16 ms·

As a long term collector of old PC hardware, software and games, it's becoming pretty obvious that keeping aging hardware around has a very tangible expiration

As a long term collector of old PC hardware, software and games, it's becoming pretty obvious that keeping aging hardware around has a very tangible expiration date to it. We are only able to keep this tech going because a lot of it was mass produced and we can find replacement parts, but we're already seeing massive failure in parts which render a device unusable regardless of how many blown capacitors or resistors we change. There comes a point when the only way to keep this stuff running is either through manufacturing replacement parts (prohibitingly expensive) or through emulation. Emulation is cheap but completely unrepresentative of the original experience. For example, you can't emulate different displays properly. As anyone who enjoyed the Vectrex's beautiful vector graphics will agree, you simply cannot emulate this on a modern display. The bright phosphorus coating with the smooth analog beam is not reproducible on something like LCD. So, I still collect this stuff and enjoy it. But I have given up my ambition for hardware preservation. It will take an organization much better funded than me to keep this stuff alive in the long term. And even then, I suspect a lot of it is going to be lost to time in the coming decades.

philistine 4y ago
There’s this pervasive idea that computers are solid-state machines meant to work forever. But they’re full of moving parts, grease, fluids, and fans. Only now with our fanless machines are we approaching the true idea that these machines just turn on and work. I’d bet an Apple TV has a better chance of working in 400 years than a Commodore 64.
- kjs3 4y ago
  There's also a pervasive idea solid-state means works forever. Ask anyone who collects old computers and you'll find that ain't true. Solid state devices fail with age too, via electromigration, temperature cycling fatigue, hot carrier injection, NBTI/PBTI and a host of other causes. And it gets worse the smaller the geometries we are working with. It's huge topic of concern in the industry. We won't be around to know, but I'd be confident enough to bet you a beer that Apple TV will be dead as a doornail in years or decades, not centuries.
TylerE 4y ago
I wonder what could be done to maximize life? Something like run it in a well cooled and humidity controlled, nobel gas filled enclosure.
PostOnce 4y ago
Some of these computers rely on parts that are hilariously simple individually, it's in aggregate that it becomes a computer. For example, even a child could manufacture this with $10 worth of tools and parts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10#/media/File:KA10_mod_end.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10#/media/File:KA10_mod_en... Keeping machines from the 00s running is going to be a hell of a lot harder than keeping machines from the 70s running
jacquesm 4y ago
If you read the LCM tech blog it is exactly in this 'manufacturing replacement parts' where they absolutely shone. Of course you will end up in a ship-of-Theseus like situation, how many replacement parts does it take before it is no longer the original. But that's because these are working systems, unlike you average museum where you just get to look at stuff and the cases might as well be empty.
jart 4y ago
> Emulation is cheap but completely unrepresentative of the original experience. Never enough, but THANK GOODNESS for emulation! My favorite old skool computer is the IBM 704 that LISP originally ran on. This machine didn't have a visual display or anything fancy. It was the sort of thing where you'd hand in your punch cards and an operator would run your job, then give you back the program results in your mailbox or something. When I was doing research for writing my blog posts about LISP about a year ago, it was so helpful that a turnkey SIMH environment for this machine existed, that let me run the original software and then get definite concrete answers about its behavior. There were things I was curious about, particularly its handling of the T atom (and whether that remaps to TRUE which is the true truth) that I wouldn't have been able to talk about, had the emulator not been available.
technothrasher 4y ago
Yeah. I've got quite a few old machines from various periods, but I mostly just store them or have them on static display. I'm afraid to turn most of them on. The last one I tried was a Mac IIcx and it let the smoke out pretty quickly.
cbm-vic-20 4y ago
This can really be a labor of love. The volunteers at the Rhode Island Computer Museum, which is much more modestly funded than LCM, have ongoing restoration projects for rare vintage machines like the PDP-9 and PDP-12. They literally have a warehouse full of stuff like this[]. [] https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery
pigsty 4y ago
I’ve never seen a Vectrex, but having seen other vector displays on old arcade machines, it’s truly mind blowing. The warm glow of those smooth beams has no modern equivalent in consumer hardware. Despite technically being old technology, and some machines being over 4 decades old, it can still blow young minds seeing a way of rendering so different from what we accept as the norm today and how it’s in many aspects even more advanced than modern screens. Knowing it’s something that’s gradually being lost with time is pretty sad. Previous human technology advancements would often be lost in a hole and still be recognizable for what they were centuries later when they were dug up. It’s kind of strange that the tech we make since the computer revolution basically dies along with their creators and maintainers and basically just turn into future door stoppers.
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  I love the Atari vector games! There’s an excellent video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained on how they work: https://youtu.be/smStEPSRKBs https://youtu.be/smStEPSRKBs Recently I stumbled on some Tektronix videos on YouTube. Those vector displays are even more mind blowing than Atari’s arcade games. I hope I can get to see one in person someday.
- erikpukinskis 4y ago
  I’m not sure I follow your final conclusion… we mostly don’t use archeological artifacts do we? They are “recognizable” but so will old computers be 1000 years from now. With a good microscope you can still study the chips, etc. If anything I expect computers from 1985 to be much better “preserved” than physical history from, say, 885, no? Granted you have to resist the urge to use them as door stoppers and keep them in a controlled environment. But an archive is a lot cheaper/more stable than a living museum.
  - pigsty 4y ago
    Just to use your example, you could dust off a 200 year old microscope and it’d be perfectly fine. If there’s a cracked lens, that’s an easy fix without any significant expertise. Same with any old blacksmithing tools and so on. They’ll look old, but generally retain their functionality and a novice can repair them. Old electronics require expert knowledge and specifically manufactured parts to fix. Knowledge of old electronics dies each year and the parts go away. A person who’s never heard of a Vectrex or see one in action would have no idea what it does. Even if they recognize that it has a screen, they wouldn’t be aware that it renders vectors and not pixels like nearly every other screen. Another 1000 years removed from the computing standards of today, people might not even be able to imagine what a typical desktop computer does when they look at it. But they’ll see tools from 885 and generally be able to guess what they’re for. High tech things are very abstracted tools that are just going to look like useless boxes to future people. Most won’t know or care what they did. It’s weird to think about. Advances will also be lost with time without us realizing it. Vector screens are truly impressive, but people don’t know they exist. Will we someday get monochrome retinal implants and they’re convenient enough that people give up on traditional computer screens, and someday humanity forgets we all used to have full color displays with sound in our pockets? Who knows.
rbanffy 4y ago
> manufacturing replacement parts (prohibitingly expensive) Some are more than others. PALs and ASICs can be reimplemented in CPLDs and FPGAs. At come point it becomes Theseus' computer, but, if the goal is to preserve the boat, that works. If you want to preserve the wood planks, then you need to keep it powered down in a controlled environment for future generations to apply atomic-resolution sensing eventually. > For example, you can't emulate different displays properly. As anyone who enjoyed the Vectrex's beautiful vector graphics will agree, you simply cannot emulate this on a modern display. The bright phosphorus coating with the smooth analog beam is not reproducible on something like LCD. Not right now, but, soon-ish, we'll be able to do that very well with HDR displays. I already can't see pixels or jaggies on my LCDs. With proper computation, one could simulate the analog aspects of CRT tubes - its a lot for GPUs to do now, but, in a decade or so, I assume a mobile GPU would be able to do that without breaking a sweat. Not long ago I was thinking about a CRT+deflection replacement that would take the analog signals used in CRTs (from an adapter on the neck, where the pins have a lot of variation, and the inputs to the coils), and, maybe, an extra power supply input to power the electronics, and spit out an HDMI signal on the other end. This should be possible with modern flat panels to a point the image is hard to distinguish for all but the most extreme (think X-Y displays and Tektronix DVSTs) cases. Curvature is an issue, but flat and Trinitron CRTs should be trivial.
- Retric 4y ago
  That really depends on what you’re trying to emulate about a display. You can see artifacts from how the electron beam on a CRT paints the image by holding your hand in front of the screen fingers spread and shaking your fingers back and fort. Emulating that well might take a ~10,000fps display which I doubt anyone is ever going to produce.
  - Phiwise_ 4y ago
    I suspect even most hardcore retrocomputer hobbyists care most about emulating the parts of a display that actually came up in use of the machine. If I were an eccentric billionaire who wanted a replica of the Mona Lisa to hang on my wall and enjoy regularly without the inconvenience of weekly flights to France, I'd care much more about my money going into making a product that got the visible details of the canvas right (https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.055,0.021&i=Rijksmuseum/SK-C-5/SK-C-5_VIS_5-um_2020-09-08 https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.055,0.021&i...) than spoofed the proper results if I carbon-dated it or something. I think the same concept applies here. I don't really care as much if the only thing an emulator can't replicate is a clever but (to an observer) comically specific physics-based test for authenticity if I get everything I'd notice while using the computer correct at a fraction of the price. In the context of preservation, just knowing some other (far richer than me) person or org keeping a single-digit number of the actual artifact maintained for future reference is good enough for me.
phkahler 4y ago
>> Vectrex My surviving stuff consists of a Vectrex, an Interact with many tapes (including Microsoft Basic), and an I Robot. I always thought the Interact belongs in a museum but they all seem to have one already or don't care. Maybe the solution to hardware failure is to keep the hardware, working or not, AND have emulation. But as you say vectors don't emulate well.
DanielBMarkham 4y ago
A bit off-topic but relevant to the aging problem of tech: is there any commonly-available persistent storage medium you would use to store say, family movies for 100 years? Or is that a hopeless cause? For instance, will BluRay players be around for much longer? USB drives? At what point are we where "Either put it in the cloud or lose it" is the law of tech?
- kjs3 4y ago
  I wouldn't count on 'put it in the cloud' being the answer, for a number of reasons. Personally, I think that the only answer to the "preserve the family stuph for a 100 years" is to migrate it all to the most reliable media available every 5-10 years (it used to be every 3-5 years). Even if there was an archival media that was 100% reliable 100 years from now, will there be something that can read it?
- bluGill 4y ago
  I think it is safe to say you have to plan on moving media you care about to a different format every couple decades. From the first Edison wax cylinders, to today's latest format, the technology has changed that often, and if you care you have to follow. Sure you can keep older stuff working and some do. You can also say the same about photographs and books: most degrade after a few decades, but there if you spend $$$ you can get archival grade that will last for a century or two (many centuries if you store in a desert, but in human friendly places a century is all you should count on). I have some archival grade CDs and DVDs that claim they will last longer. However I'm not sure if readers will exist as long as the media.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Every couple decades? More like every 5 years!
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Depends on the format. Some have lasted longer than others. I just migrated my grandparents slides from the 1960s and 1970s.
flyinghamster 4y ago
The situation is only getting worse, as bootloaders are increasingly locked-down and internal hardware pairing is a thing (hello, Apple, but even AMD has joined that game with Epyc processors getting locked to motherboards). And then there's the soldered-in hardware that can't be replaced without a lot of expense and risk. Preservation at this point is going to be VMs and emulators. And, in all honesty, while a working PDP-11/70 would be kind of neat, by today's standards it's dreadfully underpowered in speed even as it sucks down the kWh, and requires a lot of space, while SIMH on a modern SBC would run circles around it. A museum is a better place for it than a living room.
Damogran6 4y ago
In the dark of winter, while I work to fill the hours, I troll ebay and Craigslist...looking at the $200 Macs and $400 amigas and $800 Apple ][s and $2000 complete NeXT stations, think it's another hobby that's gotten more expensive faster than I have the stomach for. I also realize I'll get 95% of the enjoyment by just hitting the emulators at archive.org. I gifted myself an Amiga Mini500 for xmas and once you play the games, and mess with Amiga Forever for an afternoon, and Amibian for ANOTHER afternoon...that scratch is pretty well itched.
JohnBooty 4y ago
For those unfamiliar with the unique look of vector displays, you've simply got to see one in motion to understand. Asteroids is probably the most famous example. Look at the "ultra bright" bullets and the glowy trail they leave. https://youtu.be/w60sfReTsRA?t=247 https://youtu.be/w60sfReTsRA?t=247
- kjs3 4y ago
  Persistent phosphors are magical.

philistine 4y ago

There’s this pervasive idea that computers are solid-state machines meant to work forever. But they’re full of moving parts, grease, fluids, and fans. Only now with our fanless machines are we approaching the true idea that these machines just turn on and work. I’d bet an Apple TV has a better chance of working in 400 years than a Commodore 64.

kjs3 4y ago
There's also a pervasive idea solid-state means works forever. Ask anyone who collects old computers and you'll find that ain't true. Solid state devices fail with age too, via electromigration, temperature cycling fatigue, hot carrier injection, NBTI/PBTI and a host of other causes. And it gets worse the smaller the geometries we are working with. It's huge topic of concern in the industry. We won't be around to know, but I'd be confident enough to bet you a beer that Apple TV will be dead as a doornail in years or decades, not centuries.

TylerE 4y ago

I wonder what could be done to maximize life? Something like run it in a well cooled and humidity controlled, nobel gas filled enclosure.

PostOnce 4y ago

Some of these computers rely on parts that are hilariously simple individually, it's in aggregate that it becomes a computer. For example, even a child could manufacture this with $10 worth of tools and parts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10#/media/File:KA10_mod_end.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10#/media/File:KA10_mod_en... Keeping machines from the 00s running is going to be a hell of a lot harder than keeping machines from the 70s running

jacquesm 4y ago

If you read the LCM tech blog it is exactly in this 'manufacturing replacement parts' where they absolutely shone. Of course you will end up in a ship-of-Theseus like situation, how many replacement parts does it take before it is no longer the original. But that's because these are working systems, unlike you average museum where you just get to look at stuff and the cases might as well be empty.

jart 4y ago

> Emulation is cheap but completely unrepresentative of the original experience. Never enough, but THANK GOODNESS for emulation! My favorite old skool computer is the IBM 704 that LISP originally ran on. This machine didn't have a visual display or anything fancy. It was the sort of thing where you'd hand in your punch cards and an operator would run your job, then give you back the program results in your mailbox or something. When I was doing research for writing my blog posts about LISP about a year ago, it was so helpful that a turnkey SIMH environment for this machine existed, that let me run the original software and then get definite concrete answers about its behavior. There were things I was curious about, particularly its handling of the T atom (and whether that remaps to TRUE which is the true truth) that I wouldn't have been able to talk about, had the emulator not been available.

technothrasher 4y ago

Yeah. I've got quite a few old machines from various periods, but I mostly just store them or have them on static display. I'm afraid to turn most of them on. The last one I tried was a Mac IIcx and it let the smoke out pretty quickly.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

This can really be a labor of love. The volunteers at the Rhode Island Computer Museum, which is much more modestly funded than LCM, have ongoing restoration projects for rare vintage machines like the PDP-9 and PDP-12. They literally have a warehouse full of stuff like this[]. [] https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery

pigsty 4y ago

I’ve never seen a Vectrex, but having seen other vector displays on old arcade machines, it’s truly mind blowing. The warm glow of those smooth beams has no modern equivalent in consumer hardware. Despite technically being old technology, and some machines being over 4 decades old, it can still blow young minds seeing a way of rendering so different from what we accept as the norm today and how it’s in many aspects even more advanced than modern screens. Knowing it’s something that’s gradually being lost with time is pretty sad. Previous human technology advancements would often be lost in a hole and still be recognizable for what they were centuries later when they were dug up. It’s kind of strange that the tech we make since the computer revolution basically dies along with their creators and maintainers and basically just turn into future door stoppers.

Bluecobra 4y ago
I love the Atari vector games! There’s an excellent video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained on how they work: https://youtu.be/smStEPSRKBs https://youtu.be/smStEPSRKBs Recently I stumbled on some Tektronix videos on YouTube. Those vector displays are even more mind blowing than Atari’s arcade games. I hope I can get to see one in person someday.
erikpukinskis 4y ago
I’m not sure I follow your final conclusion… we mostly don’t use archeological artifacts do we? They are “recognizable” but so will old computers be 1000 years from now. With a good microscope you can still study the chips, etc. If anything I expect computers from 1985 to be much better “preserved” than physical history from, say, 885, no? Granted you have to resist the urge to use them as door stoppers and keep them in a controlled environment. But an archive is a lot cheaper/more stable than a living museum.
- pigsty 4y ago
  Just to use your example, you could dust off a 200 year old microscope and it’d be perfectly fine. If there’s a cracked lens, that’s an easy fix without any significant expertise. Same with any old blacksmithing tools and so on. They’ll look old, but generally retain their functionality and a novice can repair them. Old electronics require expert knowledge and specifically manufactured parts to fix. Knowledge of old electronics dies each year and the parts go away. A person who’s never heard of a Vectrex or see one in action would have no idea what it does. Even if they recognize that it has a screen, they wouldn’t be aware that it renders vectors and not pixels like nearly every other screen. Another 1000 years removed from the computing standards of today, people might not even be able to imagine what a typical desktop computer does when they look at it. But they’ll see tools from 885 and generally be able to guess what they’re for. High tech things are very abstracted tools that are just going to look like useless boxes to future people. Most won’t know or care what they did. It’s weird to think about. Advances will also be lost with time without us realizing it. Vector screens are truly impressive, but people don’t know they exist. Will we someday get monochrome retinal implants and they’re convenient enough that people give up on traditional computer screens, and someday humanity forgets we all used to have full color displays with sound in our pockets? Who knows.

rbanffy 4y ago

> manufacturing replacement parts (prohibitingly expensive) Some are more than others. PALs and ASICs can be reimplemented in CPLDs and FPGAs. At come point it becomes Theseus' computer, but, if the goal is to preserve the boat, that works. If you want to preserve the wood planks, then you need to keep it powered down in a controlled environment for future generations to apply atomic-resolution sensing eventually. > For example, you can't emulate different displays properly. As anyone who enjoyed the Vectrex's beautiful vector graphics will agree, you simply cannot emulate this on a modern display. The bright phosphorus coating with the smooth analog beam is not reproducible on something like LCD. Not right now, but, soon-ish, we'll be able to do that very well with HDR displays. I already can't see pixels or jaggies on my LCDs. With proper computation, one could simulate the analog aspects of CRT tubes - its a lot for GPUs to do now, but, in a decade or so, I assume a mobile GPU would be able to do that without breaking a sweat. Not long ago I was thinking about a CRT+deflection replacement that would take the analog signals used in CRTs (from an adapter on the neck, where the pins have a lot of variation, and the inputs to the coils), and, maybe, an extra power supply input to power the electronics, and spit out an HDMI signal on the other end. This should be possible with modern flat panels to a point the image is hard to distinguish for all but the most extreme (think X-Y displays and Tektronix DVSTs) cases. Curvature is an issue, but flat and Trinitron CRTs should be trivial.

Retric 4y ago
That really depends on what you’re trying to emulate about a display. You can see artifacts from how the electron beam on a CRT paints the image by holding your hand in front of the screen fingers spread and shaking your fingers back and fort. Emulating that well might take a ~10,000fps display which I doubt anyone is ever going to produce.
- Phiwise_ 4y ago
  I suspect even most hardcore retrocomputer hobbyists care most about emulating the parts of a display that actually came up in use of the machine. If I were an eccentric billionaire who wanted a replica of the Mona Lisa to hang on my wall and enjoy regularly without the inconvenience of weekly flights to France, I'd care much more about my money going into making a product that got the visible details of the canvas right (https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.055,0.021&i=Rijksmuseum/SK-C-5/SK-C-5_VIS_5-um_2020-09-08 https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.055,0.021&i...) than spoofed the proper results if I carbon-dated it or something. I think the same concept applies here. I don't really care as much if the only thing an emulator can't replicate is a clever but (to an observer) comically specific physics-based test for authenticity if I get everything I'd notice while using the computer correct at a fraction of the price. In the context of preservation, just knowing some other (far richer than me) person or org keeping a single-digit number of the actual artifact maintained for future reference is good enough for me.

phkahler 4y ago

>> Vectrex My surviving stuff consists of a Vectrex, an Interact with many tapes (including Microsoft Basic), and an I Robot. I always thought the Interact belongs in a museum but they all seem to have one already or don't care. Maybe the solution to hardware failure is to keep the hardware, working or not, AND have emulation. But as you say vectors don't emulate well.

DanielBMarkham 4y ago

A bit off-topic but relevant to the aging problem of tech: is there any commonly-available persistent storage medium you would use to store say, family movies for 100 years? Or is that a hopeless cause? For instance, will BluRay players be around for much longer? USB drives? At what point are we where "Either put it in the cloud or lose it" is the law of tech?

kjs3 4y ago
I wouldn't count on 'put it in the cloud' being the answer, for a number of reasons. Personally, I think that the only answer to the "preserve the family stuph for a 100 years" is to migrate it all to the most reliable media available every 5-10 years (it used to be every 3-5 years). Even if there was an archival media that was 100% reliable 100 years from now, will there be something that can read it?
bluGill 4y ago
I think it is safe to say you have to plan on moving media you care about to a different format every couple decades. From the first Edison wax cylinders, to today's latest format, the technology has changed that often, and if you care you have to follow. Sure you can keep older stuff working and some do. You can also say the same about photographs and books: most degrade after a few decades, but there if you spend $$$ you can get archival grade that will last for a century or two (many centuries if you store in a desert, but in human friendly places a century is all you should count on). I have some archival grade CDs and DVDs that claim they will last longer. However I'm not sure if readers will exist as long as the media.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Every couple decades? More like every 5 years!
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Depends on the format. Some have lasted longer than others. I just migrated my grandparents slides from the 1960s and 1970s.

flyinghamster 4y ago

The situation is only getting worse, as bootloaders are increasingly locked-down and internal hardware pairing is a thing (hello, Apple, but even AMD has joined that game with Epyc processors getting locked to motherboards). And then there's the soldered-in hardware that can't be replaced without a lot of expense and risk. Preservation at this point is going to be VMs and emulators. And, in all honesty, while a working PDP-11/70 would be kind of neat, by today's standards it's dreadfully underpowered in speed even as it sucks down the kWh, and requires a lot of space, while SIMH on a modern SBC would run circles around it. A museum is a better place for it than a living room.

Damogran6 4y ago

In the dark of winter, while I work to fill the hours, I troll ebay and Craigslist...looking at the $200 Macs and $400 amigas and $800 Apple ][s and $2000 complete NeXT stations, think it's another hobby that's gotten more expensive faster than I have the stomach for. I also realize I'll get 95% of the enjoyment by just hitting the emulators at archive.org. I gifted myself an Amiga Mini500 for xmas and once you play the games, and mess with Amiga Forever for an afternoon, and Amibian for ANOTHER afternoon...that scratch is pretty well itched.

JohnBooty 4y ago

For those unfamiliar with the unique look of vector displays, you've simply got to see one in motion to understand. Asteroids is probably the most famous example. Look at the "ultra bright" bullets and the glowy trail they leave. https://youtu.be/w60sfReTsRA?t=247 https://youtu.be/w60sfReTsRA?t=247

kjs3 4y ago
Persistent phosphors are magical.