Quote:
Originally Posted by ssipes
This is off topic, but since it's an old thread that was magically reincarnated, here's a humorous tangent.
I can match just about anyone who thinks they might still be using the oldest still-functioning mac in the universe. The DNA sequencer in my lab connects to an old Power Macintosh running OS 7. The instrument will not interface with anything newer.
So, the DNA sequencer still works, and the Power Mac still analyzes the data, but it has become quite an issue trying to figure out how to get the data off the computer.
It has a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and a read-only CD drive. No USB. No firewire. For a while, we had an external zip drive on it, but none of my newer computers do. It has an ethernet connection, but has a really hard time appletalking to anything running OSX (which would be all the other macs in my lab).
My graduate students are mostly PC-based folk, and they get really irritated having to deal with macs in general, but OS 7? Forget about it. I am the only one with any memories of how that works.
I got my tech support person to hoard power macs for me, in case this one croaks. Oh, it is also hard to find monitors that will interface with it.
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Actually, that's really really common. I do university IT for my day job, and we hear of a lot of instruments running on ancient machines.
And if you had posted that two years ago, I'd have had you beat: we punted our cruft (including an SE30 and a Mac Portable) the last time we moved.