Back in the 1990's when I was in computer education school in Silicon Valley there where lots of computer re-sellers , used computer stores, and refurbishers and recycle'ers.
I use to spend my weekends just checking out all the stuff.

The San Francisco Bay Area use to be home to the Pacific Fleet so there was allot of Military surplus and old computers from Military contractors.

Some was Corporate liquidation sales, Some was Military and some was Demo or Samples.
Hospital devices etc.....

All kinds of strange stuff.

But that was back in 1990’s

It’s nothing like the stuff that must be out there today.

The 90's really was an interesting time, that's for sure. Even though I wasn't around back then, I'm sure it was.

I also remember another client at that store who had a pretty modern system in an old case, and it had a Live! drive in the 5.25" drive bay, even though it must have been years since he removed the SB Live. If only I could have had that, not that it would make much of a difference anyway 😀

I do every day. (Nuke plant) We retired a MODCOMP system in 2013, I still have 8086 hardware, 286/386/486 hardware, Motorola 68000 hardware, DEC Alpha hardware, and everything in between up to modern day that I maintain. Some is proprietary, some isn't. Just the other day I was editing some Fortran code that was ported to one of our new Windows-based systems from OpenVMS.

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-13, 17:31:

I do every day. (Nuke plant) We retired a MODCOMP system in 2013, I still have 8086 hardware, 286/386/486 hardware, Motorola 68000 hardware, DEC Alpha hardware, and everything in between up to modern day that I maintain. Some is proprietary, some isn't. Just the other day I was editing some Fortran code that was ported to one of our new Windows-based systems from OpenVMS.

yall still rocking any 8" floppies?

BIG DISK ENERGY

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-06-13, 17:50:

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-13, 17:31:

I do every day. (Nuke plant) We retired a MODCOMP system in 2013, I still have 8086 hardware, 286/386/486 hardware, Motorola 68000 hardware, DEC Alpha hardware, and everything in between up to modern day that I maintain. Some is proprietary, some isn't. Just the other day I was editing some Fortran code that was ported to one of our new Windows-based systems from OpenVMS.

yall still rocking any 8" floppies?

BIG DISK ENERGY

No, we jumped from reel to reel tapes right to 5.25" 🤣. Some systems still use 5.25" floppies to perform config changes.

Nice histories guys ! Back in summer 1979 was hired on at Intel as a temp employee, my job was to take various boards and run them thru an atmospheric chamber to test how they worked under heat, pressure, humidity, etc. Was actually a very fun summer job, wished I could have stayed but had to finish college. After that worked for the state and some private companies doing various tech jobs for a while. Later in 1995 worked for a company building/ reworking RMA'd computers and servers, that was also fun for quite a few years. For some extra income did night work building rack mount servers for one of the founders of FreeBsd that were sent to Universities and hi-tech businesses all over the states. That is how I got my copy of FreeBsd v1.1 on cd. The 90's were the great years for computer work IMHO. Unfortunately the last 20 years have been mostly in maintenance which is boring but pays the bills. I have forgotten 90% of what I learned back in the 90's luckily this place has helped me remember some of it.

I just remembered 2 more.

There was a ship that sent an old 486 PC to the store about two years ago or more. Yep, an actual 486. I have no idea why ships even need those to be honest. Do they control sonars or radars or something? Anyway, I hadn't been there yet, so I was told this second hand.
The issue? It just wouldn't POST. In typical fashion, they tried everything, cleaning/swapping SIMMs (Yep, they actually had spares) etc. and then they tried another CPU. Lo and behold, it worked! Apparently, the CPU had died. They also added a cooler to ensure longevity, and the client was pleased.

There was also a weird embedded system that had a small screen and a crappy built-in keyboard, reminiscent of the Sinclair ZX80. It ran Windows XP (no idea if it was Embedded) and it probably had an Intel CPU. I don't remember anything else about that system, not even what the issue was, other than the obnoxious keyboard (if you can even call it that! 🤣). I do know it was fixed though.

Speaking of ship based computers:
I remember someone who asked me for help concerning an old MFM drive containing a software used to trim the balast of a cargo ship.
The disk originated from a 286 and somone managed to corrupt it using the wrong drive geometry.
The shipyard allready filed for bancrupcy and it was the only copy of this software.
The job looked to delicate for me as an engineering student, so I recommended professional data rescue services.

I work for national TV and 6 years ago I was still using 286 for inserting subtitles to broadcasting for minorities. I wanted to take it, when it becomes obsolete but then I returned from vacation one day and my 286 was already replaced 🙁 It had very nice case 🙁

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-06-13, 17:50:

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-13, 17:31:

I do every day. (Nuke plant) We retired a MODCOMP system in 2013, I still have 8086 hardware, 286/386/486 hardware, Motorola 68000 hardware, DEC Alpha hardware, and everything in between up to modern day that I maintain. Some is proprietary, some isn't. Just the other day I was editing some Fortran code that was ported to one of our new Windows-based systems from OpenVMS.

yall still rocking any 8" floppies?

BIG DISK ENERGY

I lost it at "big disk energy" 😁

Haha, when I saw the subject I thought wiretap! Some of his "pics from work" is pure hardware porn.

Used to work at an industrial printers until end of last year.
Most weird was the HP Turbojets, about the size of a hatchback, and looks like a 90's HP Deskjet on steroids

Around the back it has a built in rack for a standard Proliant server running WinXP, This is basically the print server, a 2nd tower style Proliant also running XP acted as the print spooler.
These were "small printers"

Next printer size up were upgraded so managed to take 1 of the PC's home, An industrial case similar to your police PC with a socket 775 industrial motherboard with ISA slots 😀

The biggest printer was also the oldest, a Roland Cant remember the exact one but similar to this and about the length of a Semi Trailer.

Don't know how old it was but it was still using OS2.

All were under contract so only work I had to do was basic troubleshooting.

I've got a client/customer that I'm working for/on now. They've got an old Arrow/Acromatic 1500 CNC mill with a customized controller in it. 486/66 running Win 95 to a CRT touchscreen. Somehow NTFS is involved, too. It's bizarre.

They make their engravings on a separate PC and transfer them via 3.5" floppy to the mill. The separate PC is a Duron 1200 running Win 98, and also has a serial cable to a different machine.

I've been tasked with updating the 1200 to a new machine but keeping their software working. I think I have a machine built for them but what a ride!

I cloned the 1200 hard drive to an image. Got a NIB M848A motherboard that was still on the shelf at a locally-owned shop that kind of 'became forgotten' in the mid 2000's and still has some stuff NOS on the shelves.

Moved the image onto a new drive, and got all the drivers for the M848A board working in Win98. Upgraded to Win 2000. Migrated from FAT32 to NTFS. Upgraded to XP. Re-imaged hard drive for safety's sake, and moved it from the M848A to a spare Dell with an Athlon64 x2 chip. Re-install all the drivers and get it happy. Upgrade to Vista. Install all updates, then upgrade to Windows 7. Install all updates.

Then upgrade their software from the version they were using (2004 edition on Win 98!) to the last one the company made, 2015 edition.

Just have to try it out!

^Which country are you based?
Purchasing disk's must be a challenge in itself and shop floors are not IT friendly best of times let alone disk that can go bad if you even look at them in the wrong way.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-06-16, 10:43:

Most weird was the HP Turbojets, about the size of a hatchback, and looks like a 90's HP Deskjet on steroids

I just image searched this and in pictures it really does look like it could sit on your desk.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-06-16, 13:00:

^Which country are you based?
Purchasing disk's must be a challenge in itself and shop floors are not IT friendly best of times let alone disk that can go bad if you even look at them in the wrong way.

I'm on the East coast of USA. They're a small-time gunsmith that offers custom engraving on barrels. So far everything is OK, but if things get ugly I'm glad to have learned that the USB floppy emulators work and work well - so thanks, Vogons! 😀

I remembered another. Not really old, but definitely weird.

Some middle-aged man brought his ASUS laptop for a service and a diagnostic check-up (it was starting to get slow). Pretty expensive in its time, and well-specced (also thick and heavy):

• Intel Core i7-3820QM

• 8GB RAM

• Some Nvidia GPU that I can't remember

• 3TB 3.5" HDD. Yep, an actual desktop HDD. In a freaking laptop. Just why?

Of course the HDD was going bad, and that was the reason It was slow to start up. And the real kicker: The guy didn't even have more than ~150 GB of data, vast majority of which being Win10 eating away at the HDD space. After some effort, we managed to convince him to just get an SSD, and in the end, he left satisfied.
I have no idea why ASUS thought it would be a good idea to include a desktop HDD in a laptop. Those are even less capable of handling shock, while a laptop is more likely to experience that.