ago. It was 1.6GHz with only 1GB of RAM.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#33

Post by ninefathom »

duffyjp wrote: post #20

I have a PowerPC G4 Powerbook with 3+ years of uptime. https://old.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/vhk4xy/12_pow... I test all my shell scripts on it to ensure the maximum of cross compatibility. You can't leave the PPC folks behind.

Ditto re: the PowerBook, and thanks for not leaving us PPC folks behind.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#34

Post by pomatic »

Some random tech items from my collection: A (British) 1920's candle-stick phone count? With a rotary dial, still works just fine. An Edison phonograph - missing its original horn (I have a homemade replacement), plays wax cylinders just great. A brass carriage lamp (streching things a bit), and an oil based motorcycle lamp. A 1960's Teas Maid, in full working condition. I'm sure I've overlooked various items, but those are the most interesting pre-1980's items I own.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#35

Post by saruken »

dusted wrote: post #29

I'm not a minimalist, and I'm somewhat possessed by my possessions. Stuff that comes to mind: A few commodore 64's, a vic 20, C128, IBM 5155, RS/6000F80, Apple SE/30, Power Mac G3, Libretto CT70, ipaq hx4700, hp streambook 11, Lenovo T420, Olivetti M6 460 Suprema, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Super Nintendo, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Atari 2600, A couple Dell Optip…

GBA is such a sweet spot for me. My SP is still one of my favorite platforms.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#36

Post by rootbear »

The oldest functioning electronic computing device I have is a Nokia N800 Internet Table, ca. 2007. I never wrote anything for it beyond a shell script or two, but it was possible to write custom code for it. I never owned any of the classic 8-bit consoles. I do regret letting go of my first computer, a z-80 based Ampro Little Board that ran CP/M.

The oldest electronics I have are from the '60s and earlier, in various states of repair. I have a preamp and amplifier that I believe still work. I also have some of my dad's old equipment such as his Heathkit VTVM and audio signal generator. I have his ancient (1930s?) voltmeter that would probably work if I could get a 22.5V battery for it. And I have a non-functional '30s era Atwater Kent multi-band radio.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#37

Post by ninefathom »

- Toshiba PocketPC PDA, circa '03 or so

- RPi 1 B+

- Apple PowerBook G4 (Al)

- Some old Samsung non-Android smartphone, circa 2010 or so

- Older Android-based Amazon Kindle tablets

- Older bargain bin Android tablets (think RCA)

- Pre-iPod MP3 players (think Diamond Rio and similar)

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#38

Post by xchip »

Vrondi wrote: post #23
tacostakohashi wrote: post #7

I have a whole drawer full of android phones with broken screens, or in some cases bad headphone sockets, flakey USB sockets, etc. Some software to turn these into gadgets like a surveillance camera, doorbell camera / intercom, walkie talkie, etc would be cool. Basically the equivalent of a Nest camera / doorbell using the camera, and not using the screen so much (although its often still useable, just a bit too anno…

Easy to turn an old Android phone into a webcam (I wrote this up for a less tech-savvy friend): http://teadragon.org/?q=content/turn-old-android-phone-or-ta... Once set up, you can plug the stream into a security software on a PC or NAS to record the stream, detect motion, etc.

That is not a webcam, is an IP cam.

Re: Ask HN: Which old, functional, electronics do you have?

#39

Post by ungawatkt »

zozbot234 wrote: post #19
ungawatkt wrote: post #10

The oldest fitting the actual question (though an n64 and GBC can run custom software technically), and the most interesting thing is a 32bit netbook circa 2011, samsung n150. I wish it were more useful but the 32bit limitation has made it not worth the effort for a while. Also fill in the unsurprising collection of android phones, and a handful of older rpis (zeros without wifi and a 2).

Looks like the Samsung N150 actually has a 64-bit capable CPU. Additionally, Debian GNU/Linux still supports 32-bit i686 hardware quite well.

I remember searching around alot about that (it shipped with 7 starter, which was confusing the issue for me) and not being able to run 64bit docker images at the time, so I might have the model wrong. It's been quite a few years though so I might dig it out and check again now that I'm older and smarter.

There still Linux support, yeah, but last time I pulled it out there was enough friction in the apps I was trying to run to just send me back to using more modern hardware.

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