Jorpho wrote:

Aren't ink ribbons for ancient printers in short supply?

If I'm not mistaken impact printers (which use ribbons) are still relatively common in commercial/industrial settings because they're able to work with things like carbon paper and whatnot. I'm not sure if that makes ribbons available though. 😊

That is true, at the store where I work they still use an old impact printer for printouts of grociery stock related things. (I'm a cashier so I have no idea what they do on that computer specifically 😜 )

I was pretty surprised to see a printer from the 80's still in use in 2014 for business applications.

Yup, they're still quite popular where I live too. The Epson LX-300 series... they may not be as fast as laser, but they're eternal.

Impact printers? 😀 While correct, we used to call them dot matrix printers back in the day.

depend on the system, and specially the software and how is all set...

Lately I used a K6-2+ trying to build a "modern office pc" but at the end the only modern distro/kernel that still runs, freeze often and beside it the power of the K6-2 isn't enough for daily usage.
Now I'm running a Raspberry Pi 1 based on an ARM11 700 @ 1000Mhz cpu with 512Mb of ram and a Linux based os. A bit faster of the K6-2+ but not that much. I'll get the updated version with the Cortex A53 based quad core cpu to see some serious improvements.

I think that the only way to use really old system on daily usage is to have only and only old systems and no alternatives. At the end you will accept also a 486 if we have no other system, not even a smartphone.

Why K6-II have tons of power, what to say then for 8086.....
Every single retro hardware can be used for daily tasks, even 8086, but your daily tasks need to be the same as they was back in the days of the system you use.
for example you need to have socket 7 daily tasks, then it will be like modern system, otherwise no chance on all under Pentium II....

I scan my documents on a p3-like system running windows 98. The scanner is from 2000 or so.

I have a Pentium II running as dedicated firewall 24x7 at least 10 years.
On the other hand, I use my main retro, rather obsolete PC, to play music with Winamp.

vvbee wrote:

I scan my documents on a p3-like system running windows 98. The scanner is from 2000 or so.

Same here.

I still have an old scanner with a serial connection that doesn't have any drivers for NT-based systems.

Too useful to throw that away.

is 3d asset profiling a daily task? 😁

I plan to use an old 90’s desktop pc or laptop to save all my passwords, of course one without internet connection. I would have to make backups every now and then, but it would be a safe place. I don’t really trust any program, service or my daily pc with them. Everything that’s online seems to can get hacked these days.

An old laptop and a decent pair of speakers makes a cheap, serviceable Jukebox! Alright, it doesn't look juke-boxey (though I suppose you can buy Wurlitzer style housings for such use), but it's still a dream come true for those of us who grew up in the 1970s/80s and for whom listening to music meant storing dozens of vinyl LPs and having to sort through them to hear a particular song. Instead you can keep all of your music in .mp3 files (or lossless audio formats, if you have excellent hearing and can honestly tell the difference) on the laptop and quickly and easily find the albums or single songs with just a few mouse clicks.

I use the Pmmx 166 next to my main system for playing the keyboard with the AWE's onboard sampler and OPL3 synth(using FM801), sometimes an SC8850 as well. Also, I like listening to music on it as well as light·internet browsing and using Photoshop4

I occasionally turn on my Windows 98/2000 rig (a Dell Optiplex GX150) for basic text editing and floppy disk imaging, the most recent non-gaming task I did on there was edit AUTOEXEC.BAT on my bootable utility floppies (i.e. adding messages to simplify the use of my AIDA16 diskette, and making my TOPBENCH diskette launch TOPBENCH automatically).

Also, I'm currently using a Dell Dimension 4600 with Windows XP for transferring songs from cassettes to CD-Rs.

I use an HP Pavilion N3350 as a CD player (yes, you read this right) sometimes, my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus to beta test some games that people are developing to see if the system can handle it (MS-DOS games to be exact), including DOSBox on my Windows 7 laptop, my Socket 370 machine as a gaming PC/DVD player/floppy imager, Socket 7's not doing anything ATM, but I might utilize it as a Network Attached Storage box to archive movies and stuff, or as a basic MS-DOS machine after I upgrade my S370 to a Socket 754 setup, and my C64 is being used for testing the VIC-II and SID chips (I have another C64 that needs repairs, but can be used as a parts machine since the SID and VIC-II chips are socketed).

At work, my PowerMac G5 still gets a bunch of use, mainly for Photoshop & Illustrator since my main i7 workstation runs Linux. I also have a Dell Inspiron 600m (Pentium-M / 768MB RAM) that I keep on the desk just in case I wanna grab a laptop and work somewhere else. (Writing code or documentation doesn't take much horsepower; it's compiling and running it that needs the grunt.)

At home I make music and demoscene stuff using various retro PCs running old trackers & sequencing external MIDI gear, but that's kind of the point. 😀 The new G4 will be going into service there too.