There are instances, especially on the federal level, of a Windows XP machine that’s roughly that old running HVAC systems without a connection outward. It requires a connection that isn’t on modern PCs and the support software out of date.
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 3 days ago
My Mom had a saying when I was young(er): vintage is all the crap we couldn’t wait to get rid of and couldn’t throw away fast enough.
Decades later, I totally get what she’s saying: 30 year old PCs are utter crap in my eyes. Good riddance. Who wants to restore that junk: it was cheap-ass commodity hardware at that point. A PDP11 on the other hand… 🙂
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure I guess. I can’t count the number of PCs I brought to the recycler simply because I literally would have had to pay someone to take them back in the days. I wish I had kept them to sell to today’s enthusiasts and get back some of the insane money that stuff sold for when it was new.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Madison420@lemmy.world 2 days ago
There’s a commodore 64 running HVAC in iirc a high school.
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
The less something is available, the more it is worth.
Take VHS recorders for example. Something that used to be extremely common is now super rare because it doesn’t get manufactured anymore, but tons of people still have plenty of VHS they want to see so they still get used. After a while those break down too, making the pool even smaller.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Capitalist propaganda. Rare garbage is still garbage. The desire has to be there and often isn’t. But capitalist ideas say you have to hoard for potential.
Contramuffin@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That seems the exact opposite of capitalism? I would assume capitalist propaganda encourages you to throw away old things and buy new. Preserving old things is antithetical to that
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
There can still be value in some old things like maintaining old equipment or preserving old media. The demand may have collapsed, but it didn’t collapse to zero.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
They still have usable data on them? They were magnetic and one weak point was cross-magnetizitation on the reel, causing ghost images. What was that defect called again? And the magnetizitation holds 30 years otherwise?
Piwix@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Depends on storage conditions and age but I just digitized my family VHS tapes from 96 to 08 and they were all still in great shape having been stored inside and left alone. Older tapes might be having trouble around now
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I remember some old Disnay VHS about 15 20 years ago, wasn’t fun with all the ghosting and crosstalking.