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Survey Results

How old is your main development machine?

Survey period: 9 Sep 2019 to 15 Sep 2019

Even if you've replaced all the bits many times over, only count the date you purchased the initial unit.

OptionVotes% 
It's brand new474.63
Less than a year old10510.34
1 - 3 years old32932.41
3- 5 years old24524.14
5 - 7 years old15615.37
7 - 10 years old757.39
10 - 15 years old242.36
15 - 25 years old141.38
Over 25 years old80.79
I don't have a "main" work machine.121.18



 
GeneralNew Job, New Machine Pin
maze311-Sep-19 5:09
professionalmaze311-Sep-19 5:09 
GeneralNot "main" machine... Pin
KLPounds10-Sep-19 10:03
KLPounds10-Sep-19 10:03 
GeneralWhat about not sure? Pin
agolddog10-Sep-19 7:10
agolddog10-Sep-19 7:10 
General"How old is it?" Pin
littleGreenDude10-Sep-19 6:49
littleGreenDude10-Sep-19 6:49 
GeneralThey got me a XEON Pin
W Balboos, GHB10-Sep-19 4:41
W Balboos, GHB10-Sep-19 4:41 
GeneralRe: They got me a XEON Pin
Nathan Minier13-Sep-19 1:02
professionalNathan Minier13-Sep-19 1:02 
GeneralRe: They got me a XEON Pin
W Balboos, GHB13-Sep-19 1:18
W Balboos, GHB13-Sep-19 1:18 
GeneralRe: They got me a XEON Pin
Nathan Minier13-Sep-19 2:03
professionalNathan Minier13-Sep-19 2:03 
GeneralRe: They got me a XEON Pin
W Balboos, GHB13-Sep-19 3:27
W Balboos, GHB13-Sep-19 3:27 
GeneralTeam just got an upgrade Pin
MadMyche10-Sep-19 4:25
professionalMadMyche10-Sep-19 4:25 
GeneralBetter question: how long do you keep your development machine Pin
obermd10-Sep-19 3:30
obermd10-Sep-19 3:30 
GeneralRe: Better question: how long do you keep your development machine Pin
Mark Starr10-Sep-19 4:06
professionalMark Starr10-Sep-19 4:06 
GeneralRe: Better question: how long do you keep your development machine Pin
kmoorevs10-Sep-19 17:30
kmoorevs10-Sep-19 17:30 
GeneralAnything after Haswell.. Pin
harold aptroot9-Sep-19 22:36
harold aptroot9-Sep-19 22:36 
GeneralDate of production or date of purchase? Pin
RJOberg9-Sep-19 4:04
professionalRJOberg9-Sep-19 4:04 
GeneralRe: Date of production or date of purchase? Pin
Rajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 17:52
professionalRajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 17:52 
GeneralRe: Date of production or date of purchase? Pin
kalberts9-Sep-19 22:44
kalberts9-Sep-19 22:44 
Generalcouple of years old. Pin
Maximilien9-Sep-19 3:15
Maximilien9-Sep-19 3:15 
GeneralOver 25 years old?! Pin
Rajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 3:00
professionalRajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 3:00 
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! PinPopular
Slacker0079-Sep-19 3:17
professionalSlacker0079-Sep-19 3:17 
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! PinPopular
Amarnath S9-Sep-19 3:25
professionalAmarnath S9-Sep-19 3:25 
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! Pin
Rajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 3:34
professionalRajesh R Subramanian9-Sep-19 3:34 
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! Pin
Dennis E White9-Sep-19 4:12
professionalDennis E White9-Sep-19 4:12 
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! Pin
kalberts9-Sep-19 22:12
kalberts9-Sep-19 22:12 
Not necessarily. I've still gotten a 25+ year old Win 3.11 PC sitting in my home office, for the reason that it has a 5.25" floppy drive. Or rather, the last time I turned it on was because a friend of mine wanted me to check if his old floppies were still readable (they were!). I've got a couple other rather outdated interfaces to it as well, such as a MIDI interface card, an interface card for a tape cassette unit, and for a hand scanner. The cards are for old bus systems, so I can't move them to a newer machine. (For the MIDI, I could of course buy a brand new USB based MIDI interface, but not for the other two.)

I am not doing any development on this machine, but if you work as a consultant, you should be prepared for the strangest requests. If I was offered a six man months project on adding some new functions to a 16-bit Windows program system (that is entirely possible, even today!), I guess I would take it. Then, this Win 3.11 machine would be my development environment (it has a C++ compiler and debugger - but I have forgotten the name of the debugger!), and for a period my main development machine would have been 25+ years old.

I haven't had such a project, but about fifteen years ago a fellow came with a pile of 8" floppies (I guess most of you have never seen a real-life 8" floppy!). "I think these may contain some essential data, but I don't know the format...". He couldn't tell what kind of machine or software had created them, their age (except that they were old!), nothing. He gave us a cost limit (which turned out to be high enough to get his data out).

At that time, we had an old minim machine (not a PDP-11, but same class, from around 1980) with an 8" drive and a good selection of drivers for various track/sector formatting, and I managed to get a binary dump of the floppies. Then I could start poking around. The blocks looked like line noise, so I suspected that it could be encrypted in some way. In those days, some people were still using primitive encryption (like xoring or code shifting). Octet values were indeed unevenly distributed. By plain luck I came across an EBCDIC table, and saw that the two most common octed values were the EBCDIC codes for 'e' and 't'. The very most of the contents were plain text in EBCDIC coding. The customer confirmed that the floppies might come from an old IBM system.

For this project, we at least made use of a 20+ year old machine to dump the floppies to a hard drive. Not quite "software development", but it illustrates that some projects may call for that kind of equipment.
GeneralRe: Over 25 years old?! Pin
Amarnath S9-Sep-19 23:33
professionalAmarnath S9-Sep-19 23:33 

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