The oldest computer that I run regularly is an Amiga 3000. It's now 33 years old, yet the system has everything it needs to run lots of excellent and modern software: 16 megs of memory, a SCSI bus that can take drives of any size, decent resolution graphics that can be used on many modern monitors and TVs, a processor with an MMU, and a good keyboard and mouse.
Add an ethernet card and perhaps a Zorro III RAM card, and it's usable even on the modern Internet: modern TLS works, and for sites that are too complex for AmigaDOS browsers, there are public proxies that can help.
While I wouldn't suggest anyone tries to get serious work done on the modern Internet using an original, unaccelerated Amiga 3000, it makes an excellent example of how things really haven't changed aside from speed and size since we moved to 32 bit CPUs with MMUs.
Something like this could easily be used for non-Internet heavy tasks for fifty years. We just need to be aware of the things that typically fail, such as bearings and capacitors.
Add an ethernet card and perhaps a Zorro III RAM card, and it's usable even on the modern Internet: modern TLS works, and for sites that are too complex for AmigaDOS browsers, there are public proxies that can help.
While I wouldn't suggest anyone tries to get serious work done on the modern Internet using an original, unaccelerated Amiga 3000, it makes an excellent example of how things really haven't changed aside from speed and size since we moved to 32 bit CPUs with MMUs.
Something like this could easily be used for non-Internet heavy tasks for fifty years. We just need to be aware of the things that typically fail, such as bearings and capacitors.