Hello all,
I am doing some contributes to the 3D-viewer of kicad,
I would like to know that are the oldest machines that you currently use (for kicad or other electronic / development projects).
I am interested to know the CPU type and GPU. Or if you dont know, just the year you bought or something that can explain the age of your machine.
Btw, I am only interested to know if you are using something older than 5 years.
Thanks!
Usually: AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 610GT [works pretty well]
Rarely: 10y old laptop: core2duo, 1.6GHz, Intel GM945, 1200x800 [quite painful experience]
The oldest I got that I would use with KiCAD is a Core2Duo E8400 with 8GB ram. GPU wise anything ‘current’ in the $50-80 range that can drive 2 screens @ 21-24" with 1680x1050 or 1920x1080.
2 machines like that are standing in the workshop 
Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33GHz
Ram: 4GB
Video: Intel® G33/G31 Express Chipset Family (OpenGL 1.4) <------totally trash. Intel makes bad drivers.
Windows 7 64-bit build 7601 [Service Pack 1]
Hi !
The lowest spec machine I use is Thinkpad X301 [this is core 2 duo CPU, full specs here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X301], but with 8GB ram, running Fedora Linux.
How about the Raspberry Pi 2?
Not the oldest machine but definitely lower powered hardware. I created a Raspberry Pi HAT running KiCAD on the Raspberry Pi 2. The schematic and layout worked great on the Pi 2. I tried the 3D-viewer and it wasn’t very useable. If you are looking for a tester I would be happy to try out any changes you make on the Pi 2 hardware.
Here are the slides from the talk I did at this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire about running KiCAD on the Pi 2:
https://drive.google.com/a/lowvoltagelabs.com/file/d/0B61dceBMLIvlYll5S0ZGNmZ2VVk/view
My main system is about 6 years old now, and definately in need of an upgrade. The 3D viewer was terribly slow, but after some of the later KiCad updates it has been a bit faster, but rotating the board happens far from fluently. My 2 year old laptop with integrated graphics (!) performs much better.
CPU: Core2Duo E4500 @ 2.2GHz
GFX: GeForce 9500GT, 512MB
RAM: 2GB