Oldest machine

['Computer Collector Newsletter']

Oh, what about the people who have Kenbaks?  Those are from 1971.

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Jules Richardson
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 9:54 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Oldest machine

Wai-Sun Chia wrote:
> curious to know of any operational PDPs prior to the classic-8s? (the 
> PDP-1 in CHM doesn't count! :-)

Why not though? Assuming it's a faithful restoration using period parts [1]
(rather than emulating bits using modern parts) and it works then it should
qualify...  I have no objections to museum machines being mentioned if the
poster is directly connected with that museum [2] (nor would I mind hearing
about ancient hardware that people are still using in a commercial capacity
:)

[1] Someone told me of one museum with an old machine where the core memory
had been torn out and replaced with modern DRAM, but I can't recall what
machine or where - to me though it's non-original at that point because it's
not a restoration faithful to the original hardware.

[2] I've mentioned our early 60's Marconi in a museum capacity. Oldest
machine in my private collection is a lot newer - probably my Acorn System
1, circa 1979. I don't have room for big stuff, and the older a machine is
the bigger it tends to be :-)

I suppose I'm just curious as to what systems from the 1940's to 1970's have
survived, as most of the talk on here seems to be of more recent (1970's and
1980's) hardware and very little gets said about the earlier stuff.

cheers

Jules