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The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: redrumloa on February 17, 2005, 12:41:50 PM
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Original article HERE (http://www.wdr.de/themen/computer/1/commodore64/)
Please announcement consider in the Dortmunder main station strikes a Commodore 64 for twenty years was nearly forgotten located it in a chamber in the Dortmunder main station. For day it fulfilled complainless its service to day, but now it kicked: A Commodore 64, a Computerrelikt of the 80's, paralyzed all indicating panels.
1982 came the C64 on the market and became a best seller, its fans called it whether its form affectionately "bread box". More than ten million copies were sold, three million of it in Germany. One of these three million landed in the Dortmunder main station. As part of the plant for the controlling of the indicating panels it rested in its Kaemmerchen, "a completely normal computer with keyboard and screen", as a course speaker said.
Nothing goes more
But now the old Moehrchen gave up, apparent finally its spirit with the amazing life span. Since then it means in the Dortmunder main station: "request announcement consider!" The indicating panels are blind, nothing go more. Course travelers must listen exerted, if they want to go surely, at the correct track to stand and to course woman employee Mareike Heydecke spend eight hours on the day with reading out announcements. No condition actually, but the work-tired C64 places the station before an enormous problem: A new indicator plant would cost three million euro. Those may not spend anybody, because the station is to be converted anyway soon completely.
Where does the expert from Munich remain? Thus now all wait an expert from Munich for the allegedly only man, who can bring the "bread box" back in course. That was expected already two days ago, did not arrive however so far not at Dortmund. That is however only geruechteweise because of it that nobody knows in Dortmund, at which track it to be fetched would have.
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Surely they could just replace it with one of those C64 in a joystick jobbies...
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You'd think so, given a choice between 3 million euro for a new system and 50 euro for a C64DTV.
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Nah, they probably need the user and expantion port. I hope for their sake the cardridge, diskdrive or tapedrive containing the software is still there. Repairing a C64 is one thing but what about software support.
I do think it is amusing the machine kept running that long. It must be some sort of cardridge based software or an uninterrupted power supply that makes sure the C64 stays on all the time. Otherwise you must load and start the software manually each time the machine is powered off or resetted.
Nice story.
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I've got several old 64s here I'd be happy to part with...as long as they pay for my trip over to deliver it!
Geez...just go to ebay, there are tons of working 64s out there!
Bob
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:,)
What a touching story. If you're able to understand German also have a look at the two video reports.
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Calm down it allready turned out to be a mistake, it`s not a C64 but an old bog standard Commodore PC:
http://www.forum-64.de/wbb2/thread.php?postid=41591#post41591
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Lemmink wrote:
Calm down it allready turned out to be a mistake, it`s not a C64 but an old bog standard Commodore PC:
http://www.forum-64.de/wbb2/thread.php?postid=41591#post41591
Commodore made PC's 20 years ago?
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mdma wrote:
Commodore made PC's 20 years ago?
Yup i have one i can't give away.
You want it?
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Whats the postage going to be like on this thing out of curiosity? Are we talking sparcstation build quality (as in would survive being hit with a tank shell and wieghs about the same) or something slightly less robust?
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Depends on the model I would say.
The PC-1 is small (MiniMac anyone ?), while the PC-10/20/30... series is build into military-spec A2000-alike cases :-D
And yes, both series where available 1985 or earlier :pissed:
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the_leander wrote:
Whats the postage going to be like on this thing out of curiosity? Are we talking sparcstation build quality (as in would survive being hit with a tank shell and wieghs about the same) or something slightly less robust?
I? have a Commodore 486/66 here, and it's not that great a case (though it is still working, that has to count for something), but interestingly, it is the only PC I've ever seen with RCA outputs for sound as standard... Not counting those with super-duper serious sound cards of course
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the_leander wrote:
Whats the postage going to be like on this thing out of curiosity? Are we talking sparcstation build quality (as in would survive being hit with a tank shell and wieghs about the same) or something slightly less robust?
Postage would be extremely hefty, it's one of the sherman tank models. Here's a pic I borrowed from the net.
(http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/miscCPUs/pc10.gif)
That's the problem, no one wants to pony up shipping costs on this thing. I hate to send it to the dump as it must be getting rare by this point.
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>Old computers
Hi
I read that NASA still use obsolete technology on their shuttle and space station (ie 8086 CPU). Is this correct?
Why don't they use modern low power ultra reliable hardened CPU?
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@asian1
I no nothing about this, but I believe that radiation-hardened components are always quite a way behind "ordinary" components, and you don't want to be at the bleeding edge of hardware for mission-critical applications.
Are you sure that they use 8086's on the ISS - if so, I presume that they're still made, since its a fairly new space station ;-) (Z80s are still made - there's still a demand for simple microprocessors) As for why they're using designs that old - why do they need anything newer? An 8086 will probably crunch numbers quite fast enough for what it's needed for, won't have any cooling or power problems, and they've probably got lots of experience with them. I guess that they're also cheap enough to have loads as spares :-D Finally, don't forger that these older chips are fabricated with much larger components. This is definitely an advantage - less heat produced, and if a stray particle whacks into the chip its less likely to cause much damage.
---edit---
Hmmm - done a quick search and it seems that the shuttle used to use 8086's, untill they had to start looking on EBay for them :-o That said, I don't agree with this:
Until recently, the flight-deck computers on the space shuttle used old 8086 chips from the early 1980s, the sort of pre-Pentium electronics no self-respecting teenager would dream of using for a video game.
Does this guy seem to think that the shuttle needs game-style visualisations, or that simple trajectory calculations need more processing power than an immersive 3D game? It's not rocket science :-P