What Was Your Longest-Lived PC?

[smatovic]

I know, I know, people still run their 8-bit chess machines in here, and other prefer the latest gear, but hey, what was your longest-lived PC?

https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/005 ... t-lived-pc

Replacing their main machine, long-time Slashdot reader shanen had a sobering thought. "Considering how many years it's lasted and adding that number to my own age, I wouldn't want to bet on who will outlast which." And this prompted a look back at all the computers used over a lifetime:
I've purchased at least 15 personal computers over the decades. Might be more like 20 and couldn't even count how many company computers I've used for various classes and work. Then there were the computer labs filled with my students.

But this ultimately led them to two questions for Slashdot's readers:

(1) What was the brand of your longest-lived PC?
(2) What is the brand of your latest PC and how long do you expect it to last?

Lenovo T61 (type 7659) from 2008, still use it as my main machine with Ubuntu Linux. Did 2020 a complete revive, new inverter+panel, CPU/RAM/WLAN upgrade, SATAII SSD upgrade, keyboard, hinges, fan, thermal paste, bios battery replaced, for about ~300 Euro total. Use it mainly as thin internet-terminal to connect to other workstations/servers, but video decoding is still smooth with 720p30. Hope I can use it till ~2032. My Pentium 4 1.8@2.95 GHz, 1GB RAM, lasted from 2003 to 2008, started in 2008 with GPGPU programming and was missing a PCIe slot. Amiga 500 was used as main machine from 1990 to 1996, pondered about further upgrades, but the architecture was meanwhile really dead. The Amiga 500 and Atari 800 dwell well packed in the basement, every ~10 years unpacked for a little retro session.

From the comments:
https://slashdot.org/story/23/04/02/005 ... c#comments

An Intel Q6600 and Apple MacBook, both from 2007, seem to be the record holder as daily driver/main machine.

On my web-statistics there is still an entry with OpenBSD i386, there must be 32-bit machines running out there

--
Srdja

[Jouni]

I have own 7 PCs starting with 80286. Only one has crashed. Others were simply too slow and I bought new after 5-7 years.

[Leo]

Exactly.

[jdart]

For a long time I had a Q6600 running Windows NT, which I kept around to test if my program would still run on that old configuration. But it finally died.

[Eelco de Groot]

I bought a computer with one of the first 64 bit processors, an Athlon 3200+, manufactured 2005-04-25 from Paradigit. Windows XP Pro. It broke down finally, about two years ago. It was not supposed to be my main PC as for instance I also owned a Q6600 for a short while from Paradigit but that one broke down after only a couple of months. In the end I was using my windows XP machine again for Internet use and usually it was kept running for weeks on end. It was never cleaned inside so I am a bit afraid what will happen if I open up the enclosure. Bio hazard, I probably have to put on a dust mask and immediately try to vacuum it. If I had cleaned the ventilator every year or so and not kept it running for weeks on end it would probably not have broken down.

No new machines for me anymore, I would prefer a refurbished Dell or so from the place where Ed is also buying his computers, see his forum. The only disadvantage is that those workstations need a separate video card because the Xeons, at least the ones you can get second hand (refurbished) don't have a GPU. That means a lot more Wattage is needed just for video (not games) The upside is I suppose that you can run Lc0 or more importantly perhaps Leela (the Go program) from Gian-Carlo Pascutto reasonably well (I think) on even an older Dell supplied video card but I have never done that yet, at least not on my Dell computer that I have now.

[Wilhelm]

My oldest is a Pentium P60 with a Hercules Stingray and Windows 3.11 - works perfect since 1993
Then I have a AMD Athlon XP 3000 with a 3Dfx Voodoo5500 on Windows 98 - works perfect since 2002 I think
A Phenom II with a AMD HD3850,
and a Core i7 3770K with a GTX1080
That's all

[Gabor Szots]

I had a Q6600 for 9 years, followed by an i5-4690K for 8 years. The latter is still in use, only not for chess.

[mvanthoor]

My previous computer was a Q9550 (upgraded from an E8500), 8GB RAM, 9600GT, which lasted from August 2008 up to October 2016, so a bit more than 8 years. Then I all but gave it away for a token price to a co-worker, for her oldest son to use as a first computer (that could even play some games). A Dell E6500 laptop, bought in September 2008 was used as my main laptop until September 2016 (8 years), then it lay dormant as a backup until 2021, and then I gave it away to a co-worker for his 7-y/o son to use as a first laptop. I recently got a report that either the BIOS-battery died, or the entire laptop is dead. It doesn't boot anymore. Maybe I'll get a chance to look at it one day.

My current computer (i7-6700K, 32GB, GTX 1070) would have become 7 years old in October 2023, but I'm in the process of replacing it because of chess programming. Otherwise, I would have waited until October to replace it. I just hope that AM5 doesn't have too many gremlins in it anymore after 6 months... I typically wait with hardware replacement until the replacement has been on the market for a year.

The new computer will be a Ryzen 7950X, 64GB, RX 6750 XT, and its projected lifespan would be at least 8 years; maybe 10 or even 12 if AMD makes a Ryzen 9 with 24 cores or more (and I don't mean efficiency cores) and a graphics card at least twice as fast as the 6750, that work on this motherboard without exploding the 850W power supply that is in this thing.

[Dann Corbit]

I have a HP ProLiant 4U Rack Server (4 x AMD Opteron 6276 2.30 GHz) 64 cores in total.
It was made in 2012 and it still runs today. It runs Ubuntu Linux now (I have had a few different flavors of Linux on it).
It has squirrel cage blowers that sound like a jet plane taking off when it is analyzing at full steam.
I had to buy a large sound proof enclosure for it so that I could have normal conversations in the computer room.
I rarely run it these days, since it uses so much power and my AMD Threadripper 3970X is about twice as fast at half the power consumption.

[syzygy]

I know, I know, people still run their 8-bit chess machines in here, and other prefer the latest gear, but hey, what was your longest-lived PC?

My Amiga 500 from 1988 (I think) is still working. My Commodore 64 from late 1983 has a broken kernel ROM which I want to replace one of these days.