I have many computers in storage. One of my oldest is an apple ][+ that a I got out a few months ago and it powers on normally. Did not try a disk drive with it though. Last week I dragged out an IBM PS/2 model 60 straight from 1987 that I may sell. Once I ran the floppy-based configuration ( which required a networked machine with floppy drives and USB that I had to revive first in order to recreate the setup disk) it booted fine to Netware server 2.2. Even then dual ESDI full height drives powered up. I was surprised it still worked. My current machine is a Thinkpad T61 running Linux Mint. It does everything I need it to do although it does run hot watching youtube. I plan to continue to use it indefinately until I replace with a later model since the T61 does not have a camera built in.

Glad to see it coming back presumably. I've gone through most if not all the books and have some favourites ('my dinner with Andy', 'ship of fools, car of idiots', 'inside the sun' and the one where the kids are hiding beside the house when the liver and onions truck drives by playing music.) but the later books it seems like he was trying too hard and didn't seem as good as earlier drawings. Hopefully the many years off has give him good ideas again as there are currently some cartoons being made that are very similar to Far Side.

I have Linux Mint on my old Thinkpad T61 as my main computer and I only recently restarted it because for some reason sound didn't come back after waking up from suspend mode and while it usually fixes itself somehow, I didn't want to wait for it to happen and I don't really know how to fix it. Otherwise, it was up and running for weeks. I shoulda checked the uptime on it. My windows work computer I never restart unless an update requires it. My FreeNAS box upstairs never gets powered down unless I'm leaving for several days as I'm leery of leaving stuff running when I am gone for some time. When I tell users at work that they DON'T have to shut down every day after work, they seem surprised when they found out they can just lock the screen instead. Of course, I advised them to restart at least once a week for any updates to process.

Just visited the site and left a comment. Nice to have a real geeky tech story on slashdot for a change. Might have to dig out my SE/30 and do this myself. I wonder how performance would be if you upgraded to the max 128mb?

I remember buying a JTS drive when 1 gig drives broke the $100 barrier. Still works though.

Back in the day I worked at IBM, and managed to get a copy of OS/2 v3 blue box (win included) for free. After some initial difficulties, I got it running and ran pretty good on a 386dx-40 and a 486-80 triple boot system. It was slow on memory-constrained systems, but would run nonetheless. 4mb was operable, 8mb was usable, 32mb it was flying! Later I went to Version 4 which had networking and voice dictation built in. Drivers really were not a problem for me as long as you used a popular video and sound card, and used 3com NICs. Annoyances were that single input que problem where you lost desktop control while the system kept running. I installed a utility called watchcat that would intercept your control-esc and give you a chance to kill the application causing the problem without having to reboot. Also, when making any changes to your network settings after initial setup, either the ibmlan.ini or protocol.ini file would not get updated and you'd get error messages pertaining to network when booting up. Easily fixable, but aggravating having to fix it. Fixpaks were tedious as well, but some company came out with a utility CD that automated all the installs which made it easier. It installed easiest on the IBM PS/2 models, since they went together so nicely. Still miss the workplace shell and newsreader/2. Still have a bunch of OS/2 programming and reference books I can't make myself throw away.

Reminds me of Dr. Strangelove or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb.

That was Christoper Cross, IIRC, MM was a backup singer.

I help refurbish computers for a nonprofit and had one donated a while back. From a cursory look on the hard drive, there was no login password, business and home addresses, SSN and credit card numbers, pictures, scans, detailed financial data and more. I could have totally stolen this user's complete identity so easily if I were a dishonest person. Needless to say. the hard drive underwent DBAN. Even computers I've bought from secondhand stores have had personal info on them. I guess most people think the login password is sufficient in most cases to prevent the data from being used even though we all know there are tools to recover or erase the login password.

I remember getting a free copy of OS2 3.0 blue box when I worked at IBM. After a few tries, I got it working pretty good on a 386dx-40. Boot manager was great for setting up a method for booting multiple operating systems. I later moved to Warp connect and then WSEB which I downloaded from who knows where... There was a few aggravating issues. One was the single input que issue. One program could cause the WPS to not respond even though the system would continue to function. Pressing control+escape a few hundred times might recover the system for you if you were lucky. A program called WATCHCAT was a lifesaver here. Also, if you made any network changes after the initial install, the config utility would not update the configuration files right and you'd get CONFIG.SYS errors. You had to manually edit the networking config files to resolve the issue. I think this was finally fixed in WSEB. Sometimes the WPS would act funny because of ini file corruption. There were 3rd party utilities for this too. OS/2 ran great on the IBM PS/2 models. Just choose the defaults and wait for install to finish. I never had a driver issue myself. Just use a soundblaster or crystal audio sound cards and 3com NICs, and you had drivers. I loved newsreader/2 as it made reading threads so easy. That and browsing web with netscape 2.0 When setup right, it was bulletproof. Lots of settings to tweak and play with. Still miss the WPS.

I've a number of old IBM systems that still run fine, mostly PS/2 models both of the 85xx and 95xx models. With OS/2, they are bulletproof. Unfortunately, I'm finding computers and hardware from the 1990s are failing due to bad caps.

it just really sucks. FUCK BETA

those that forget history will oft repeat it. beta sucks, too

I run mine wide open, and initially had a generic name for my WAP until I noticed some neighbor continuing to connect with a phone or something like that. I finally changed it to getoffmyfuckinwificonnection Havent had any problems with rogue connections since. Whilst scanning for WAPs once, came across one named 'fbi suvaillance Van' I'm sure that'll scare people away!

Find a nonprofit org to donate to that will rebuild them and give them away to needy skoolkids. That's what I help out with on a weekly basis. The high-end machines are rebuilt and sold to help with costs of rebuilding the older models. People saying a 2006 era machine is useless obviously don't know what they are talking about. This nonprofit is still giving single-core computers away. They will take anything except CRTs and what cannot or will not be used is disassembled and sold to scrappers so nothing goes to waste. A PC does NOT have to be less than a year old to be useful!