The oldest working Macintosh?

And by "working" I do not mean "functioning"! That is, I don't mean that it will turn on and run properly. I mean, doing an actual job for an organization, still "in service" as it were.

I wonder if our labs' Macintosh IIcx isn't the oldest Mac still in service!

Here is our control room--not all of it--but a good portion of it--enough to see the Mac IIcx, up high, just to the right of the clock:



And zooming in:









According to EveryMac.com this computer has to be at least 23 and 1/2 years old at this point! We got it from CERN to run our text to voice software (which we also got from CERN, I believe). So, anytime a program on the control system wants to audibly output some text, it is sent to this computer.

Apparently, there were two voices to chose from: a male voice--don't know the name--and a female voice--named "Victoria". The previous director of operations used to talk back to her, saying stuff like "Yes, Dear. I know." when she said things like "Warning, 30 seconds left before ramping magnets" or "TC MON four-hundred-thirty-one hot: fifty-one-point-seven degrees C. Take action." or "gate valve closed--you will not inject this way."

Some of the text to voice stuff is really funny. Like "diodes" gets turned into "Dee Ohh Dez".

The monitor has been repaired a number of times, but the computer itself was repaired only once--not sure what was done--probably a new hard drive. Hard to believe that we had a spare hard-drive of this type, but if any organization would had such a thing we would. We're big on spares!

We keep expecting this machine to die, and we have a replacement solution ready and waiting. But the director of operations wants to see how long it will take before it does fail. It's kind of amazing that it's still running. It has been in almost continuous service over the past 23+ years. Maybe two or three days of downtime at most, that I know of.

Anyway, if you think have an example of an older Mac still in service, please let us all know! But I wouldn't be surprised if this is it! LOL!

And also please feel free to chime in with any examples of old Macs or with anything related!

Working for my high school paper ~20 years ago, we still used the old vertical box Macs with black and white screens; paired with laser printers, they worked beautifully for the job, produced very professional results without a fuss. No idea if they still use them, but they would still fill the role perfectly.

StarHalo said:

Working for my high school paper ~20 years ago, we still used the old vertical box Macs with black and white screens; paired with laser printers, they worked beautifully for the job, produced very professional results without a fuss. No idea if they still use them, but they would still fill the role perfectly.

Click to expand...

You mean the original Macintosh's? Yeah! Those are pretty old if that's what you're talking about! Check out the link and see if you can confirm which model(s)!

That Macintosh is pretty wild!

Although it's not in operation, and I got rid of the computer long ago, I have a new in box 5 1/4" floppy drive for the Apple IIe.

I intend not to let this happen to my acquisitions on this forum however.

We definitely have an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude! When I first started here in 2001, there were still frigging nixie tube readouts in the control room. Only two of them, to be fair, and they were removed that summer. But . . . seriously? Nixie tubes!?! Now that's dated! And when I cleaned out some of the spare parts and supplies cabinets I found two working frequency counters with like six digit nixie tube readouts. One of the operators and I stashed those aside I can tell you! We are still hoping to make some nixie tube clocks at some point. LOL! Nixie tubes are seriously cool. But, they were certainly superseded a long time ago--like in the 1970's.

I remember cutting teeth on the old Apple IIc's, monochrome green or orange. In the mid 90's I went back to Apple's with about 10 of the rack mounted G3's used on the high speed vision systems that the company I worked for at the time used to inspect reel to reel injection molded parts. Those were the days.

nice to see old stuff still working!

I'm not a member at mac-forums.com , but those guys might like to see this.

I bet they'd be drooling.

My buddy used to build and repair computers during the heyday of the '90's. He's going to get a kick out of this when I show him.

One thing that totally blew me away when I read it is that this computer, new, sold for like $5,000+! Adjusted for inflation, that's probably more like $10,000!

A lot of the IBM and Compaq components that were built for industrial applications were selling in that ballpark and extremely expensive. And there's a good reason, because much like the Mac, these things were bullet proof. I acquired one of the Compaq hard drives from my buddy (hmm...I may actually still have it laying around somewhere) and it looked like it could survive a war. The only problem is that, although the quality was top notch (unlike my Samsung Galaxy cellphone), they were quickly becoming limited to what they were capable of handling as technology rapidly advanced. Much like today.

Anyway, I threw in the towel when I bought a 36" square tv for $2,000 the year before the U.S. switched to widescreen format. After that, all the prices on tv's dropped. I still have it for the eventual retro factor when friends come over LOL.

Even better than that are the Mom and Pop stores that don't update technology because they don't like change. The chiropractor I saw this past spring, for example, was using the same key punch, typewriter and printout machine since when his father ran the business before him. I didn't realize why until I put two and two together. His Mom runs the front office and she likes to keep things simple!

I'm still using an old generation i-mac purchased in June 2000 running system 9. That won't beat any record for sure, but the reason I keep it is that I need it to run Hypercard. I have a lot of data on Hypercard decks, and I don't think there is another (newer) machine out there that will run Hypercard. Am I the last Hypercard user?

You may well be the last Hypercard user! LOL! Unless some government agency or other is still also using it.

But that's the thing about old hardware. If it is running old software it's still as good as it ever was. That's why it's not always the best idea to update to the latest operating system if your hardware is old.

Of course, I have a pre-uni-body MacBook Pro (4,1) and I'm running OS X Mountain Lion, and it's still very pleasant to use! Of course, I have 6 GB of RAM installed and a 1TB SeaGate Hybrid hard-drive as well. Boots up from the (relatively) small SSD section of the drive, and then is conventional for everything else. Nice to have the fast boot-up, though. Haven't updated to Mavericks due to the Mail issues and won't update to Yosemite until I verify that it's worth doing so in my case.

js said:

Haven't updated to Mavericks due to the Mail issues and won't update to Yosemite until I verify that it's worth doing so in my case.

Click to expand...

Haven't updated to Mavericks myself. It was suggested I upgrade my memory first (which just arrived in the mail). I had no idea about the mail issues either... What's Yosemite? I was just at the Genius Bar last week and they never said anything about that, only Mavericks.

I went to work for a Silicon Valley company called ComputerWare (in 1988 or 1989), that sold Macs, peripherals, and software. There were only three Mac models when I started: the Plus, the SE, and the MacII (color-capable!). The Mac OS at that time (OS 2?) did not allow more than one program to be running at a time. Most private users bought external hard drives that were either 10mb, or 20mb, although, if they wanted, they could special-order a 5mb external hard drive. Several years later, when the Internet started growing, I remember a repair tech telling me to get AOL access, since getting full access to the entire internet "was just too confusing."

I was a very early Apple Lisa user (cost just shy of $10,000), I remember seeing a number of them still in use in the 1990's, mine was finally retired in 1995. As I recall I was on the 5th power supply. There were a number of efforts by Apple to get Lisa users to upgrade to a Mac (for free no less), there were essentially no takers. So I am sure that quite a few them were still cranking away after 15 years.
The original Lisa's are in fact a piece of history. The original Apple external HDD used the Seagate ST506, the first commercial PC hard drive (all 5mb of it!)

novice said:

I went to work for a Silicon Valley company called ComputerWare (in 1988 or 1989)...

Click to expand...

I used to shop at the ComputerWare in Sunnyvale. Bought my PowerBook G3/500 there, IIRC.

My first Mac was a Plus purchased in '89, when I started college. That Plus (along with my roommate's) was stolen a couple years later, but our (parents') insurance policies didn't have depreciation clauses for computers yet, so it could have been worse. The Plus had been discontinued at that point, and the new Classic was actually a downgrade, so we were given the option of an SE/30 or a first gen LC. I got seduced by the color of the LC (nice, but the color was ultimately a waste in that era), and my roommate opted for the faster SE/30. He made the better choice - the SE/30 was awesome, and definitely the best of the original all-in-one's with the 9" displays.

I bought another Plus years later, and it's still collecting dust up on my bookshelf. It ran the last time I powered it up (maybe a decade ago), and if I could find the system floppies and a PRAM battery, I imagine it still would. Yeah for no internal hard drive.

Peace Train,

Yosemite hasn't had a public release yet, only betas or developer previews. It will be released in the fall along with iOS8 and the iPhone 6. The Mac IT guy at work is already using it and loves it. I am always very conservative about changing my OS. I like to wait and see the Ars Technica review, reports from the forums, and for the first update to the OS for bug fixes. Then I wait until Apogee Digital has released the driver for that OS for my Duet. Then if all is well I clone my hard-drive and go for it. If I don't like it, I can always step back. I've never understood people who don't leave themselves a way back! It's just too important not to do, and it's really not that hard to do. Anyway . . . We shall see about Yosemite.

Everyone,

Thanks for your posts!

Yeah, Apple hardware tends to last a lot longer than you have interest in it, which is the way it should be, I think! LOL! I just picked up a 17" 1.8GHz iMac G5 with keyboard, mouse, Leopard Retail Install DVD pack, and 60 watt laptop power supply (it was lying there with this stuff) for . . . wait for it . . . $12.50.

I picked it up for my Father-In-Law who is still using my old 744MHz G4 desktop! This will be a definite upgrade. I bought 2GB of RAM for it and a 120GB SSD, and as long as you aren't doing something graphically intensive, it's a really good performer running Leopard. And given that all he does is email and surf the web and word process (I installed MS Office 2004 for Mac on it, as well as iLife 09), this computer should be fine for him. Personally, I was trying to get him to buy a new iMac (or an iPad). Money isn't an issue for him, truly, but he is still very, very frugal and thrifty and was MUCH happier to put $150 into the old iMac G5 and use it instead of buying a new computer.

I've been eyeing the 13" rMBP, but my 15" 2.4GHz Penryn MBP (pre-unibody) shows no signs of slowing down, still works perfectly, and will be able to run Yosemite, so I'll hold onto her for a while longer, I guess!

Long ago I used an Apple IIc at work --- until it was stolen! Someone took the whole thing monitor, computer, floppy drives (2), impact printer, and the cart it all was locked to! Never got it back.... It was a fun old machine! A real workhorse. Some of the early Macs had a voice called Fred. Don't know if that's what you have.

novice said:

The Mac OS at that time (OS 2?) did not allow more than one program to be running at a time.

Click to expand...

OS/2 is IBM's OS. Apple used the names System and Finder, and it was usually System 4.0 Finder 6.0 etc. This got unified with System 6, which sort of did context switching rather than multitasking.

Peace Train said:

Haven't updated to Mavericks myself. It was suggested I upgrade my memory first (which just arrived in the mail). I had no idea about the mail issues either... What's Yosemite? I was just at the Genius Bar last week and they never said anything about that, only Mavericks.

Click to expand...

Actually, going to Mavericks is like getting a free memory upgrade. The memory optimisation and compression tech in Mavericks means it runs more smoothly on systems with less RAM than Mountain Lion. (I'm not a punter, just a 15yr certified Mac engineer )

Also Yosemite PB2 runs perfectly well - just waiting for some 3rd party apps to catch up and then I'll be 100%. I always see people holding off on Mac OS upgrades, but I've been an early (bleeding edge!) adopter since the OS X 10.0 Public Beta and I can't ever recall a show stopping issue...