oldest electronic
Electronic WHAT!?! Choose a noun, son.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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I suspect this is the (non-word) singular form of the noun "electronics". If there's a better term for such words, and you let me know what it is, I will give you my thank.
Gizmo
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I cleaned up when I moved, so the oldest gadget I have right now is a 15 year old MSI laptop, still happily running with linux.
You should throw it a quinceanera. Put it in a dress and buy it a small car.
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i have an old magnavox TV from the early 70s, with the wooden slat curtain thing you pull in front of it.
Old 8 track players,
my great grandfather was an electrical engineer and made some custom lighting controls in wooden boxes, with dials and meters and switches, he did made it all for his church!
from that same grandfather, he had some portable reel to reel tape recording stuff, an old portable projector that comes in a cast iron cowl.
tons of stuff that everyone makes fun of me for holding on to.
i have an old magnavox TV from the early 70s, with the wooden slat curtain thing you pull in front of it.
i grew up on old floor wooden console tv's and had one up until 2014 when it died and discovered that neither replacement parts nor repairmen existed anymore despite the tv being manufactured not very long ago in 1992.
i haven't bought a tv ever since then and my plasma died after only 8 years, so i don't have a tv anymore; but would instantly buy one they made another console tv.
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Original Gameboy.
Still works.
Hah, you stumbled upon one of Lemmyβs weird UI quirks. If you start a line with a number and period, it assumes youβre making a numbered list. But that period is placed at a specific indent, so long numbers spill off the left side of the screen.
- Hereβs what it is supposed to look like.
(Adding a line break here)
- And here is what happens when the number is too long.
It only works with 8 numbers or less though, because 99999999 is the highest value that the numbered list supports.
I have a battery operated tube radio from mid to late 1940's. It even works, but the battery it uses is getting rare and quite expensive. And my country doesn't really use AM radio broadcasts anymore, so it's more of a curiosity nowadays.
I also have a lot of working stuff from the 1950's, mostly radios and amplifiers. Great gear, and much easier to service than their modern counterparts.
I own a model electric train that was built in 1937. So, 88 years young?
Runs well, it's kinda weird to think that this was a toy and this level of build quality was normal. To be fair, it wasn't exactly. This was a high end toy aimed at affluent teens and young adults. It would have been equivalent to buying a new PlayStation. But still, I have trouble imagining any toy you could buy today that would hold up like this.
My husband has a collection of obsolete technology. The oldest thing heβs got in there is a VT100 terminal.
A ferrite core memory module, circa 1956 at a guess.
I have the Commodore64 my family got used when I was 8.
I've had it less long, but the sewing machiney mother bought after she left college is older than that.
And I inherited it even more recently, but also have my maternal grandfather's electric hair clippers from when he was a teenager, around 1960.
And I bought my house most recently of all, but some of the wiring dates back to 1926 (the house itself was built without electricity in 1880).
I have an electric singer sewing machine from 1964 and another one from around 1950. Amazing how well they work.
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An originally original gameboy. Still worked until about 2 years ago. I assume there's just a little battery or a capacitor that needs replacing, but I haven't had the time to look into it.
I have a radio from the late 30s, though not in working condition. And a radio from 1961 that I use regularly
1983 Lenco LRP 5450 DD record player &
1998 Yamaha RX-496 RDS stereo receiver
My father-in-law got them for us 2nd hand for a joint present. Quite a decent system!
Not a real audiophile, but it works well and we enjoy it.
I also made a Google Home kind of thing out of it using an ESP32S3 that uses ESPHome, Home Assistant, and Music Assistant to make it a Spotify connect node to play Spotify through it, control it with an IR blaster, and use Voice Assistant with it if I am not too far (it has a single mema mic)
Donkey Kong Game & Watch (1982)
I'm still the original owner of one of these 1982 Pac-Man consoles. Actually, I thought it was lost for decades but my aunt discovered it during a basement clean out and gave it back to me. Last I checked, it still worked. But the volume is so dang loud that I remember I always had to play with it outside.
Don't know if it counts, but my suitcase record player has vacuum tubes. Still spins but it needs a needle.
Our old pong console. I don't know if it still works because it's been boxed up for over a decade at this point.
Oldest in use? Probably my old texas instruments graphing calculator, but it's dying. I got it back in the early nineties for college, and my kid was using it last year with homework, but the screen is failing and it sometimes just freezes until you pull and replace the batteries. So only kinds in use, and barely hanging on.
My VCR is newer and still sees use rarely, but was used daily for a few years in the early naughties.
Wait! The phonograph! It's still functional and my dad got it in the early eighties, so it's older than the pong console, but I think calling it electronics is dubious, so I dunno if it counts. But it's the oldest functional electric powered thing we have that I know of.
Not entirely sure but this has to be one of the oldest and is fully functional.
4 channel mono audio mixer, with germanium transistors only
From the mid-sixties
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Fully functioning Commodore 64, monitor, 2 floppy drives, printer, and several joysticks.
One of the Play it Loud Game Boys (the red one), it's as old as I am
I have a bunch of mid-century Roberts radios that I've convert to smart speakers (using the original speakers and, where possible, the amplifiers) if that counts.
My original gameboy colour
I still have my original Pikachu gameboy color, and it works. Somehow the battery on my Pokemon Red hasn't died but there's nothing useful on it.
Not electronic, but I have a pre-WW2 era windup clock that still works. It's loud af and built like a tank
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Bulova Accutron from the 60s. I also have a Heathkit oscilloscope which I think is of similar vintage.
A Hitachi TRK-3D8 boombox from 1986 - you can see it sitting above my retro PC here.
I got that for 12β¬ on eBay and that was the best deal I ever made. It has great audio range, the subwoofer packs a mean punch and it looks awesome. It's the perfect device for a drum&bass enthusiast. Just put some batteries and a Bluetooth tape in and you can even take it outside (it's quite heavy, though).
My speakers by far
So many old computers & calculators here.
I have an Apple IIe, but at the moment it's at my friend's place. What I have with me are a bunch of Thinkpads: a barely working X60, a fine X200 with busted battery, and a combination of 20 and 30 series ones I am currently using.
May I insert some additions of analog here?
I got a Rotel RA-04 audio amp from 2006 from my dad that I am currently using, and I'm sure there are older stuff where it's from.
Aside from that, a Yaesu FT-60 FM transceiver made in 2004 still running strong.
atari vcs (from before it was rebranded to atari 2600)
Casio CZ-1 synthesizer, produced in 1986.
I still have a CRT from the early 90s and all my old video game consoles.
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Got my aunt's rotary phone in the closet.
Casio f-91w watch. Its like 6 years old now, so the battery only has like 4 more years left.
I believe itβs my Atari 2600! I canβt think of anything older that Iβve got that runs on electric juice.
I have a lamp my grandfather made out of an old moonshine jug in like the 40s.
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Probably my Canon AE-1. Not sure of the exact year, but the model was made from roughly '76 to '84.
250 MHZ analog oscilloscope from HP
Probably my dad's electric turkey carver. It was a wedding gift he got in 1980
Fridge. Older than me
My Nintendo dsi. Since 2009
1962 fender brownface pro-amp
My TI-84 calculator.
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