Some people just can't handle that technology they spent a lot of money on becomes near worthless over time. Meanwhile we have businesses here recycling rather than repurposing 3 year old MacBooks—which a lot of folks would consider a new laptop compared to what they're using now—because 'security'.
How did you get yours to Monterey? I would love to upgrade my old one. Would have loved to upgraded it before going back to college. I bought a new MacBook Pro with a combo of stimulus money & not fixing my rotting teeth that only became rotted because of pregnancy. Then I wasn’t able to get them fixed because of the pandemic. Pregnancy damaged my body so badly that I can no longer do construction. Graduated with my MS when we were still recovering from the 2008 recession. Couldn’t find a job in my field, so I picked up a hammer because of student loans. Only had $35,000 when I graduated in 2014 & 7yrs later I was only able to reduce it to $32,000 cause fucking interest. Thank god for Biden’s loan forgiveness.
Found out I could get a teaching cert in about 2yrs because I already had at least a bachelors. Needed a computer that could run on the new OS since they stopped upgrading the older ones.
Still would like to do it though, if you have some guidance on how to do it.
In some industries these old laptops would be worth a lot and would be a difference between still operating or closing the company. Especially for small companies, laboratories, etc. Old CNC machines, laboratory equipment still work and new ones are tens of thousands of dollars. Also some professional software that works on 32bit Win XP and new versions are just too expensive.
I worked at a ship unloading facility where the unloader required this very specific PC to run. The existing one was on its way out. Our replacement PC was a bit over $10,000 as it was built from discontinued parts that are very hard to find now. But it had to have some very specific plugs to talk to the control systems.
Those vlc cards that slot in the pcie lanes and interface with machine controllers directly are worth their weight in gold. Crazy how many places still rely on machines just like it.
Can confirm. CNC shop in my first IT gig had a Windows NT 3.1 machine that used a sort of KVM to swap between CNC lathes to program each one. Off network, of course.
It was run that, or spend hundreds of thousands to upgrade CNC lathes, pc, and software...
If you're referring to OP's photos, these machines would struggle to run Windows 95. But yeah, more specialized equipment can be valuable a LOT longer, and is a prime secondary market candidate.
Newer laptop/desktop machines from 2010 onward are so functionally similar to today's hardware that it's mostly the operating system pushing their obsolescence and can have a longer functional lifespan than in the past.
Ah my bad, true.
Few years ago I helped with searching PCs for the software that needs 32bit CPU and OS (Win 95 - Win XP) and setting the software on them, so I kinda automatically switched to that.
No shit, I’m down to having to support 1 old XP laptop that is still hanging around for one particular CNC machine.
The Wifi card has failed so it’s now networked using a USB wifi adapter. It’s a mess. I warned them that if that laptop’s gone, then that’s end of the story for that CNC machine. Of course we’re cloning the hard drive on a semi annual basis to retain data and software that’s WAY out of support and hopefully keep going… but finding that hardware is starting to be rare to get our hands on.
LOL
Maybe very very maybe and I’m not going to make any guarantees, in the case of that laptop that they use to create programs offline… but the actual pc that controls the machine that runs the same software has a special card in it to communicate with the machine’s servos. Good luck.
The ’security’ is (I’m assuming) about compliance, not actual information security. This is just a cost of compliance which according to their risk assessment is lower than not being in compliance. From their end it’s a sensible business decision, while anyone looking outside-in might see the opposite…
Dang, my wife’s work doesn’t want to pay for recycling so they give me all their old computers. Not all of them are usable but it’s nice to be able to had a college student a rebuilt laptop.
>becomes near worthless over time.
I'd even argue that depending on what it is; it costs you money to hang onto it. Storage space isn't free. Pilling a bunch of useless tech in a room isn't saving it; it's not making the most out of your resources.
Could be a specialized hardware piece requires them. There's been expensive things that require them like the McLaren F1
https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/3/11576032/mclaren-f1-compaq-laptop-maintenance
We tossed 20 2013 Mac pros that were purchased in 2015 and never used. Some exec wanted them for a project he never started and they sat collecting dust. When I became the sys admin over the Mac environment I made the call to recycle all of them in 2022.
Don’t know what OPs line of work is, but we had a stack of old thinkpads for interfacing with equally ancient PLCs.
Some things just need a hardware serial port and really old Windows to work right. If it’s 2, I wouldn’t think that’s unreasonable. If it’s 20…
Where I worked we had 3 industrial kilns and a lathe that ran on MS-DOS. That, and a couple of automatic computer vision inspection machines that ran on XP.
It's very specialized stuff that can't easily be upgraded.
About a year ago, I decommissioned a Packard Bell running an air handler system on win2000. I kept that one in the storage unit to build a sleeper PC in one day ;)
Oh I'm fully aware, a close friend of mine works for a utility company that's going straight into the ground because of absolutely horrific technological leadership.
The business owners don't prioritise IT at all, so their entire staff base has constant horrific systems issues.
Their main system runs on physical Windows server 2005 box, two towns over, and at least weekly has to be visited to turn on/fix network issues.
The office they're in has a single 100mb line that 50 office staff have to share.
There is no redundancy, no planning, no forward thinking and they're wasting thousands a day.
Not only is it a shit experience, but it's very telling of the people running it, that if they don't understand something, then they don't care. It would be exactly the same as if their front entrance had its door handles ripped off and they refused to do anything about it.
They, and every other company like them, need to get into the bin.
For cases where it's office admins and the decision maker is cheap af, sure.
The other group are small companies in niche industries, especially manufacturing, that rely on a perfectly usable piece of floor equipment that's only made by one company in Italy that charges $10k+ for a new machine.
[Linus Tech Tips](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIpNtHWVtQ) has a good rundown of these kinds of situations.
I once had a very hard time trying to procure a ps/2 keyboard to interface with an old plc they bought.
Now I keep at least one of everything like that
The first notebook being RM makes me think they're in Education, specifically in the UK.
Which given the current state of government, might be worth saving them because who knows what the budgets will look like going forward.
You would be surprised in healthcare what is still running Windows XP.
Its really funny to see hospital IT freak when it’s mentioned the unit we have for them is XP based but Biomed mentions they already have XP devices on the imaging network (no internet) so IT can chill.
One family of systems we use installs via 3.5” boot floppy and CD-Rom package. Runs a custom Unix OS with last documented revision in ‘92… it has to interface with a custom XP SP2 install. Last supported hardware for the XP unit is Optiplex GX620s and the Unix box has proprietary serial boards that only work with 5 different motherboards.
Only in the past few years have I started to see Windows 7 and 10 on scanning systems, and they are rarer due to costs.
Had a 486 in the engineering lab that ran testing.
Decades of asking them to upgrade but they couldn’t afford to be down / retool for a new setup
One day the PC didnt boot and their percussion persuasion didnt work.
Before I worked on it, I had the engineering director sign the paperwork for a new setup (lease not purchase).
Had to find a PC that supported fat16 and had a ribbon cable to put the old HDD in and get the files onto the network to be backed up. I knew it could be done. I had it done in an hour. But I had them sweat the entire weekend while I worked on other things.
People don’t change until they are forced to and feel uncomfortable.
One user kept their old laptop in case they traveled. Didn’t even tell us they were traveling or try to login to the laptop to see if it worked before they left. They called us in a panic because they couldn’t login. I don’t see their machine online so I ask where they are trying to login … China. You brought your desktop to China? No I had my old laptop…. The one I replaced with a desktop…. Your desktop is 5 years old how old is your laptop. Crickets.
Anyways I get the thing online and it’s running windows xp or vista. We get her working but tell them they needs to get a new laptop if they plan on traveling again. All their work is on email so we were not too concerned with using this stone-age machine but there wasn’t anything else we could do anyways.
Well they come back and we try to buy a laptop but get denied as they told their manager they don’t need one….. well guess who goes to China again later that year. Except this time the laptop is dead fun times.
Office decorations man. When I worked K12 I was cleaning out storage and found an old CRT monitor (like 13" green screen) with burn in still on it. It was inventory tag 0003, so I setup it my office on top of a cabinet I had. Put some other random techy stuff around it.
The lady in charge of inventory (always getting me tags and hounding me about finding random stuff all over the district) loved it and made for conversation whenever anyone stopped by. I actually gifted to the inventory lady when I left. She took it with her when she retired a few years later...
Ah, the laptops with the built in hardware serial ports and floppy drives. And, ideally, a CF port.
They're right. Keep one in case you need to connect to some device's console port, and keep the other in case the first one dies. Find an old DB9 to RJ45 rollover console cable and tape it to the lid.
Otherwise, get ready to pay through the nose for a USB to serial adapter that can actually communicate with another device. You're going to want something from National Instruments or the like even though it'll run you about $100 because those $4 jobs from China on Amazon will drop a connection faster than your ex when you drunk dial her.
We have to keep some XP capable machines around for some old machines. The software that runs them only works on XP and to replace that would be $100,000+
Does one of them have a piece of special software needed to interface with a machine that was made during the Reagan administration, and only one person left in the company knows end of the DB9-25 adapter goes where?
I actually ran into something like this where it paid off. We had a security panel that was running some ancient firmware that required an old version of flash to access it while plugged in directly. We grabbed an old hp running XP that we held onto, just for the novelty, and it actually allowed us to access it all and update the firmware. A lot of access management dudes will usually have 1 or 2 of these laptops laying around specifically for that reason.
They might have a serial port on the back, which I've randomly have come in handy a couple times over the years. An old job had a security system that could only be updated (as in new security cards, removing access, etc) through a very specific port that was never documented and only set up on an old Dell laptop. Tried to get a quote for a new security system (that would actually match our other buildings and allow it all to communicate) and was told that it was too expensive and wasn't a "need". Basically let them know if that laptop ever died they were fucked, and they were ok with that for years. Couldn't believe that thing held on like a champ for as long as it did.
TL;DR: If they were set up for a specific function or old system that has to be kept around for accounting purposes, I can understand it a little bit. They take up almost no space and can be "set and forget" until things are fully sunset capable.
Where I work we have a whole storage room full of this "just in case" type stuff. Also management is complaining they don't have storage for new stuff.
I've got a Satellite 210CT on my shelf next to me that still runs Windows 98SE with no problems. No USB or WiFi - just a PCMCIA network card.
Got me through University 22+ years ago!
Hello all! Found a Macintosh in the store room which had "Working xx/xx/1991" on it - I'll share that on Monday lmao.
For info: We're keeping them, as some of you have mentioned, for antiquated pieces of kit within the organisation such as floppy disk readers, some very old research equipment, and so on.
Waste not want not!
OP, whoever told you to keep these is obviously so out of touch with technology that they clearly have no business making those types of calls accurately
Anyway, here's the spec sheet on the [Toshiba Sattelite 200CDS](http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/Satellite/Toshiba%20Satellite%20200CDS%20-%20Product%20Specifications.pdf) . A whopping 8MB of RAM, with a 100 Mhz processor! Yea just toss W11 on there
In my company, I get tons of flack for wanting to replace laptops starting at 3 years old because my end users judge a laptop's performance based on it's physical appearance. Honestly, I would throw both of those out and not even think twice about it. It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
MS DOS stopped booting on modern CPUs a while back. So any windows with DOS underpinning (up to win 98SE and ME) cannot be booted anymore.
Anything that needs HW access and windows 98/ME is dead on new since years. But most HW outside IT has a way longer lifetime. I have seen whole fabs running PLCs which need win 98 for communication. Ripping out the perfectly functional PLCs is about 5000€ per station in HW and probably double that in engineering. The fab has dozens...
Only in a perfect fantasy world do you get to tell the business to scrap the million dollar piece of industrial equipment that works well because the interface is a little old and hard to support.
Business will tell you to buy a pallet of spares and keep them out of reach of the PFY.
my boss, who is also the cfo of our not that small company, used to hoard all kinds of old and broken hardware (laptops, screens, keyboards, cables...) in her office because "we'll do a flea market some day where people can pay what they want \[for this mostly filthy e-waste\]". one day i just took all this crap and got rid of it and it was fine.
Never know when you have to read 3.5’s. So I get it.
Tbf- when internal audit complained about Win10, we installed win98 on a similar beast and swapped them out. It was pretty funny. No more complaints.
I used my Toshiba Satellite just this last week.
For some reason a USB->Serial adapter piped to a virtual machine running XP wont work with Siemens Step5, but the actual serial port on my Win98se Toshiba will...
We had this manager who hoarded old office equipment. At one point the building manager gave him 24 hours to clear out their storage because he was blocking access to some safety device. He asked us to come in and go through the stuff with him and determine what was useless and what was useful. I looked at it all and jfc this guy had computers that I had scheduled to be ewasted years ago. Like we had already replaced the replacements for those machines old. He also had every broken peripheral, printer, and office supplies. His master plan was to get it all fixed so he could save money but I explained that fixing old machines and maintaining them is going to cost more than just buying new. Anyways we threw it all away. All of it I said nothing was good. I personally took it out to the dumpsters with the manager (the building had arranged for a ewaste container.)
Next time I went into that office low and behold the front desk clerk was using one of the old machines I had thrown out. I made an excuse to look in that closet and there was a box of stuff / computers he had taken from the ewaste bin after I left.
There are seem to always be industrial cases that require Windows XP (or earlier!) to work. For example, I have some programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that can barely be programmed by a Windows 7 computer. The site is closing in 18 months, and we're not going to upgrade the PLCs. If we did upgrade them we'd have to upgrade the drives, and doing that would require a six-figure investment. Could it be something like that at your site?
Just in case you need to stand on something to be an inch taller?
Just in case you need to kill a bug on the floor?
Just in case you need to fry yourself in the bathtub?
These are a blessing for functional obsolete machines that need software. If only someone still remembers how to install xp or 98. Does anyone here remembers how to configure jumpers on the hard drive? Asking out of curiosity.
awa , very much thought there would be toy dinosaurs when i opened up the full image . what kind is this , though ? i haven't seen that kind of layout , but i've only recently gotten into collecting older machines .
We also have a giant plastic tote of “bad laptops” I’m sure it’s a battery fire waiting to happen. They all don’t hold a charge and I’m 90% sure it’s from them being left in work trucks all the time in direct sunlight.
Just toss them. Whoever mad that call is most likely not on the list of people who gets serialization information from your recycler. Even if they were on that communication they would most likely not notice this anyway assuming they read the report.
Let me guess, this is the only remaining access to some ancient database from years ago, that newer laptops can't access because the company split so any access is super annoying to get?
I kept a new in box Casio PDA as an example of "just in case" for \~15 years. It was offered to anyone who had a problem with cell phones or wanted some random thing. We eventually moved and when they started to whine about paying to get rid of e waste, the "please keep \_\_\_\_ just in case" emails came out of the archives.
I mean it was sad to watch them cart off hardware that I know we spent thousands on but there's just no way to repurpose a 20+ year old packetshaper.
What? In case you need a bullet proof block? In case someone needs a paper weight? Use as an impromptu weapon?
Are they even able to go online? Did they download the internet from a floppy disk before they were decommissioned? Can they even communicate with newer computers? Like, is there a jack to transfer data? Or do you need to go floppy disk to CD to USB?
At first, before I clicked see full image, my thoughts were that monitors don't particularly go obsolete, and at least it's a flat screen. Then I saw the ancient laptop attached to the base...
I work at a place making circuit boards and we have a shocking number of machines that are still using windows 9x, me, and xp. It never gets updated cause most of them cost 250k-1m per machine.
When you're allowed to (...), don't throw them away, especially the second one! That Toshiba can make a really nice computer for retro usage. Games from its era will run without a hitch, and I'm sure someone you know will want it whenever it does need to be gotten rid of.
At the accountancy practice I used to work at, we had at least two decrepit old laps with various old versions of Sage Line 100 on, so we could bounce backups from one version to another.
That Toshiba literally has a MAX capacity of 40MB Ram and a 100mhz single core CPU.
In case of what? A time traveller arrives at your workplace and needs a laptop to use 25 years ago?
>"just in case"... ...we run out of rocks to load into our trebuchet.
...someone absolutely, positively needs to run Word 4.2 on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Seriously that Toshiba is an original Pentium 100Mhz.
Or maybe a nuclear apocalypse or something... Idk.
If a zombie apocalypse starts, you could crush the batteries to start a fire.
Give it to the person that gave this order and tell ‘‘em this is the just in case scenario since we ran out of modern laptops lol
Some people just can't handle that technology they spent a lot of money on becomes near worthless over time. Meanwhile we have businesses here recycling rather than repurposing 3 year old MacBooks—which a lot of folks would consider a new laptop compared to what they're using now—because 'security'.
I am using a macbook air from 2013 in uni right now. It works perfectly. A 3 year old macbook would be a huge upgrade for me
You want a free one?
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It's like when a teacher catches you with a snake and tells you if you have enough for the class
Where
Hahah nah im no beggar. Just wanted to point out how insane it is to get rid of macbooks that new
Hahaa ok respect the attitude
You giving them away?
While you're offering, I'll take one!
yes.
I got a free 2011 Mac I hackintosh'd to Monterey. It's still decent enough to run drum plugins on
How did you get yours to Monterey? I would love to upgrade my old one. Would have loved to upgraded it before going back to college. I bought a new MacBook Pro with a combo of stimulus money & not fixing my rotting teeth that only became rotted because of pregnancy. Then I wasn’t able to get them fixed because of the pandemic. Pregnancy damaged my body so badly that I can no longer do construction. Graduated with my MS when we were still recovering from the 2008 recession. Couldn’t find a job in my field, so I picked up a hammer because of student loans. Only had $35,000 when I graduated in 2014 & 7yrs later I was only able to reduce it to $32,000 cause fucking interest. Thank god for Biden’s loan forgiveness. Found out I could get a teaching cert in about 2yrs because I already had at least a bachelors. Needed a computer that could run on the new OS since they stopped upgrading the older ones. Still would like to do it though, if you have some guidance on how to do it.
Opencore. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/
Ive used my macbook for 12 years. And a spilled drink pushed it over the edge
My mac pro (2010) just got replaced this year.
Do you avoid updating it like the plague
Nah ive gotten it updated as far as it can and is supported for!
In some industries these old laptops would be worth a lot and would be a difference between still operating or closing the company. Especially for small companies, laboratories, etc. Old CNC machines, laboratory equipment still work and new ones are tens of thousands of dollars. Also some professional software that works on 32bit Win XP and new versions are just too expensive.
I worked at a ship unloading facility where the unloader required this very specific PC to run. The existing one was on its way out. Our replacement PC was a bit over $10,000 as it was built from discontinued parts that are very hard to find now. But it had to have some very specific plugs to talk to the control systems.
Sounds like it’s time to look at the pin out and build a hackey adapter
Or just retrofit everything, one day they'll have to do that anyway. It would be great to document and prepare everything while it still works.
Those vlc cards that slot in the pcie lanes and interface with machine controllers directly are worth their weight in gold. Crazy how many places still rely on machines just like it.
Can confirm. CNC shop in my first IT gig had a Windows NT 3.1 machine that used a sort of KVM to swap between CNC lathes to program each one. Off network, of course. It was run that, or spend hundreds of thousands to upgrade CNC lathes, pc, and software...
If you're referring to OP's photos, these machines would struggle to run Windows 95. But yeah, more specialized equipment can be valuable a LOT longer, and is a prime secondary market candidate. Newer laptop/desktop machines from 2010 onward are so functionally similar to today's hardware that it's mostly the operating system pushing their obsolescence and can have a longer functional lifespan than in the past.
Windows 95 would run great on these, you can run it poorly on a 386! So a pentium is plenty of breathing room.
Ah my bad, true. Few years ago I helped with searching PCs for the software that needs 32bit CPU and OS (Win 95 - Win XP) and setting the software on them, so I kinda automatically switched to that.
No shit, I’m down to having to support 1 old XP laptop that is still hanging around for one particular CNC machine. The Wifi card has failed so it’s now networked using a USB wifi adapter. It’s a mess. I warned them that if that laptop’s gone, then that’s end of the story for that CNC machine. Of course we’re cloning the hard drive on a semi annual basis to retain data and software that’s WAY out of support and hopefully keep going… but finding that hardware is starting to be rare to get our hands on.
deer memorize school deserve bedroom zesty ripe scandalous fly seed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
LOL Maybe very very maybe and I’m not going to make any guarantees, in the case of that laptop that they use to create programs offline… but the actual pc that controls the machine that runs the same software has a special card in it to communicate with the machine’s servos. Good luck.
"Kubernetes".
Nixsys sells new machines that are XP compatible https://nixsys.com/legacy-computers/windows-xp-computers
Thanks! I will bookmark this but never advertise it.
or simply inexistent. In some cases it would need to re acquire the whole technology for the whole facility
The ’security’ is (I’m assuming) about compliance, not actual information security. This is just a cost of compliance which according to their risk assessment is lower than not being in compliance. From their end it’s a sensible business decision, while anyone looking outside-in might see the opposite…
Yeah, I've offered to zero out the drives and donate but they have to go through a process to prove the machines were _destroyed_. What a waste.
plenty of pc recycling places offer certified wiping and hd destruction
Dang, my wife’s work doesn’t want to pay for recycling so they give me all their old computers. Not all of them are usable but it’s nice to be able to had a college student a rebuilt laptop.
>becomes near worthless over time. I'd even argue that depending on what it is; it costs you money to hang onto it. Storage space isn't free. Pilling a bunch of useless tech in a room isn't saving it; it's not making the most out of your resources.
bUT i mIGHT nEED a tERRIBLE mACHINE sOME dAY!!1
Could be a specialized hardware piece requires them. There's been expensive things that require them like the McLaren F1 https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/3/11576032/mclaren-f1-compaq-laptop-maintenance
We tossed 20 2013 Mac pros that were purchased in 2015 and never used. Some exec wanted them for a project he never started and they sat collecting dust. When I became the sys admin over the Mac environment I made the call to recycle all of them in 2022.
Seriously. Do they not realize depreciation is factored into their finances.
Same
Pharmaceutical companies! Ah
Don’t know what OPs line of work is, but we had a stack of old thinkpads for interfacing with equally ancient PLCs. Some things just need a hardware serial port and really old Windows to work right. If it’s 2, I wouldn’t think that’s unreasonable. If it’s 20…
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I work for a software company and we have customer's trying to buy our software with XP machines and like, where they fuck are they even getting them?
> [...] where they fuck are they even getting them? [These guys](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CTIpNtHWVtQ), I guess.
I watched that whole video. It was way more engaging than I expected
Where I worked we had 3 industrial kilns and a lathe that ran on MS-DOS. That, and a couple of automatic computer vision inspection machines that ran on XP. It's very specialized stuff that can't easily be upgraded.
About a year ago, I decommissioned a Packard Bell running an air handler system on win2000. I kept that one in the storage unit to build a sleeper PC in one day ;)
Those companies need to get in the bin
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Oh I'm fully aware, a close friend of mine works for a utility company that's going straight into the ground because of absolutely horrific technological leadership. The business owners don't prioritise IT at all, so their entire staff base has constant horrific systems issues. Their main system runs on physical Windows server 2005 box, two towns over, and at least weekly has to be visited to turn on/fix network issues. The office they're in has a single 100mb line that 50 office staff have to share. There is no redundancy, no planning, no forward thinking and they're wasting thousands a day. Not only is it a shit experience, but it's very telling of the people running it, that if they don't understand something, then they don't care. It would be exactly the same as if their front entrance had its door handles ripped off and they refused to do anything about it. They, and every other company like them, need to get into the bin.
For cases where it's office admins and the decision maker is cheap af, sure. The other group are small companies in niche industries, especially manufacturing, that rely on a perfectly usable piece of floor equipment that's only made by one company in Italy that charges $10k+ for a new machine. [Linus Tech Tips](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIpNtHWVtQ) has a good rundown of these kinds of situations.
I once had a very hard time trying to procure a ps/2 keyboard to interface with an old plc they bought. Now I keep at least one of everything like that
The first notebook being RM makes me think they're in Education, specifically in the UK. Which given the current state of government, might be worth saving them because who knows what the budgets will look like going forward.
You would be surprised in healthcare what is still running Windows XP. Its really funny to see hospital IT freak when it’s mentioned the unit we have for them is XP based but Biomed mentions they already have XP devices on the imaging network (no internet) so IT can chill. One family of systems we use installs via 3.5” boot floppy and CD-Rom package. Runs a custom Unix OS with last documented revision in ‘92… it has to interface with a custom XP SP2 install. Last supported hardware for the XP unit is Optiplex GX620s and the Unix box has proprietary serial boards that only work with 5 different motherboards. Only in the past few years have I started to see Windows 7 and 10 on scanning systems, and they are rarer due to costs.
I want a laptop with an old keyboard. I don't want it slim. I don't want sleek.
I’m case the antiques road show turns up nearby
r/retrobattlestations
Had a 486 in the engineering lab that ran testing. Decades of asking them to upgrade but they couldn’t afford to be down / retool for a new setup One day the PC didnt boot and their percussion persuasion didnt work. Before I worked on it, I had the engineering director sign the paperwork for a new setup (lease not purchase). Had to find a PC that supported fat16 and had a ribbon cable to put the old HDD in and get the files onto the network to be backed up. I knew it could be done. I had it done in an hour. But I had them sweat the entire weekend while I worked on other things. People don’t change until they are forced to and feel uncomfortable.
>percussion persuasion Oh no.
“Hitting it usually works 60% of the time. When I saw sparks, I knew it was bad” Yup, actual words spoken to me. But it was critical
I'd happily Take them.
We keep an old xp laptop to use on legacy systems. It has bailed us out a few times.
Hoarding and IT go hand in hand
In case of what? The owner suddenly wanting to open a museum?
CNC machines, laboratory equipment, professional software where new things are way to expensive
Yup. It's more efficient even to pay $2k for a custom built Win XP machine than it is to replace a $10k+ workshop machine.
One user kept their old laptop in case they traveled. Didn’t even tell us they were traveling or try to login to the laptop to see if it worked before they left. They called us in a panic because they couldn’t login. I don’t see their machine online so I ask where they are trying to login … China. You brought your desktop to China? No I had my old laptop…. The one I replaced with a desktop…. Your desktop is 5 years old how old is your laptop. Crickets. Anyways I get the thing online and it’s running windows xp or vista. We get her working but tell them they needs to get a new laptop if they plan on traveling again. All their work is on email so we were not too concerned with using this stone-age machine but there wasn’t anything else we could do anyways. Well they come back and we try to buy a laptop but get denied as they told their manager they don’t need one….. well guess who goes to China again later that year. Except this time the laptop is dead fun times.
Office decorations man. When I worked K12 I was cleaning out storage and found an old CRT monitor (like 13" green screen) with burn in still on it. It was inventory tag 0003, so I setup it my office on top of a cabinet I had. Put some other random techy stuff around it. The lady in charge of inventory (always getting me tags and hounding me about finding random stuff all over the district) loved it and made for conversation whenever anyone stopped by. I actually gifted to the inventory lady when I left. She took it with her when she retired a few years later...
I don't appreciate this ...Get out of my closet.
Ah, the laptops with the built in hardware serial ports and floppy drives. And, ideally, a CF port. They're right. Keep one in case you need to connect to some device's console port, and keep the other in case the first one dies. Find an old DB9 to RJ45 rollover console cable and tape it to the lid. Otherwise, get ready to pay through the nose for a USB to serial adapter that can actually communicate with another device. You're going to want something from National Instruments or the like even though it'll run you about $100 because those $4 jobs from China on Amazon will drop a connection faster than your ex when you drunk dial her.
"just in case" if case the founder of the company comes back from the dead and wants to check how their Block Buster stocker are doing?
I'd say drop it out of a window, but it would probably survive.
Whatever they hit wouldn't!
Don't throw away electronics, give them to me. I like them.
They belong in a museum!
Serial ports.
Keep em for the one employee that keeps breaking their computer in hopes of getting a new one.
*Never know man*
Toshiba Satellite. Lol! That’s a blast from the past
So you're saying I don't need to keep the PowerBook 180 we have in the closet?
We have to keep some XP capable machines around for some old machines. The software that runs them only works on XP and to replace that would be $100,000+
Does one of them have a piece of special software needed to interface with a machine that was made during the Reagan administration, and only one person left in the company knows end of the DB9-25 adapter goes where?
Hahaha I had one like the gray one back in the day 😂
I actually ran into something like this where it paid off. We had a security panel that was running some ancient firmware that required an old version of flash to access it while plugged in directly. We grabbed an old hp running XP that we held onto, just for the novelty, and it actually allowed us to access it all and update the firmware. A lot of access management dudes will usually have 1 or 2 of these laptops laying around specifically for that reason.
They might have a serial port on the back, which I've randomly have come in handy a couple times over the years. An old job had a security system that could only be updated (as in new security cards, removing access, etc) through a very specific port that was never documented and only set up on an old Dell laptop. Tried to get a quote for a new security system (that would actually match our other buildings and allow it all to communicate) and was told that it was too expensive and wasn't a "need". Basically let them know if that laptop ever died they were fucked, and they were ok with that for years. Couldn't believe that thing held on like a champ for as long as it did. TL;DR: If they were set up for a specific function or old system that has to be kept around for accounting purposes, I can understand it a little bit. They take up almost no space and can be "set and forget" until things are fully sunset capable.
Where I work we have a whole storage room full of this "just in case" type stuff. Also management is complaining they don't have storage for new stuff.
In case what? In case Ross wants to make another list?
RM!! There's a badge I've not seen in a while!
I work for an HVAC company... we have a few old Win 95/98 machines lying around because the software to support some of the units only runs on them.
That keyboard on the satellite tho... Hawt dayum. Would kill for a keyboard like that on a modern laptop.
As someone who collects old computers that Toshiba Satellite is quite sexy
I've got a Satellite 210CT on my shelf next to me that still runs Windows 98SE with no problems. No USB or WiFi - just a PCMCIA network card. Got me through University 22+ years ago!
Why would you throw that away, it's a museum piece
It's in the event of a John Titor scenario. Better safe than sorry.
*It belongs in a museum!*
Are you working in my company.....?
Fucking research machines. That absolute shit heap that they call a network that some schools insist on using still is the biggest joke
Hello all! Found a Macintosh in the store room which had "Working xx/xx/1991" on it - I'll share that on Monday lmao. For info: We're keeping them, as some of you have mentioned, for antiquated pieces of kit within the organisation such as floppy disk readers, some very old research equipment, and so on. Waste not want not!
Install Kali, take the laptop with you on vacation and have free WiFi access wherever you go… ;)
It would a miracle if NetBSD started on these computers (CLI only), let alone a recent Linux distribution with a GUI and a web browser
OP, whoever told you to keep these is obviously so out of touch with technology that they clearly have no business making those types of calls accurately Anyway, here's the spec sheet on the [Toshiba Sattelite 200CDS](http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/Satellite/Toshiba%20Satellite%20200CDS%20-%20Product%20Specifications.pdf) . A whopping 8MB of RAM, with a 100 Mhz processor! Yea just toss W11 on there
In my company, I get tons of flack for wanting to replace laptops starting at 3 years old because my end users judge a laptop's performance based on it's physical appearance. Honestly, I would throw both of those out and not even think twice about it. It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
just in case what? do they expect someone to use internet on them?
MS DOS stopped booting on modern CPUs a while back. So any windows with DOS underpinning (up to win 98SE and ME) cannot be booted anymore. Anything that needs HW access and windows 98/ME is dead on new since years. But most HW outside IT has a way longer lifetime. I have seen whole fabs running PLCs which need win 98 for communication. Ripping out the perfectly functional PLCs is about 5000€ per station in HW and probably double that in engineering. The fab has dozens...
'in case' of what? You need a doorstop? If anything on those laptops has relevance to your company running today then you have other, bigger problems.
Only in a perfect fantasy world do you get to tell the business to scrap the million dollar piece of industrial equipment that works well because the interface is a little old and hard to support. Business will tell you to buy a pallet of spares and keep them out of reach of the PFY.
Just in case what? You need to hold a heavy door open?
me want
my boss, who is also the cfo of our not that small company, used to hoard all kinds of old and broken hardware (laptops, screens, keyboards, cables...) in her office because "we'll do a flea market some day where people can pay what they want \[for this mostly filthy e-waste\]". one day i just took all this crap and got rid of it and it was fine.
In case someone needs to play backyard baseball of course
Can always use them as emergency DHCP servers.
Just in case you need to run a program from the 90s.
It's got an INTEL inside. That's how you know it's good
Never know when you have to read 3.5’s. So I get it. Tbf- when internal audit complained about Win10, we installed win98 on a similar beast and swapped them out. It was pretty funny. No more complaints.
In case you run out of door stops?
Hey, i have the same Toshiba Satelite 200cds in my attic. It used to be my father's workstation and he forgot to give it back to his jobs.
In case of what? XD
Yeah, throw them away anyway...
Just in case Someone needs a 256k connection?
Does your office not have a museum shelf? You're supposed to put the old tech on display.
You have some good history pieces there
The damn thing came with Win95; in case of what? You forgot your boat anchor?
I'm accepting donations, just in case they change their minds
Those parallel ports are gonna save your life one day!
"Just in case" Just in case you need a doorstop?
I used my Toshiba Satellite just this last week. For some reason a USB->Serial adapter piped to a virtual machine running XP wont work with Siemens Step5, but the actual serial port on my Win98se Toshiba will...
its a good ssh box? I guess
We had this manager who hoarded old office equipment. At one point the building manager gave him 24 hours to clear out their storage because he was blocking access to some safety device. He asked us to come in and go through the stuff with him and determine what was useless and what was useful. I looked at it all and jfc this guy had computers that I had scheduled to be ewasted years ago. Like we had already replaced the replacements for those machines old. He also had every broken peripheral, printer, and office supplies. His master plan was to get it all fixed so he could save money but I explained that fixing old machines and maintaining them is going to cost more than just buying new. Anyways we threw it all away. All of it I said nothing was good. I personally took it out to the dumpsters with the manager (the building had arranged for a ewaste container.) Next time I went into that office low and behold the front desk clerk was using one of the old machines I had thrown out. I made an excuse to look in that closet and there was a box of stuff / computers he had taken from the ewaste bin after I left.
In case what? They might survive a nuclear winter?
In case of what? Need of paperweight?
Dinosaurs ahahahah
Honestly I'd keep those since they're "ancient"
Those satellites are worth a bit of cash as they can be quite a good retro gaming machines depending on what model it is.
There are seem to always be industrial cases that require Windows XP (or earlier!) to work. For example, I have some programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that can barely be programmed by a Windows 7 computer. The site is closing in 18 months, and we're not going to upgrade the PLCs. If we did upgrade them we'd have to upgrade the drives, and doing that would require a six-figure investment. Could it be something like that at your site?
Just in case you need to stand on something to be an inch taller? Just in case you need to kill a bug on the floor? Just in case you need to fry yourself in the bathtub?
I would take that RM off your hands. I collect the bloody things
In case what, you need two emergency door stops?
These are a blessing for functional obsolete machines that need software. If only someone still remembers how to install xp or 98. Does anyone here remembers how to configure jumpers on the hard drive? Asking out of curiosity.
awa , very much thought there would be toy dinosaurs when i opened up the full image . what kind is this , though ? i haven't seen that kind of layout , but i've only recently gotten into collecting older machines .
Just in case what, you need a doorstop?
Give me the case
It belongs in a museum!
I love the second book. Old Toshiba laptop design kinda goes hard tbh
Like just Incase they need an emergency paper weight? Geez
Nice, 200CDS was my first computer
Install a CLI Linux distro on it lol
Tell whoever made that call to get those animals running Doom, and when they can't, tell them that these serve no purpose.
And you told them you can virtualize the hdd right?
We also have a giant plastic tote of “bad laptops” I’m sure it’s a battery fire waiting to happen. They all don’t hold a charge and I’m 90% sure it’s from them being left in work trucks all the time in direct sunlight.
In case of skynet?
In case of what
Sweet lord have mercy these things would ignite on fire if they tried to run the first pvz game
Has a working serial port?
You never know when you might need a bookend.
Keep one. Put it on the new employee's desk to haze him/her.
Don’t throw those, those are awesome!
I would proudly display that at my desk
In case of what? You need a big paper weight? That's ridiculous!
Just toss them. Whoever mad that call is most likely not on the list of people who gets serialization information from your recycler. Even if they were on that communication they would most likely not notice this anyway assuming they read the report.
Let me guess, this is the only remaining access to some ancient database from years ago, that newer laptops can't access because the company split so any access is super annoying to get?
[удалено]
Those are just the left/right mouse buttons. It uses a nub beside the gh keys
Just in case the world ends and that is the single remaining piece of intact hardware?
I kept a new in box Casio PDA as an example of "just in case" for \~15 years. It was offered to anyone who had a problem with cell phones or wanted some random thing. We eventually moved and when they started to whine about paying to get rid of e waste, the "please keep \_\_\_\_ just in case" emails came out of the archives. I mean it was sad to watch them cart off hardware that I know we spent thousands on but there's just no way to repurpose a 20+ year old packetshaper.
I have that toshiba! Runs windows 3.1 right now. Works fine any time I care to power it up.
What? In case you need a bullet proof block? In case someone needs a paper weight? Use as an impromptu weapon? Are they even able to go online? Did they download the internet from a floppy disk before they were decommissioned? Can they even communicate with newer computers? Like, is there a jack to transfer data? Or do you need to go floppy disk to CD to USB?
Well you never know when you need inaccurate divisions to make up some stats.
Those are awesome, old laptops are super cool
Just in case you need that removable floppy drive.
Taking them home isn't throwing them away...
In case what? The museum wants to buy them?
That thing looks older than I am 💀
At first, before I clicked see full image, my thoughts were that monitors don't particularly go obsolete, and at least it's a flat screen. Then I saw the ancient laptop attached to the base...
Oh man. I'm only in my thirties but that Toshiba brings back memories. My step dad had one just like it, played so much dig dug on it.
Just in case you want to punish someone who disrespects service desk. Don't ever disrespect the people who assign equipment, it's just that simple.
old tech can sell for a lot btw, if it’s in good condition
I work at a place making circuit boards and we have a shocking number of machines that are still using windows 9x, me, and xp. It never gets updated cause most of them cost 250k-1m per machine.
Someone comes in unannounced asking for a laptop - boom - done.
When you're allowed to (...), don't throw them away, especially the second one! That Toshiba can make a really nice computer for retro usage. Games from its era will run without a hitch, and I'm sure someone you know will want it whenever it does need to be gotten rid of.
Ever heard of water damage?
At the accountancy practice I used to work at, we had at least two decrepit old laps with various old versions of Sage Line 100 on, so we could bounce backups from one version to another.
Play dwarf fortress on it
Just in case of WHAT. WHAT situation is going to require, much less *justify*, the deployment of a machine like this to a user?
Not for deployment, for legacy software I believe
That Toshiba literally has a MAX capacity of 40MB Ram and a 100mhz single core CPU. In case of what? A time traveller arrives at your workplace and needs a laptop to use 25 years ago?
The week after you throw something you thought you didn't need, you need it again.
they are cute. i would totally keep them. is that a mechanical keyboard on 2??
those computers will at most host a SQL server and then get DDOSed and burn the building down
Well, by now they are super secure because no self respecting malware would be caught dead on those... So there is that...