5 ms·

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it

by femto 10y ago

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, and if you replace the motherboard to allow a newer component to be plugged in then all of the other old stuff needs to be replaced due to the new motherboard. The most success with longevity seems to be USB peripherals, with old/new stuff working together, and it's worth noting that USB is external to the PC. (I'd contend that that USB's success is largely due to the mechanical simplicity of USB, which is beginning to disappear.) With increased integration, there's also an aspect of the cost of a module being almost independent of its contents, meaning that the cost of making a device is roughly proportional to the number modules it contains. Under those circumstances, it makes sense to minimise the number of modules, the lowest overall device cost being a single integrated unit. In my mind, the key to long life is freedom to modify the software. It's amazing how far a well designed hardware platform can be pushed with software optimisation over time. I do embedded systems in my day job and our current product does things that weren't even thought of when it's hardware was designed, by virtue of the original design keeping the hardware simple whilst doing as much as possible in software, and current creative use the existing hardware resources. I think a fixed hardware platform can work well, provided an original design goal is to do as much as possible in software and there is complete freedom to rework the software going forward.

akozak 10y ago
That the vast majority of people have a different relationship to technology than you is a critical insight for engineers transitioning into (consumer facing) product development.
swsieber 10y ago
The boon wasn't that consumers could customize their computers - it was that competitors could easy compete on individual parts because of the standardization.
- femto 10y ago
  A valid point! The economics of integration seems to be driving us towards single boxes which suit stifled competition? Is there an opening here for a non-manufacturing "open" standards body to emerge? They could publish mechanical specifications for a "click together phone" and a specification for a simple electrical bus/interconnect (use USB for everything?) One could envisage a series of standard exterior cases, based on a common unit of measure. Each case might contain openings for screen, camera, connectors, etc. according to the type of device. Inside the case would be spaces for internal modules, also based on the common unit of measure, not specific to any one type of module and with interfaces in standard positions. Exterior cases in the series might include: * Smartphone * Tablet * Laptop * Desktop * Media player Such a movement could arise from the Makerspace movement, as it would be a relatively low cost thing to do? One can imagine a website with specification documents and 3D printer files for the various module outlines. People would then be free to experiment on making new components within this ecosystem. --- Edit: I'm pessimistic that the above would progress past a hobbyist level as the economics favours an integrated approach, unless it spurs a level of competition and innovation that undercuts the premiums being charged by the makers of walled gardens.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    It basically won't happen until we have a competitive processor that's fully open. Nobody has a strong incentive to start a standards body when they can control a market instead. Even when Google was still working on Ara, they planned to release the "Endo", or base frame, itself, and then just let vendors sell modules with a similar OEM partnership to how they control Android OEMs today.
- nrp 10y ago
  There are equivalents in smartphones. MIPI standards like D-PHY and C-PHY and DSI and CSI on top of those ensure compatibility of cameras and displays in a way there is significant competition among suppliers there, and wide range of options for handset makers. JEDEC similarly does so for DRAM and Flash. Unlike the IBM PC era, the mechanical interfaces aren't standardized due to the desire for deeper physical integration for miniaturization, but the electrical interfaces and protocols still are.
flukus 10y ago
> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? It worked in 90's and early 00's, particularly with RAM, hard drives and CD ROM drives. You could walk into a consumer electronic store and buy these drives stand alone, I don't think you can do that anymore. I was frequently upgrading friends and family computers for beer, anyone technical usually had a bunch of old RAM sticks and hard drives lying around for anyone that wanted them and a new computer frequently meant a new motherboard and case where you could add all the component of the old one. This was a time where hardware upgrades were a huge deal. Going from 8MB to 16MB of RAM was a lot more valuable than going from 8GB to 16GB is today. And there were frequently software releases that warranted hardware upgrades. For my, buying visual studio necessitated I upgrade my 540MB hard drive to a 3GB one for instance. > After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, and if you replace the motherboard to allow a newer component to be plugged in then all of the other old stuff needs to be replaced due to the new motherboard. Yeah, it became like that in the early 00's from memory after a decade of relative stability. That's when the hardware world got too complicated for a simple software dev like me. Although with everything on SATA and PCIx these days I wonder if I could pick it up again.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  It's still true today if you buy non-"premium" laptops and boxy desktops still. DDR3 was the RAM of choice for a good long number of years, and SATA drive connectivity standards have reigned for even longer. Stores like Fry's Electronics have major component offerings, and even at your Best Buy or Staples today there's generally a limited supply of standard replacement parts for conventional PCs.
WalterBright 10y ago
> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, It did in the early days (the first 10 years). These days, the mobo, CPU, ram, power supply, graphics card all seem to need to be a matched set.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  You've been active through the transition. Care to speculate why?
  - flukus 10y ago
    Basically the interfaces between the components became less stable, instead of a single PCI connector for every component and IDE for drives, several were around at once. These were stable for a long time because the CPU was always the bottleneck, then suddenly CPU's got to the point were disk/RAM and graphics card buses were the bottleneck. So probably nothing intentionally sinister, other than the lack of more future proof standardization when the change happened. Now that CPU speed increases have leveled off things seem to have stabilized again.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      This. The interfaces kept changing at an accelerating rate. In the 80s people bent over backwards to not change the interface. That all went out the window.
- SerLava 10y ago
  Oh man, I was poor soon after leaving my parents' house, and stopped thinking about PC upgrades for about 7 years. When income finally happened, I decided to customize a gaming PC and I thought I was just stupid. I guess it's actually a lot harder now.
- p1mrx 10y ago
  For the mobo, CPU, and RAM, I would agree, but power supplies and graphics cards have been forwards and backwards compatible for roughly a decade.
hackuser 10y ago
> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? IME, it never did. Except for techies, hardly anyone opened their computers. I remember seeing some system offered to corporate customers that lacked upgradability (except maybe memory). At first I objected - what a ripoff - but then I realized the truth. My impression is that PCs got their start with hobbyists and were designed for them, with extra slots and bays, etc., and to this day the designs are still adjusting to the vast majority of end-users. I think the first office suites included relational database authoring tools for everyone - as if most office workers would just whip them up as needed, like word processing documents. Apple has always seen it differently: You couldn't (can't?) open the cases without special tools.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  >Apple has always seen it differently: You couldn't (can't?) open the cases without special tools. FYI the Mac Pros before the trashcan had a latch and the side opened just fine for upgrades. Actually even the trashcan can be opened but I kinda get the impression it can only be opened for you to admire it not really for you to upgrade it...
  - grzm 10y ago
    Not everything can be swapped, but memory and storage can be: Upgrade memory: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205044 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205044 Upgrade storage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881
digi_owl 10y ago
It did, until it no longer did. With DOS and Win9x one could effectively replace everything underfoot of the OS and it would hardly blink. Yes it would fall back to 640x480 and 16 colors, and demand you install some new drivers, but beyond that you could do just about anything and it would still boot. Come NT and you would just be greeted with a error screen and a demand that you did a recovery (that would effectively roll back all patches etc). And these days you have to phone Microsoft if you try anything like it more than a couple times because you tripped their DRM checks. Yes, one could wander into a solid case of "my grandfathers axe". But the various layers were independent enough that they would come up in some kind of state that you could work with. Sadly i fear that Linux is heading into the NT realm with the changes to the graphics sub-system that has come in recent years. Where before higher modes were the realm of X, and things like 3D acceleration was yet another semi-independent layer, these days the kernel may well give you an error if you do not have the right GPU driver compiled in.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  It will not. It should boot using either VESA, VGA or EFI video driver. Low resolution, no acceleration, potentially single monitor, but it will start. Even OpenGL will work via software emulation.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    I have personally experienced it not working, by changing the motherboard+hard disk combo from IDE to SATA. No SATA drivers installed => system boots but Windows falls over as soon as it stops using the BIOS. (I can't remember exactly which version of Windows this was!)
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I think it was more a response to me jab towards changes to the Linux graphics stack.

by femto 10y ago

akozak 10y ago

That the vast majority of people have a different relationship to technology than you is a critical insight for engineers transitioning into (consumer facing) product development.

swsieber 10y ago

The boon wasn't that consumers could customize their computers - it was that competitors could easy compete on individual parts because of the standardization.

femto 10y ago
A valid point! The economics of integration seems to be driving us towards single boxes which suit stifled competition? Is there an opening here for a non-manufacturing "open" standards body to emerge? They could publish mechanical specifications for a "click together phone" and a specification for a simple electrical bus/interconnect (use USB for everything?) One could envisage a series of standard exterior cases, based on a common unit of measure. Each case might contain openings for screen, camera, connectors, etc. according to the type of device. Inside the case would be spaces for internal modules, also based on the common unit of measure, not specific to any one type of module and with interfaces in standard positions. Exterior cases in the series might include: * Smartphone * Tablet * Laptop * Desktop * Media player Such a movement could arise from the Makerspace movement, as it would be a relatively low cost thing to do? One can imagine a website with specification documents and 3D printer files for the various module outlines. People would then be free to experiment on making new components within this ecosystem. --- Edit: I'm pessimistic that the above would progress past a hobbyist level as the economics favours an integrated approach, unless it spurs a level of competition and innovation that undercuts the premiums being charged by the makers of walled gardens.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  It basically won't happen until we have a competitive processor that's fully open. Nobody has a strong incentive to start a standards body when they can control a market instead. Even when Google was still working on Ara, they planned to release the "Endo", or base frame, itself, and then just let vendors sell modules with a similar OEM partnership to how they control Android OEMs today.
nrp 10y ago
There are equivalents in smartphones. MIPI standards like D-PHY and C-PHY and DSI and CSI on top of those ensure compatibility of cameras and displays in a way there is significant competition among suppliers there, and wide range of options for handset makers. JEDEC similarly does so for DRAM and Flash. Unlike the IBM PC era, the mechanical interfaces aren't standardized due to the desire for deeper physical integration for miniaturization, but the electrical interfaces and protocols still are.

flukus 10y ago

> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? It worked in 90's and early 00's, particularly with RAM, hard drives and CD ROM drives. You could walk into a consumer electronic store and buy these drives stand alone, I don't think you can do that anymore. I was frequently upgrading friends and family computers for beer, anyone technical usually had a bunch of old RAM sticks and hard drives lying around for anyone that wanted them and a new computer frequently meant a new motherboard and case where you could add all the component of the old one. This was a time where hardware upgrades were a huge deal. Going from 8MB to 16MB of RAM was a lot more valuable than going from 8GB to 16GB is today. And there were frequently software releases that warranted hardware upgrades. For my, buying visual studio necessitated I upgrade my 540MB hard drive to a 3GB one for instance. > After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, and if you replace the motherboard to allow a newer component to be plugged in then all of the other old stuff needs to be replaced due to the new motherboard. Yeah, it became like that in the early 00's from memory after a decade of relative stability. That's when the hardware world got too complicated for a simple software dev like me. Although with everything on SATA and PCIx these days I wonder if I could pick it up again.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
It's still true today if you buy non-"premium" laptops and boxy desktops still. DDR3 was the RAM of choice for a good long number of years, and SATA drive connectivity standards have reigned for even longer. Stores like Fry's Electronics have major component offerings, and even at your Best Buy or Staples today there's generally a limited supply of standard replacement parts for conventional PCs.

WalterBright 10y ago

> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, It did in the early days (the first 10 years). These days, the mobo, CPU, ram, power supply, graphics card all seem to need to be a matched set.

throwaway91111 10y ago
You've been active through the transition. Care to speculate why?
- flukus 10y ago
  Basically the interfaces between the components became less stable, instead of a single PCI connector for every component and IDE for drives, several were around at once. These were stable for a long time because the CPU was always the bottleneck, then suddenly CPU's got to the point were disk/RAM and graphics card buses were the bottleneck. So probably nothing intentionally sinister, other than the lack of more future proof standardization when the change happened. Now that CPU speed increases have leveled off things seem to have stabilized again.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    This. The interfaces kept changing at an accelerating rate. In the 80s people bent over backwards to not change the interface. That all went out the window.
SerLava 10y ago
Oh man, I was poor soon after leaving my parents' house, and stopped thinking about PC upgrades for about 7 years. When income finally happened, I decided to customize a gaming PC and I thought I was just stupid. I guess it's actually a lot harder now.
p1mrx 10y ago
For the mobo, CPU, and RAM, I would agree, but power supplies and graphics cards have been forwards and backwards compatible for roughly a decade.

hackuser 10y ago

> Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? IME, it never did. Except for techies, hardly anyone opened their computers. I remember seeing some system offered to corporate customers that lacked upgradability (except maybe memory). At first I objected - what a ripoff - but then I realized the truth. My impression is that PCs got their start with hobbyists and were designed for them, with extra slots and bays, etc., and to this day the designs are still adjusting to the vast majority of end-users. I think the first office suites included relational database authoring tools for everyone - as if most office workers would just whip them up as needed, like word processing documents. Apple has always seen it differently: You couldn't (can't?) open the cases without special tools.

intoverflow2 10y ago
>Apple has always seen it differently: You couldn't (can't?) open the cases without special tools. FYI the Mac Pros before the trashcan had a latch and the side opened just fine for upgrades. Actually even the trashcan can be opened but I kinda get the impression it can only be opened for you to admire it not really for you to upgrade it...
- grzm 10y ago
  Not everything can be swapped, but memory and storage can be: Upgrade memory: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205044 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205044 Upgrade storage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202881

digi_owl 10y ago

It did, until it no longer did. With DOS and Win9x one could effectively replace everything underfoot of the OS and it would hardly blink. Yes it would fall back to 640x480 and 16 colors, and demand you install some new drivers, but beyond that you could do just about anything and it would still boot. Come NT and you would just be greeted with a error screen and a demand that you did a recovery (that would effectively roll back all patches etc). And these days you have to phone Microsoft if you try anything like it more than a couple times because you tripped their DRM checks. Yes, one could wander into a solid case of "my grandfathers axe". But the various layers were independent enough that they would come up in some kind of state that you could work with. Sadly i fear that Linux is heading into the NT realm with the changes to the graphics sub-system that has come in recent years. Where before higher modes were the realm of X, and things like 3D acceleration was yet another semi-independent layer, these days the kernel may well give you an error if you do not have the right GPU driver compiled in.

AstralStorm 10y ago
It will not. It should boot using either VESA, VGA or EFI video driver. Low resolution, no acceleration, potentially single monitor, but it will start. Even OpenGL will work via software emulation.
- pjc50 10y ago
  I have personally experienced it not working, by changing the motherboard+hard disk combo from IDE to SATA. No SATA drivers installed => system boots but Windows falls over as soon as it stops using the BIOS. (I can't remember exactly which version of Windows this was!)
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I think it was more a response to me jab towards changes to the Linux graphics stack.