Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #219278
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?

From	Bud Frede <frede@mouse-potato.com>
Newsgroups	alt.folklore.computers
Subject	Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work?
Organization	Wossamotta U.
References	<sh246e$9kp$1@theuse.news.theuse.net> <sh2rdc$tbl$1@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net> <0dmv1ixgjv.ln2@minas-tirith.valinor>
Message-ID	<kRE6J.138786$lC6.15664@fx41.iad> (permalink)
Date	2021-10-04 11:12 -0400
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"Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:

> On 05/09/2021 18.28, Grant Taylor wrote:
>> On 9/5/21 3:55 AM, Jason Evans wrote:
>>> First of all, what is "real work"? Let's say that you're a
>>> Linux/Unix/BSD system administrator who spends 90% of his day on the
>>> command line. What is the oldest computer that he could get by with to
>>> do his job?
>> 
>> The problem is the remaining 10%.  (I'm re-using your numbers.)
>> 
>> IMM/RSA/iLO/LOM/iDRAC/etc consoles that are inherently GUI which are
>> invaluable when recovering systems during outages.
>> 
>> Don't forget that email clients /almost/ *need* to be GUI to display
>> more than simple text ~> attachments.  --  We can't forget the venerable
>> Power Point slides that we need to look at before the next meeting.
>
> I use a pure text mail client a lot of the time.

I use mutt sometimes, but I couldn't really do so for work. There are a
lot of times when clients send me screen captures so I can see the issue
they're running into. I need a way of displaying those or I can't
effectively do my job. A text-only display like was common years ago
just wouldn't work.

Yes, I suppose I could force my clients to decribe what they're seeing
instead of sending a screen capture, but I think they'd find it
frustrating and I don't know how long I'd retain them as clients. (I'd
find it frustrating too, but they're the ones that are paying so I want
to avoid making things awkward of difficult for them.)

I also work a lot with an app suite that has a web GUI with plenty of
graphics and javascript. You can do some management and configuration of
it from a CLI, and I do so. You can even use it to some extent with only
CLI tools. However, my clients don't use it that way - they use the web
GUI.

It might be possible to control the VOIP service I use via the CLI, but
I haven't seen any tools for doing so. (I haven't really looked, but I
did look for ways of accessing it from a Linux system. Someone had
created a very basic app with Electron, but I didn't see anything for
CLI.)

The problem with a lot of this is that, while I might be able to do more
than I am with the CLI, it might not be supported by the vendors I work
with. If there's a DDoS against bandwidth.com and the VOIP service we
use is not working as a result of that, my boss will understand why I
couldn't answer the phone. If I don't or can't answer the phone because
of some unsupported CLI client I insist on using, he's going to be mad
at me because there's a GUI client that runs fine on the computer he
provides me with, and that all the other employees are using on the
computers he provides us with - and I wasn't using it!

I don't mind using a GUI for many things, and I've actually become quite
comfortable and pretty productive in this environment (macOS). I can use
the CLI when I need to, I have most of the same Unix tools at my
fingertips that I would on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. It's pretty
usable and livable. I've found that I like it enough that I bought a Mac
for myself and use it about half the time for my personal
computing. (The rest of the time I use Linux Mint MATE, or I'm doing
something on one of the handful of Raspberry Pis I have.)

Some days at work I spend most of my time in a terminal, writing scripts
(vim is my preferred editor for most things) or connected to a remote
system via SSH and doing various tasks. 

Yes, I am sometimes nostalgic for when I was sitting in front of a
terminal in college using VM/370, or using an Apple ][, dialed into a
BBS using Telix or {Commo}, using one of the Freenets, or Linux at a time
when I didn't have a good video card in the PC I used for Linux and thus
used virtual consoles instead of X. I did have a friend who had a Timex
Sinclair, and we did some learning to use BASIC on it. I've only used
the C64 in an emulator. A former employer used a TRS-80, and I used it a
little. So I do feel a yearning to remind myself of what looking back
seem like simpler times. (They often didn't seem that simple then.)

I can't really get too retro for work though, and when I'm not working,
there are so many things to do - more than I have time for. I tend to do
more modern things. If I want a more simple computing experience, I use
the Raspberry Pi. It feels to me like a hobby computer from when I was
first using personal computers. It's far more powerful than those old
8-bit computers were, but still not nearly as poweful as the servers I
typically work with that have dozens of cores, etc. Sometimes it feels
really nice to be working on a limited system though. It feels like
sometimes I have to be more creative to work within those limits and
still get what I want done.

One thing I do regularly that's pretty retro is read and post to
Usenet. :-) I've moved on from the newsreaders I used in the past, but
gnus is still pretty venerable (it's evidently 34 years old now). I
hadn't really thought about how long it's been around before, or checked
to see when it was first released. From that perspective, almost all of
the newsreaders I used previously were younger than gnus. IIRC, the
Freenets provided rn or nn, or maybe both. Those are both a bit older
than gnus.

Getting back to the topic of the thread... I suppose that the oldest
computer I could use would be something that supports modern
cryptographic software and a modern browser. I'd actually need two
browsers, firefox and chrom[e|ium]. I very occasionally need to try
using the browser that my client is using, and I can reasonably suggest
that they try using either firefox or chrome if they're using something
else. I use chrome for work since it better supports some other software
we use. I do have to fire up firefox from time to time to try to see
what a client is experiencing. I need to be able to run various VPN
clients, need to be able to securely access various things via HTTPS,
need to be able to use ssh and scp to remote systems, and I also need a
mail client that can connect securely to the mail server and I sign all
my messages with PGP and encrypt some of them.

Given that I would also need to be running a current and fully-patched
OS, even if I were able to use Linux for work, I'd probably be looking
at an x86_64 machine. (I'm not sure what the state of 32-bit x86 is for
Linux distros these days. I see that Ubuntu is only x86_64 now.) Even if
I were able to use something older that's 32-bit, the days of that are
probably limited.

I'm not that familiar with the various Intel CPUs for personal computers
since I've typically gone with AMD when possible. I see that AMD64 came
out in 2003 with the Opteron and Athlon64. I guess that would tend to
place a limit of ≥ 2003 for my use.
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