8 ms·

Computers Built to Last

123 points by ecliptik 5y ago

zgs 5y ago
The HP 35 calculator was introduced in 1972. The early models aren't quite fifty years old yet, but will be later this year. Many (most?) of these still work just fine from the mains adaptor or once you replace the batteries.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Relative of mine bought a solar powered calculator back in the 70s. I plan on leaving it to my grandchildren.
  - kragen 5y ago
    The LCD might degrade, and you should probably replace the power capacitor.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  I "repaired" one of those a couple months ago, found a set of batteries (intended as spare for an old model cordless phone) and used a tiny DC-DC converter to use a USB charger, the tricky part was to re-tin in a few places the PCB and re-solder one of the power cables that came off due to oxidation. It came out as new, the only issue is one of the display segmemts on fifth number (from left) not lighting up, luckily it is the right bottom one, so it is still "readable". My HP 28-C (circa 1987) is still going strong, and it is 34 years old by now.
johnklos 5y ago
We don't think enough about sustainability, about history. The Amiga uniquely exists as history by itself and lives on as a platform that eschews multi-gigabyte, multi-gigahertz requirements, yet can do amazingly modern things. The hardware is wonderfully documented and easy to repair. My Amiga has been running for a quarter of a century now. http://lilith.zia.io/ http://lilith.zia.io/
- blippage 5y ago
  So, it runs a pretty recent version of NetBSD? That's quite impressive. Isn't that sacrilege, though, not to be running AmigaOS? I did see a YouTube vid last year of an Amiga booting up what I presume to be an old version of Debian. It got there - EVENTUALLY - at least proving that AmigaOS was a vastly more efficient of OS (over Debian, at least).
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Given that AmigaOS team was actually inspired by UNIX and that was their original goal, maybe it isn't as much of sacriledge, although I think it was certainly good that in the end they did their own thing instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > The Amiga uniquely exists as history by itself and lives on as a platform that eschews multi-gigabyte, multi-gigahertz requirements, yet can do amazingly modern things. Hm? Don't 386s do this too? And BeagleBones? MSP430s?
  - rvense 5y ago
    I've got a 1999 Powerbook G3 open that I'm making some music on right now. Some of the processes take a long time so I keep my X200 (13 years!) next to me as well to have something to do in between. 1999 isn't all of a quarter of a century, but there's a Quadra in the other room which will be 30 this year and also still sees some use. It's not that the new stuff isn't nice, but I still haven't managed to exhaust the potential of stuff from 20 years ago for my music at least. So I can just stay off the upgrade cycle, which feels quite good. For non-music, save for TLS, Hackernews could of course also work well on old hardware. Most websites you could also get the functionality, if not the exact experience. But alas, that's not the way the world went, and although a ten-year-old PC in 2022 is a lot more "current" than a 10-year-old PC was in 2012, it still seems like we will keep being dragged forwards by developers wanting more shiny things and hardware manufacturers who want to sell hardware.
smm11 5y ago
Got an Amiga 1200 in the garage right now.
marttt 5y ago
Same article, posted a few hours earlier, discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29773407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29773407
bullen 5y ago
Raspberry 4 is probably the most likely candidate right now. Because you need a user base to make the software carry itself. Also from a power point of view 7W is pretty much what we have to play with if everyone is going to have one powered on permanently. Get a good case for it so that you can passively cool it and you're good to go for atleast 100 years if the heatpaste doesn't dry up: http://move.rupy.se/file/pi_4.jpg http://move.rupy.se/file/pi_4.jpg I recently found this case, but it's still in the mail: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z6FYHCH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z6FYHCH
- nine_k 5y ago
  I'm afraid that 100 years are not achievable in a guaranteed way because of the tin whiskers phenomenon [1]. Maybe covering the solder surfaces with thick, hard resin could help. (So goes repairability.) [1]: https://www.microcontrollertips.com/when-tin-whiskers-spontaneously-erupt-faq/ https://www.microcontrollertips.com/when-tin-whiskers-sponta...
  - kurthr 5y ago
    While I agree with the sentiment... especially for ultra low cost solutions, the availability of Pb-Free HASL, Organic coatings, and NiAu plating make Sn whiskers much less of an issue than they were 10+ years ago. Through-hole components again might be lowest cost tin coating, but that's also easily fixed. Incremental 10% cost increases can dramatically improve long term and high temp reliability. Most SMT parts are pretty safe, because the suppliers are afraid of contaminating their supply chain. Even for commodity parts (Cell phones and Laptops) PCBs and components are built to prevent problems with Sn. Certainly, in Automotive it's a big deal!
  - bullen 5y ago
    So then just use a brush and rub the PCB every 5 years? I mean they can only grow through air right? My 35 years old breadbins show no sign of these, maybe they have more lead in them... time will tell! How ironic if the old breadbins outlive modern hardware!
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
gruez 5y ago
>My platform of choice is instead the Amiga 1200 I was honestly expecting him to mention vintage (ie. IBM/pre-lenovo) thinkpads. Those have a cult following behind them, supposedly for their serviceability, durability, and features (nice keyboards/trackpoint). They're certainly more useful and easier to repair than the Amiga. Speaking of which, can something really be considered easy to repair if replacement parts have to be custom manufactured by "hobbyists and small scale businesses", and parts need to be reimplemented via FPGAs? At that point you're probably creating more e-waste than using a raspberry pi or something.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
My 16GB 2019 MacBook Pro is slow as F on the lastest OS and feels awfully slower than an cheap 3 year old Dell Windows laptop
reaperducer 5y ago
If you're really going for "built to last," think beyond binary computing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer Also, use whatever tech is used in deep space probes.
- Jorengarenar 5y ago
  Why beyond binary? What ternary could offer to make it last longer?
- kragen 5y ago
  I like balanced ternary a lot, but there is nothing longer-lasting about it.
marcodiego 5y ago
Even considering just 2 or 3 decades, the problem with a computer built to last is that after long enough, its capabilities are outdated. Things have improved a little in the last decade: using a 10 year old GOOD computer is still comfortable if you don't need more than one vm or is patient enough to wait for things to compile, but still not a great experience. Another thing a computer built to last needs are blob-free mainline drivers. It is sad to have a hardware you just can't use with a better kernel because it is not supported.
jen20 5y ago
Although I had a friend with an Amiga growing up, I don't remember ever personally using one. Every screenshot or video I've seen since though makes it look like the aspect ratio was very weird and everything was "too wide" - was that actually the case, or is it an artefact of displaying on modern displays etc? For example: [1] - I'd expect the clock to be circular instead of oval? [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Amiga_Workbench_3.1_screenshot.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Amiga_Wo...
- thristian 5y ago
  The classic AmigaOS NTSC resolution was 640x200, and PAL was 640x256, both displayed as 4:3, so they look very cramped and squished on modern square-pixel displays. It's not difficult to double the height to get a 640x400 or 640x512 image, which is a lot closer to the intended appearance on modern screens, but still not quite right. Later versions of AmigaOS supported higher resolutions, including square-pixel resolutions, but a lot of the UI artwork was still designed with lower-resolutions in mind so it still looks weird. 640x200, doubled to 640x400, but the clock still looks weird: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1apps.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1apps.png 640x512, with a reasonable-looking circle at the top, but the icons in the middle look ridiculous: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga2bounce.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga2bounce.png 640x480 (square pixels!) with a nice clock, a nice colour wheel, and nice icons, but the title-bar buttons and the keyboard shortcuts in the menu look weird: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga35utils.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga35utils.png
  - jen20 5y ago
    Aha, that makes sense - thanks for the detailed answer. I guess the same thing must afflict screenshots of machines I used, but none had the GUI of the Amiga so the effect is not so pronounced.
mmphosis 5y ago
PowerPC Macs still running. I might have to install a more modern OS before 2038.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  I still love my PPC Macs, mostly the G4s. I have a hard time doing anything useful with my G3s any more and the G5s are too hot and power hungry for me to be comfortable running them for long periods. I keep a G4 iBook, iMac, and a couple of Minis around as backup computers because they still just work. I've been thinking about switching some of them to Linux/BSD now that TenFourFox is dead, but they're still useful for a lot of tasks on Leopard. My iBook definitely plays DVDs much more conveniently than most Macs of the last decade.
tluyben2 5y ago
The computers I own are from the 60s onward. The 70s and after 2005 (somewhat) are the most unreliable. All my 60s, 80s, 90s systems still work provided they are not PCs. The PCs from the 80s still work, but 90s and upward are quite hit or miss; HP servers, which can be seen as PCs I guess still work but desktops and laptops are broken. My favorites are msx-2(+), msx turbo r, atari st, Amiga and Sun E450 and UltraSPARC stations. They all seem unbreakable. Or maybe I am just lucky; I never had leaky capacitor issues yet that plagues many 80s ones. The one from the 60s is, obviously, over 50 years now but although called a computer, it cannot win consistently at tic-tac-toe as it is, as the memory Is wired and a few bytes; at least the 70s and 80s ones are usable somewhat (at least for games).
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Funny you should mention an unreliable tic-tac-toe, I've been reading the book "Racing the Beam" and it mentions the 1956 relay-logic computer "Relay Moe", which, despite being constructed of little more than 90 relays and a spinning drum, touted a "variable intelligence" which allowed the operator to choose how often the machine makes a mistake, and rotates the board between games so its repetitive strategy is not immediately obvious. Quoting the book (p39): > Playing against a perfect tic-tac-toe competitor, and playing well, can only ever result in a draw. This may be computationally impressive the first time, but it isn't very fun. Opponents, computer or human, become interesting when they make mistakes--or more accurately, when it becomes clear that they might make mistakes under certain circumstances. Such mistakes highlight weaknesses, which players can exploit as part of a strategy. The book goes onto explain how Pong on the Atari 2600 achieves a similar level of unreliability, since it would be trivial for the computer to follow the y-position of the ball and never lose. Every 8 frames, the computer neglects to track the ball, drifting behind the position, but recovering its position when the ball ricochets off the top or bottom of the screen. This way the "AI" of Pong occasionally makes mistakes, in order not to be too harsh to the human's ego. Thorough breakdown of Relay-Moe's logic with photos is here: (3.5MB PDF) https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%20Dec%201956%20Relay%20Moe%20Plays%20Tic-tac-toe.pdf https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%...
  - 5y ago
rahen 5y ago
> In order to become relevant for the next 50 years, the computer needs to be made of easily replaceable parts. Inspirations are the Fairphone and the MNT Reform laptop. Interesting. I knew about the Framework laptop but the Reform seems to go quite farther in being usable and repairable for a long time. Bulky and less advanced, but I like how one can just buy spare battery cells for cheap on Amazon or Aliexpress. edit: https://technomancy.us/195 https://technomancy.us/195
inc 5y ago
I'm building a series of computers designed to last for decades. They use FPGAs and run Linux. The first model will be ready later this year. https://machdyne.com https://machdyne.com

123 points by ecliptik 5y ago

zgs 5y ago

The HP 35 calculator was introduced in 1972. The early models aren't quite fifty years old yet, but will be later this year. Many (most?) of these still work just fine from the mains adaptor or once you replace the batteries.

pyuser583 5y ago
Relative of mine bought a solar powered calculator back in the 70s. I plan on leaving it to my grandchildren.
- kragen 5y ago
  The LCD might degrade, and you should probably replace the power capacitor.
jaclaz 5y ago
I "repaired" one of those a couple months ago, found a set of batteries (intended as spare for an old model cordless phone) and used a tiny DC-DC converter to use a USB charger, the tricky part was to re-tin in a few places the PCB and re-solder one of the power cables that came off due to oxidation. It came out as new, the only issue is one of the display segmemts on fifth number (from left) not lighting up, luckily it is the right bottom one, so it is still "readable". My HP 28-C (circa 1987) is still going strong, and it is 34 years old by now.

johnklos 5y ago

We don't think enough about sustainability, about history. The Amiga uniquely exists as history by itself and lives on as a platform that eschews multi-gigabyte, multi-gigahertz requirements, yet can do amazingly modern things. The hardware is wonderfully documented and easy to repair. My Amiga has been running for a quarter of a century now. http://lilith.zia.io/ http://lilith.zia.io/

blippage 5y ago
So, it runs a pretty recent version of NetBSD? That's quite impressive. Isn't that sacrilege, though, not to be running AmigaOS? I did see a YouTube vid last year of an Amiga booting up what I presume to be an old version of Debian. It got there - EVENTUALLY - at least proving that AmigaOS was a vastly more efficient of OS (over Debian, at least).
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Given that AmigaOS team was actually inspired by UNIX and that was their original goal, maybe it isn't as much of sacriledge, although I think it was certainly good that in the end they did their own thing instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> The Amiga uniquely exists as history by itself and lives on as a platform that eschews multi-gigabyte, multi-gigahertz requirements, yet can do amazingly modern things. Hm? Don't 386s do this too? And BeagleBones? MSP430s?
- rvense 5y ago
  I've got a 1999 Powerbook G3 open that I'm making some music on right now. Some of the processes take a long time so I keep my X200 (13 years!) next to me as well to have something to do in between. 1999 isn't all of a quarter of a century, but there's a Quadra in the other room which will be 30 this year and also still sees some use. It's not that the new stuff isn't nice, but I still haven't managed to exhaust the potential of stuff from 20 years ago for my music at least. So I can just stay off the upgrade cycle, which feels quite good. For non-music, save for TLS, Hackernews could of course also work well on old hardware. Most websites you could also get the functionality, if not the exact experience. But alas, that's not the way the world went, and although a ten-year-old PC in 2022 is a lot more "current" than a 10-year-old PC was in 2012, it still seems like we will keep being dragged forwards by developers wanting more shiny things and hardware manufacturers who want to sell hardware.

smm11 5y ago

Got an Amiga 1200 in the garage right now.

marttt 5y ago

Same article, posted a few hours earlier, discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29773407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29773407

bullen 5y ago

Raspberry 4 is probably the most likely candidate right now. Because you need a user base to make the software carry itself. Also from a power point of view 7W is pretty much what we have to play with if everyone is going to have one powered on permanently. Get a good case for it so that you can passively cool it and you're good to go for atleast 100 years if the heatpaste doesn't dry up: http://move.rupy.se/file/pi_4.jpg http://move.rupy.se/file/pi_4.jpg I recently found this case, but it's still in the mail: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z6FYHCH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z6FYHCH

nine_k 5y ago
I'm afraid that 100 years are not achievable in a guaranteed way because of the tin whiskers phenomenon [1]. Maybe covering the solder surfaces with thick, hard resin could help. (So goes repairability.) [1]: https://www.microcontrollertips.com/when-tin-whiskers-spontaneously-erupt-faq/ https://www.microcontrollertips.com/when-tin-whiskers-sponta...
- kurthr 5y ago
  While I agree with the sentiment... especially for ultra low cost solutions, the availability of Pb-Free HASL, Organic coatings, and NiAu plating make Sn whiskers much less of an issue than they were 10+ years ago. Through-hole components again might be lowest cost tin coating, but that's also easily fixed. Incremental 10% cost increases can dramatically improve long term and high temp reliability. Most SMT parts are pretty safe, because the suppliers are afraid of contaminating their supply chain. Even for commodity parts (Cell phones and Laptops) PCBs and components are built to prevent problems with Sn. Certainly, in Automotive it's a big deal!
- bullen 5y ago
  So then just use a brush and rub the PCB every 5 years? I mean they can only grow through air right? My 35 years old breadbins show no sign of these, maybe they have more lead in them... time will tell! How ironic if the old breadbins outlive modern hardware!
LeoPanthera 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

>My platform of choice is instead the Amiga 1200 I was honestly expecting him to mention vintage (ie. IBM/pre-lenovo) thinkpads. Those have a cult following behind them, supposedly for their serviceability, durability, and features (nice keyboards/trackpoint). They're certainly more useful and easier to repair than the Amiga. Speaking of which, can something really be considered easy to repair if replacement parts have to be custom manufactured by "hobbyists and small scale businesses", and parts need to be reimplemented via FPGAs? At that point you're probably creating more e-waste than using a raspberry pi or something.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

My 16GB 2019 MacBook Pro is slow as F on the lastest OS and feels awfully slower than an cheap 3 year old Dell Windows laptop

reaperducer 5y ago

If you're really going for "built to last," think beyond binary computing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer Also, use whatever tech is used in deep space probes.

Jorengarenar 5y ago
Why beyond binary? What ternary could offer to make it last longer?
kragen 5y ago
I like balanced ternary a lot, but there is nothing longer-lasting about it.

marcodiego 5y ago

Even considering just 2 or 3 decades, the problem with a computer built to last is that after long enough, its capabilities are outdated. Things have improved a little in the last decade: using a 10 year old GOOD computer is still comfortable if you don't need more than one vm or is patient enough to wait for things to compile, but still not a great experience. Another thing a computer built to last needs are blob-free mainline drivers. It is sad to have a hardware you just can't use with a better kernel because it is not supported.

jen20 5y ago

Although I had a friend with an Amiga growing up, I don't remember ever personally using one. Every screenshot or video I've seen since though makes it look like the aspect ratio was very weird and everything was "too wide" - was that actually the case, or is it an artefact of displaying on modern displays etc? For example: [1] - I'd expect the clock to be circular instead of oval? [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Amiga_Workbench_3.1_screenshot.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Amiga_Wo...

thristian 5y ago
The classic AmigaOS NTSC resolution was 640x200, and PAL was 640x256, both displayed as 4:3, so they look very cramped and squished on modern square-pixel displays. It's not difficult to double the height to get a 640x400 or 640x512 image, which is a lot closer to the intended appearance on modern screens, but still not quite right. Later versions of AmigaOS supported higher resolutions, including square-pixel resolutions, but a lot of the UI artwork was still designed with lower-resolutions in mind so it still looks weird. 640x200, doubled to 640x400, but the clock still looks weird: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1apps.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1apps.png 640x512, with a reasonable-looking circle at the top, but the icons in the middle look ridiculous: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga2bounce.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga2bounce.png 640x480 (square pixels!) with a nice clock, a nice colour wheel, and nice icons, but the title-bar buttons and the keyboard shortcuts in the menu look weird: http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga35utils.png http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga35utils.png
- jen20 5y ago
  Aha, that makes sense - thanks for the detailed answer. I guess the same thing must afflict screenshots of machines I used, but none had the GUI of the Amiga so the effect is not so pronounced.

mmphosis 5y ago

PowerPC Macs still running. I might have to install a more modern OS before 2038.

drewzero1 5y ago
I still love my PPC Macs, mostly the G4s. I have a hard time doing anything useful with my G3s any more and the G5s are too hot and power hungry for me to be comfortable running them for long periods. I keep a G4 iBook, iMac, and a couple of Minis around as backup computers because they still just work. I've been thinking about switching some of them to Linux/BSD now that TenFourFox is dead, but they're still useful for a lot of tasks on Leopard. My iBook definitely plays DVDs much more conveniently than most Macs of the last decade.

tluyben2 5y ago

The computers I own are from the 60s onward. The 70s and after 2005 (somewhat) are the most unreliable. All my 60s, 80s, 90s systems still work provided they are not PCs. The PCs from the 80s still work, but 90s and upward are quite hit or miss; HP servers, which can be seen as PCs I guess still work but desktops and laptops are broken. My favorites are msx-2(+), msx turbo r, atari st, Amiga and Sun E450 and UltraSPARC stations. They all seem unbreakable. Or maybe I am just lucky; I never had leaky capacitor issues yet that plagues many 80s ones. The one from the 60s is, obviously, over 50 years now but although called a computer, it cannot win consistently at tic-tac-toe as it is, as the memory Is wired and a few bytes; at least the 70s and 80s ones are usable somewhat (at least for games).

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Funny you should mention an unreliable tic-tac-toe, I've been reading the book "Racing the Beam" and it mentions the 1956 relay-logic computer "Relay Moe", which, despite being constructed of little more than 90 relays and a spinning drum, touted a "variable intelligence" which allowed the operator to choose how often the machine makes a mistake, and rotates the board between games so its repetitive strategy is not immediately obvious. Quoting the book (p39): > Playing against a perfect tic-tac-toe competitor, and playing well, can only ever result in a draw. This may be computationally impressive the first time, but it isn't very fun. Opponents, computer or human, become interesting when they make mistakes--or more accurately, when it becomes clear that they might make mistakes under certain circumstances. Such mistakes highlight weaknesses, which players can exploit as part of a strategy. The book goes onto explain how Pong on the Atari 2600 achieves a similar level of unreliability, since it would be trivial for the computer to follow the y-position of the ball and never lose. Every 8 frames, the computer neglects to track the ball, drifting behind the position, but recovering its position when the ball ricochets off the top or bottom of the screen. This way the "AI" of Pong occasionally makes mistakes, in order not to be too harsh to the human's ego. Thorough breakdown of Relay-Moe's logic with photos is here: (3.5MB PDF) https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%20Dec%201956%20Relay%20Moe%20Plays%20Tic-tac-toe.pdf https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%...
- 5y ago

rahen 5y ago

> In order to become relevant for the next 50 years, the computer needs to be made of easily replaceable parts. Inspirations are the Fairphone and the MNT Reform laptop. Interesting. I knew about the Framework laptop but the Reform seems to go quite farther in being usable and repairable for a long time. Bulky and less advanced, but I like how one can just buy spare battery cells for cheap on Amazon or Aliexpress. edit: https://technomancy.us/195 https://technomancy.us/195

inc 5y ago

I'm building a series of computers designed to last for decades. They use FPGAs and run Linux. The first model will be ready later this year. https://machdyne.com https://machdyne.com