What is the slowest computer you've ever owned?

[LinuXtreme]

The slowest computer I ever owned was a Tandy 1000SL which ran a 'blazing 4-8MHz' . The nice thing about it was that it used a graphical user interface at a time (1988) when most PCs were DOS command line only (although Windows probably did exist in some primitive state). I used it to type out schoolwork up until about 5 years ago when the printer wore out and I was unable/unwilling to replace it.

Funny thing about that is I still have it set up and use it for playing DOS games .

 

[SkyBell]

The slowest computer I ever owned was a Tandy 1000SL which ran a 'blazing 4-8MHz' . The nice thing about it was that it used a graphical user interface at a time (1988) when most PCs were DOS command line only (although Windows probably did exist in some primitive state). I used it to type out schoolwork up until about 5 years ago when the printer wore out and I was unable/unwilling to replace it.

Funny thing about that is I still have it set up and use it for playing DOS games .

Yep, I have an 8 MHz Toshiba laptop for the same thing.

 

[LinuXtreme]

Why do 1-50 MHz computers run faster then our 1.5-3 GHz computers?

'Feature creep' comes to mind. A major reason why I liked my Tandy. Turn it on and I was ready to type a report within 10 seconds. My current PC takes a full 10 minutes to turn on, thanks to all the 'indispensable' software that I 'need' to have run on startup.

 

[dpaanlka]

Weren't most computers relatively responsive when they were new?

I guess the slowest computer I've ever owned with respect to where the rest of the industry was at the time would be the Performa 5200/75 LC. A low end processor combined with a really awful system architecture made it excessively slow even when it was brand new.

 

[steamboat26]

I've only officially "owned" one computer- Mac Mini
But i did pick up an old dell and an old gateway a few weeks ago. I think the dell was 700 Mhz P3, and the Gateway was an original Pentium

 

[Silencio]

TRS-80 Model I. Mockingly referred to by the haters as the "Trash-80", but a highly underrated machine that I learned a helluva lot from. My intro to programming in BASIC and Assembler, coaxing primitive sounds and faux voice synthesis out of the cassette port.

I remember mine having a numeric keypad instead of that big badge to the right of the qwerty keyboard on the processing unit itself.

 

[MacTCP]

The slowest computer I've owned is my Macintosh LC III. I hope to break that record. It has a 25mhz 68030 processor.

 

[MacAddict2000]

For me it would be the Power Macintosh 5400/200 I bought a few years back. I bought it just to have an old Mac.

But I feel like my PackerdBell running Win95 was slower. It was a 233MHz P2 vs. the 5400's 200MHz PowerPC 603e. Probably just Win95 that slowed it down.

 

[kusanagi]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) Opera 8.65 [en])

Wang PC2/S2. 8088 cpu, 512k ram and a 10gig hdd. It also has an ibm coompatability card and an ethernet coax card. Still have it and it works too!

 

[Markleshark]

Deffo the Sinclair Spectrum

 

[yellow]

Apple ][ Plus.

 

[SMM]

IBM PC (1) 180K SS/SD 5 1/2" Floppy Drive, 64K, DOS 1.x. It was sooooooo sloooooow, you did not need to type C:>DIR /P to keep it from scrolling up, and off the screen page. You could memorize each file, and its attributes as they were displayed one at a time.

 

[Jasonbot]

Has anyone ever tried to overclock a sub 10Mhz beast at all? I've never heard of overclocking something that weak. Can it be even done?

 

[-hh]

Apple ][ Plus.

I was thinking the same thing, but the OS in the ][+ was quite efficient, so even though the CPU was only running at 1MHz, it did quite well.

An old statistic that I recall was that the floppy disk I/O on the ][ was actually faster than the I/O on the 4.77MHz IBM XT's hard disk.

Since I've used both...as well as the even slower no-HD original PC, I'd have to say that the slowest machine was the 4.77MHz IBM PC, not the 1MHz ][+


-hh

 

[G4DP]

The Acorn!

Those were the days, 2MHz of pure raw power! That green screen was something special.

Does anyone else remember the Memorex 500 - black keyboard, made of metal?

 

[yellow]

I was thinking the same thing, but the OS in the ][+ was quite efficient, so even though the CPU was only running at 1MHz, it did quite well.

I think it depends on your definition of the question..

Personally I define it as the oldest, "slowest" computer I've owned, no matter what, the ][+ was slower than all other computers I've owned after it.

But I think others define it as the biggest piece of sh*t they've owned, which for me would be a Dell GX280 mini-tower.

 

[Chrismcfall]

Deffo my familys old Time PC. It had ME

 

[CmdrLaForge]

That would be my Commodore 64 from 1984.

 

[notjustjay]

I had an Apple ][. No, not even... it was an Asian-made clone of the Apple ][! This led to a number of geeky years of owning and operating the Apple ][, which saw me through to junior high. I think my parents got us our first 386 computer when I was in grade 8. The Apple never felt slow, though, despite its lowly processing power. It would boot to BASIC, or from a DOS 3.3 disk, near instantly. Most programs loaded within a few seconds.

My memories of computing back in that day was the Apple clone, a 1200-baud VT100 terminal my dad used to dial into work, and a Mac SE that my dad occasionally brought home from work. Oh, how I longed for the days he would bring the Mac home so I could play on it... I think, somewhere amidst all my stuff, I still have the floppy with all those old games.

When the Mac wasn't around, I was resigned to playing simple text-based games on the VT100 terminal, of the "guess a number between 1 and 100" ilk. I don't know if those REXX scripts pre-existed or if dad wrote them for my entertainment.

 

[Royale w/cheese]

Ditto on the Commodore 64, but I think the slowest computer I ever owned that I did actual work on was a 33mhz Packard Bell. Maybe it was a 66mhz. I wasn't really into the whole speed thing yet. It was like the early 90's, I was around 12.

 

[macbotics]

My iMac 233 which ive had since the 90's

 

[dcv]

Amstrad CPC6128 with a 3.3 MHz Z80 microprocessor

 

[gonyr]

Definitely a Coleco Adam, which technically ran at 3.58 MHz. However, for most of it's mercifully short life in my home, it was actually 0 MHz, as it was somewhat (read completely) prone to break.

On the bright side, even after it's death as a computer, the colecovision portion of the machine somehow continued functioning. Definitely the 2nd best gaming system of the time behind intellivision, but with a much bigger library, including the atari adapter. The super action controller was a work of genius.

 

[Royale w/cheese]

Packard Bell 33mhz 16mb Ram, 740 mb HD, Windows 3.11. I loved it. I was young. I think its called Stockholm Syndrome.
(I don't really count my commodore or texas instruments as computers as I didn't do actual work on them)

 

[Cheese]

Commodore PET 8K w/ tape drive storage. Ran a version of BASIC, played space invaders.
AST peecee. 486sx33-WIN 3.11-170mbHD-4gbRAM $2000.00 and probably slower than the PET. (At least it seemed like it - most of the time.

I remember the Windows "pre-hype" from 1983/84 when nearly everyone said that WIN was going to be the bomb. Oh the things that Windows was going to do for computing and users. (I am trying to not get started about it!) I know and use the M$/O$ (because I am forced to) at work, and I still loathe Windows. There is little they could hope to do at M$ to make us all forget about the transgressions caused by their bloatwareO$. The damage is done.