
Man discovers 30 year old Apple computer still in working order - andrewstuart
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/17/tech/30-year-old-apple-computer-work-trnd/index.html
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system2
Why is this even news? Youtube is literally full of hundreds of thousands of
similar videos. 30 years old personal machine is not even old. I can't even
understand the importance of this story.

~~~
jchw
Yeah, pretty sure you can grab a working unit on eBay for under a hundred.
It's cool... but absolutely not notable or newsworthy.

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andrewstuart
Kinda weird that this is CNN news.

There's lots of old computers in working order.

~~~
grzm
There are many potentially interesting discussions around this story. Just off
the top of my head: the resilience of old hardware, the joy of rediscovering
something previously forgotten, old computer games. Let's not make this about
CNN's editorial choices (human interest stories have been a thing for a _long_
time) or whether or not this is news. After all, you submitted it.

~~~
adrianmonk
It's a reasonable topic to write a story about. However, CNN could have chosen
a much better headline, one that doesn't make it sound like a 30-year old
computer that still works as some kind of oddity.

~~~
grzm
Yeah, it's a challenge.

We as readers (and HN participants) need to rise to it and do better than
resort to knee-jerk reactions. Without excusing the behavior, CNN (and other
online publications) are in a tough spot: so much of their revenue relies on
eyeballs and clicks on ads, so the incentive to write headlines that drive
those metrics, which is often in opposition to writing more sober, descriptive
headlines.

We complain about click-bait, refuse to pay subscriptions, complain about the
quality of journalism which costs money to produce, often react only to the
headline, sometimes click anyway. Regardless of what CNN does, we can't
abdicate our role and responsibility in the relationship, both with the media,
and here on HN.

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madrox
I recently cleaned out my closet and found a Nintendo DS, 3DS, and 3DS XL. I
hadn't touched them in years. To my surprise, all of them immediately turned
on. I guess I'm so used to devices bleeding battery even when "off" that I
figured it would be the case here, but not at all. I also found a Gameboy
Advance SP with no batteries in it that booted immediately when I put fresh
ones in. I think it says a lot that I was surprised by that.

I wish more companies built hardware the way Nintendo does.

~~~
black-tea
Even original Gameboys still work fine. To the extent that they're barely
worth anything. The only things that seem to fail on Gameboys is the batteries
inside many of the cartridges, but it's trivial to replace those (you do lose
your saves, though).

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luckman212
It's actually quite a touching story! Among other things, this guy found a
letter[0] that his late father had written to him on that Apple //e when he
was 11 years old and away at summer camp.

[0] [https://t.co/Aog3MiSnXN](https://t.co/Aog3MiSnXN)

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zabuni
I think that the best part is that he still has papers from when he was a kid
on floppy disk. He was afraid of not being able to recover them, when the
@textfiles symbol was sent out and [http://archive.org](http://archive.org) 's
Jason Scott came up to bat.
[https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1097251935453876224](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1097251935453876224)

It there is anyone who can recover those files to a modern readable format,
even if only in an emulator, it's him. Also, if you have any old Apple II,
C64, or other vintage floppies, he's love to archive them. He's always up for
copying....that floppy.

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Dahoon
30 years ago was 1989. The Commodore 64 is older then that!

~~~
sys_64738
Yep. I have a 37yo working Commodore 64 here and I didn't get any CNN story
for it.

~~~
bdcravens
Was it your parents' computer that you used as a child?

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ido
believe it or not people in their 50s or older are on the internet :)

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bdcravens
My point was that was the point of the article, as much as the age of the
hardware.

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ido
sorry missed the joke!

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mahomedalid
But seriously, what do you think is more resilient? new or old hardware? do my
laptop will continue working in 30 years without maintenance?

~~~
zaarn
Bigger and more crudely build components probably play a large part. A
Microprocessor from the 70s and 80s is made on much larger nodes than today's
chips, traces and soldering points are bigger, PCB's thicker, almost all
components sans resistors and wires were either bigger or build differently.

They have more material to play with while they decay compared to modern
devices.

~~~
ido
I'll bet good money that an IBM PC or PC XT that has been properly stored will
boot up and be more or less as usable today as it was the day it was put to
storage (especially the floppy-only models without an hdd).

~~~
zaarn
Possibly, though I would still check capacitors and any voltage regulation
(transformer and linear) to make sure it won't blow up suddenly because some
wire coating rotted through.

~~~
ido
I guess another candidate are any batteries leaking, but IIRC the PC & XT
didn't have battery backed clocks & therefor no battery on the motherboard.

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Steko
I love that the saved game immediately brought up _Obvious exits are NORTH,
SOUTH and DENNIS_

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DubiousPusher
This is like 85% of the way to an Onion headline.

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joezydeco
I got a Mac SE (circa 1987) that still boots. Can I get it on CNN?

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bdcravens
Was it your parents' computer that you used as a child?

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joezydeco
No, I flipped burgers all summer to save up $1,895 and then faked my way into
the Apple Developer Program to get the 50% hardware discount. I took the Mac
to college with me that fall and used it for almost everything while earning
my CS degree.

I was still getting WWDC invites for a decade after that.

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droithomme
It's impressive that those 5.25" floppy disks are still good. Most of my 3.5"
ones bit the dust long ago, along with nearly all my CD-Rs.

~~~
ido
5.25" were always more durable than the 1.44mb 3.5" ones. I used an
'87-vintage PC XT clone till I got a Pentium in '95 & kept the old computer in
a closet.

When I booted it up a few years later all my 5.25" still worked where as brand
new 3.5" ones would be a good bet to not be readable even after a single
rewrite.

