The 1401 restoration team gets together once a week to maintain the machines. IBM mainframes were generally very reliable when new‡, but not surprisingly after

The 1401 restoration team gets together once a week to maintain the machines. IBM mainframes were generally very reliable when new‡, but not surprisingly after 56 years these machines are not as reliable. The mechanical parts have experienced wear and rubber parts have lost elasticity. One of the 1401s was stored in an unheated garage in Germany for years and suffered significant corrosion (i.e. transistors that fell apart from rust). So there are always things to fix. ‡ The IBM 360/50 was apparently less reliable. The joke was that if you threw a Model 50 into the Hudson River, it would sink intermittently.