What Was Your Longest-Lived PC?

[syzygy]

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.

That is pretty good given that the capacitors from that era tended to last only a few years. I bought an Athlon 64 4000 in 2005 which only lasted 2-3 years. When I later opened the power supply it was clear that leaky capacitors had killed it. (I never tried another power supply, so I don't know if other components got damaged.)

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.

Sounds like bad capacitors

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.

I cleaned the inside of my PC from 2012 a few years ago and it wasn't too bad. If the ventilators run well, I suppose most dust that gets in is blown out again?
More important might be reseating the CPU with new thermal paste, since that will dry out.

[Dann Corbit]

I had a Commodore 64 from my college days (I bought it in 1983). But it got thrown out, without my knowledge. I had the tape drive with assembly language load and save, the floppy drive and the dedicated monitor. All gone in a cleaning incident.

[smatovic]

What a shame, the first 20MB MFM hard disk (IBM DOS 3.3) + MFM ISA controller of my brother, safely deposited, were victim of a cleaning incident too...

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Srdja

[syzygy]

What a shame, the first 20MB MFM hard disk (IBM DOS 3.3) + MFM ISA controller of my brother, safely deposited, were victim of a cleaning incident too...

From what I understand, this drive almost certainly would not have worked anymore today.
But if the cleaning incident prevented you from saving the data in time, then that is very unforunate.

I think I still have a 3.2GB IDE hard disk from 1997 somewhere. I should try if it still works.

[smatovic]

What a shame, the first 20MB MFM hard disk (IBM DOS 3.3) + MFM ISA controller of my brother, safely deposited, were victim of a cleaning incident too...

From what I understand, this drive almost certainly would not have worked anymore today.
But if the cleaning incident prevented you from saving the data in time, then that is very unforunate.

I think I still have a 3.2GB IDE hard disk from 1997 somewhere. I should try if it still works.

I can not tell, that drive was from ~1989 and I booted it the last time in the 2000s. Now and then I do an Atari 800 XE (1987) and Amiga 500 (1990) retro session with the original hardware, the last time, ~2013, some Atari datasettes were giving errors, Amiga floppies still fine, Atari VCS game console from 1979 (bought used in ~1988) + cartridges still working, next retro session planned for 12/2023, I guess now some floppies will give errors too...

[smatovic]

Okay, I did this with a buddy some time ago, go mentally backwards and write down your complete computer history, I enjoy reading others computer timelines, born in 1978 I am sure there are people with longer (and shorter) lists in here

...show me your computer timeline, and I tell who you are

Code: Select all

 1987 - Atari 800 XE with XC12 datasette (family home computer, shared with older siblings), BASIC
 1988 - used Atari VCS game console
~1989 - older brother with Copam PC-AT, AMD 286 8/16MHz, 640KB RAM, 20MB HDD, Hercules Graphics Card (TL ET-1000?), IBM DOS 3.3
 1990 - My own Amiga 500, A520 RF, later A501 512KB memory upgrade, AmigaOS 1.3
 1996 - used PC, 486DX 33MHz, 32MB RAM, 120MB HDD, 14" CRT, 640x480px, Hercules Dynamite 128 2MB video card, MS-DOS 6.2.x+Win95
 1998 - AMD K5 100@133MHz, 15" CRT, 800x600px, Diamond Viper 330 (Riva 128) 4MB, Win98
~1999 - upgrade to Pentum 233MHz, SuseLinux+Win98
 2001 - AMD K6-2+ 550@600MHz, 512MB RAM, 19" CRT, 1600x1200px, SuseLinux+Win2000
 2003 - Pentium 4 1.8@2.95GHz, 1GB RAM, 2x17" CRT, 1024x768px, SuseLinux+Win2000/WinXP
 2008 - Lenovo Thinkpad T61, 2x2GHz, 14.1" 1440x900px, 4GB RAM, X3100 iGPU, UbuntuLinux
 2008 - MaschinaI (first dedicated machine for GPU and chess programming purpose)
        AMD K8 X2 2x2.5GHz, 8GB RAM, 22" LCD, 1920x1080px, Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB, UbuntuLinux+WinXP
 2012 - MaschinaII, used AMD K10 X4 4x1.8GHz, Asus Crosshair Formula II MoBo with 3xPCIe, Nvidia GTX 580, K20, ++, UbuntuLinux+WinXP
~2013 - ~2015 - GPU and chess programming hiatus
 2015 - MaschinaIII, same as MaschinaII, with AMD Fury X 8GB GPU, ++, UbuntuLinux+Win7
~2019 - Laptop + Google Cloud Computing with Nvidia V100
>2021 - MaschinaIV, used Core i5-6500 4x3.2GHz with AVX2 from 2015, 32GB RAM, Intel HD530 iGPU, Nvidia GTX 750, AMD RX550 GPU, UbuntuLinux+Win10

++ = a couple of used GPUs with different architecture to tinker with GPGPU.

I tried in 2019 to switch to Cloud Computing and stop collecting GPU architectures, but it did not work out, hence I did set up Maschina #IV with some entry-level hardware to tinker with computer chess.

I intended in 2008 to drop the desktop PC and use just a laptop for my studies, but then came the desire to tinker with GPGPU.

Retrospectively, the 90s were jumpy for me, went from 68k@7MHz to x32@233MHz.

...still run some oldies via emulators on my laptop.

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Srdja

[Cumnor]

My first home computer was ZX Spectrum and still working. When my family visit with the kids it get used, my brother collects these and has about 20+ of them.

[smatovic]

reminds me of the ZX81 in "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81#Impact_and_legacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_R ... on_(novel)

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Srdja

[Ozymandias]

A friend of mine still has some of my Q6600 processors working after 15 years. I looks like what they need to endure is constant work. Mine are idle 99% of the time and fall like flies.

[towforce]

At 42 years, the PC is surely the longest dominant computer platform in history. 42 years before its launch in 1981, electronic computers didn't exist.

I can understand why the Raspberry Pi hasn't replaced it: this device, although available for well under $10, is absolutely useless to most people.

I am disappointed that more people haven't taken to Chromebooks. They're secure, they start up in less than 10 seconds, applications load quickly, they cost a lot less than a Windows laptop, the battery life is really good, they run most of the applications in Google Play (and many Linux applications) and if it breaks, your new one will be up and running about 5 minutes after you switch it on. This ought to be the device of choice for most people.

Going in the other direction, you have the Apple Macs, where you get to pay twice as much for everything.

Windows, the OS for PCs, is bloaty. I like that it has a lot of features - but the OS taking over 30Gb is Microsoft taking liberties IMO.

It seems to me that Windows and the PC survive because of network effects (you're there because everyone else is there) and inertia (when the time comes to get a new device, the easiest decision is to get another one of what you've already got).