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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?

#43

Post by Nomentatus »

Not programmable examples:

Ancient mp3 player that uses regular AAA size batteries. Still in use, now and then. Not being able to economically replace batteries has doomed many other devices I've owned.

Got rid of a forty-year old Sony alarm clock with a snooze alarm that auto-reset for the next day just this year, for reasons of weight; it still worked well and was in use.

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

#44

Post by actually_a_dog »

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.

Just out of pure curiosity, what issues do you ever end up finding in PPC shell scripts that don't occur on other platforms?

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

#45

Post by actually_a_dog »

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…

That's an interesting accumulation of old computer systems. Is this a collection that you're curating, or just an accumulation over the years?

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

#47

Post by zozbot234 »

ungawatkt wrote: post #39
zozbot234 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

32-bit Windows is not going to run anything 64-bit. But you can install a 64-bit Linux distribution (with 32-bit EFI boot, which is supported by both Debian and Fedora) and run Docker natively.

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

#49

Post by quickthrower2 »

I think my cheapo refurbished Dell Optiplex is from around 2013. With an SSD and some extra RAM it is more than capable of modern workloads. The processor is about half the speed of what you get with middle of the range laptops these days, and with the processor not being the bottleneck most of the time it is a non-issue.
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