7 ms·
Are retrocomputers best left on or off?
- billfor 2y agoEspecially with older disk drives if you don't power them up for a long time (months) the bearings may seize, at which point you may have to use the hair dryer trick to try getting them to work again.
- masswerk 2y agoMy two cents: If we are talking about 1970s and '80s machines, they tend to run pretty hot, related to the PSU technology. Things like electrolytic capacitors "don't like this" and may contribute to cascading failures. PSU failures are apt to fry some chips, some of which may be hard to come by. So, better keep them cool = off. If you consider machines from the 2000s retro, continuous run, avoiding the stresses caused by system start, may help keeping them alive. (I've a MacPro running since 2008, with no failures, apart from failing 3rd party ECC DDR3 RAM. Some of this RAM has even failed twice, the RAM originally shipped by Apple is still fine, though. This machine has only been ever off, when I've been on vacation.) – Machines from the 1990s and early 2000s are pretty much the same, but typically suffer from poor capacitors and/or batteries. So…?
- BizarroLand 2y agoThere's also a small amount of wear simply from the drag of electrons running through the fine filament threads of wire they are piped through. The longer this goes on the more electron tunneling will happen, degrading the CPUs performance. We don't notice them on larger wires as the wear is infinitesimal, but in a CPU where the wire diameters are in the micron scale and below there is likely a maximum lifetime of usage before the whole system becomes inoperable. Might be 500 years of continual usage, might be 50, I don't know and I don't think anyone has done a long-term study on how long a CPU can be continuously operated before it fails, but the risk is there.
- xattt 2y agoIt’s almost as if the question is vague on purpose to stir up responses!
- ryanjshaw 2y agoSomething I didn't see mentioned but a consideration: what's the quality of your electricity supply? I live in a location with a lot of summer thunderstorms and even with a surge protector and lighting arrestors I'm nervous about having stuff plugged in unnecessarily during storms, having seen devices destroyed by it.
- electronbeam 2y agoPower them from a pure sine wave inverter connected to a battery thats being charged. Aka a good UPS
- mschuster91 2y agoThat's not good enough - everything attached to the computer (including network gear, unless it's fiber) must be powered by the same UPS, or you have pathways for lightning current to enter.
- Moru 2y agoSome UPS for consumers even have an ethernet through-port so you can connect your internet cable from the wall to the UPS before it touches your router.
- amelius 2y agoEthernet has galvanic isolation.
- formerly_proven 2y agoThat's functional isolation. Yeah, they're individually tested to 1500 Vrms (or so the factory in china claims), but that insulation is still just the very thin lacquer of the windings and maybe lacquer on the core. There are more expensive (and physically much larger) Ethernet transformers for medical devices and such, these have actual double/reinforced insulation and are tested to much higher voltages. Typically the Ethernet shield is also only alibi-insulated from the device's ground. Sometimes not at all. (Personally it's always funny to me to see the fat 1kV/1nF capacitor from the shield to the device ground and then the metal of the socket is just bunched up with basically no clearance against the metal case or something like that). This can of course be avoided by simply using unshielded cable.
- earle_wa 2y agoApple will always have the best RAM. They get to pick from the donut of wafer, and have testing processes rivaling that of the fabs.
- nrdvana 2y agoI've read that electrolytic caps dry out faster if they aren't holding a charge. Temperature is a concern, but I have a surprising number of devices that worked fine before I left them unplugged for a few years and then didn't work when I powered them back up.
- raverbashing 2y agoHonestly emulators work better than the real thing 99% of the time, so I don't feel the need to play with flaky and dusty 30yr old hardware
- dr_kiszonka 2y agoYeah, but they don't emulate the smells, the sound of fans spinning up and the gentle breeze they generate, the beeps and boops, the tick tick tick hard drives make, the long travel of keys on that old keyboard with a slightly sticky shift (gotta be from that coffee I spilled in '97).
- beaconify 2y agoGame speed too.
- anthk 2y agoSimh does.
- parpfish 2y agoI miss the scraping hard drive noises with a flickering “HDD” light and a mysterious “Turbo” indicator when my 90s PC had to work hard
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoTurbo was all about slowing down a 486-/Pentium-class machine to work with programs and some ISA cards that required a slower CPU and/or XT bus speeds.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- parpfish 2y agowait... so turbo made it slower?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Palomides 2y agoif you never turn the computer on, why does it matter if it's hypothetically still functional? boot it occasionally, the only thing that keeps a machine alive is someone caring for it
- furyofantares 2y ago"I intend to use it for about 1 hour per day."
- Dalewyn 2y ago>why does it matter Because you aren't a cat whose owner is called Schroedinger.
- yard2010 2y agoAm I, or am I not? Who could tell?
- OJFord 2y agoThat's not the question though, it's whether it's better to leave it on or turn it off between uses.
- emersonrsantos 2y agoOld components are still (and will be) manufactured, since so many old tech depends on it, like refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, microwave ovens, ...
- acherion 2y agoSome old components will be, sure, but there are some chips that aren't manufactured anymore. There's no one blanket rule.
- emersonrsantos 2y agoThat's true, but in many cases, it's not the integrated circuits (ICs) that fail, because they tend to be quite reliable. It's more often the capacitors, resistors, storage devices and power supply components that degrade over time. Capacitors, in particular, can fail due to heat, aging, or voltage surges, which can lead to failure in devices even if the ICs are still in good condition. Power sources can also fail due to wear on these exact components.
- icehawk 2y ago> It's more often the capacitors And the electrolyte can and will start to leak and foul the ICs around them, if not by ruining the traces/pads, then they can also foul the legs and/or find their way into the chip package itself, so the ICs will fail as a secondary issue.
- emersonrsantos 2y agoSo better to turn it on sometimes, without power cycling so much, to keep the electrolyte fluids wet, to extend the equipment life. Let it rot and dry and it will.
- userbinator 2y agoThat's not how it works. Electrolytics which have not had voltage applied in a long time (decades) may need gradual reforming, but if they aren't hermetically sealed they will dry out no matter what --- and heat will accelerate that process.
- anonzzzies 2y agoI switch most of mine (70-80s) on a few times a year and of them I use a lot (weekend game dev); I have to replace capacitors quite often, but outside that they all work. Unlike more recent (2000+) pc stuff which is all dead. All Sun and SGI stuff still works well though.
- technothrasher 2y agoAll my old Sun hardware has failed nvram chips. I replaced and restored the one in my 3/80 but can't be bothered with the rest. I haven't turned on the SGI Indigo in many years, so who knows. I've got an S-100 bus AlphaMicro with bad ram that would probably take a ton of work to get going again.
- iwaztomack 2y agoI have a 42 year old apple //e that had been in an uninsulated attic in Boston for 30+ years. It booted fine and all the 5 1/4" floppies worked. I know that C64s need the caps replaced and the org external power supplies can catch fire. I'd be really surprised if 1990's pcs failed. There was a period of transition to non-lead solder where many pcbs from that era suffered shorts from whiskering but everything else should be fine. Electromigration tolerances in the 90's cpu families was even more strict than today.
- RF_Savage 2y ago1990's PC's have Varta bios batteries soldered on that leak and destroy the motherboard. Or they have Dallas real time clocks with dead batteries.
- iwaztomack 2y agoI'm staring at a PC-AT mobo from 1988 with an AMD-branded 286 chip that also says Copyright Intel (lol), and the battery has leaked a white film.
- nrdvana 2y agoMy understanding is that every electrolytic cap will eventually dry out. The capacitance drifts as this happens, so the quality of the cap and the sensitivity of the circuit to incorrect capacitance will greatly affect how long it takes for the device to fail. The late 90s was also when a large quantity of low-quality electrolytic caps were manufactured.
- guenthert 2y agoI recently turned on a PC some ten years old which was in storage for five years. First time it turned on, but had difficulties booting due to the M.2 SSD from Intel being corrupt. Second time, it failed to turn on (but some LEDs on the MB indicated that there was still some power), fans not spinning. Third time, it did start again, but the fans at full speed and fan control not working anymore. It seems the lubricant of the fan's bearing dried up and made them hard to spin to the point that the in-rush current exceeded the capacity of the fan-control chip. Fortunately, those beige^black boxes hold no sentimental value whatsoever and will be replaced with something better at a convenient time. Before turning on something more rare, I'd inspect the MB visually for corrosion, bloated caps and test the fans and disk drives externally.
- toolslive 2y agoI'm not an expert, but I'm convinced the answer is "off". The reason is "on" accelerates growth of whiskers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_%28metallurgy%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_%28metallurgy%29
- relaxing 2y agoWhat’s the point of a retro machine from ‘98? Any application from that era should run natively on a modern machine. It’s past the point of games locked to a certain MHz or special purpose video drivers. If you want a CRT, just get a CRT. What’s the appeal?
- ido 2y agoTheoretically, but practically a lot of late 90s (and early 00s) games don’t run on modern windows.
- em-bee 2y agothey probably run well in wine though
- figglestar 2y agoThis seems like the most difficult era as far as emulation of PC games goes. There was a ton of change and different 3D accelerators during this time and hardware advanced away from things like 16-bit color and dropped support. And it is old news, look up "thief crappy colors" so see all the work that had to be done to get Thief: The Dark Project (and games using the same engine) to look normal on modern hardware. And that was 10-15 years ago. And many games didn't have the fan base to update game like Thief did.
- cmiller1 2y agoBecause people enjoy using them
- em-bee 2y agoapplications yes, but operating systems less so. i am a fan of NeXTstep. i can see myself wanting to run that on an original machine because all alternatives would not provide the same experience. next time i visit my mother i have to try and check if the NeXTstation stored there still boots up.
- dartos 2y agoWhy does there have to be a point?
- rasz 2y agoNo matter what you do it will all need servicing. Capacitors are perishable. Electrolytics dry up, solid (MLCC, polymer, tantalum, paper) dont like humidity (some even require baking before soldering). Mechanical stress and temperature cycling leads to cracking of caps and solder joints. Mechanical parts will have stiction (hdd heads), dried grease. Plastic parts expand due to moisture (sprockets/cogs in FDD/CD), rubber bands liquify or dry and stiffen. Then you have vented helium/lost vacuum.
- hingusdingus 2y agoEarly 1990s dec machines: 3100 m series and 4000- 60 90 90a 705 If you have a modern scsi2sd card solution as your drive, off is fine. Just make sure all fans can spin prior to boot. If you have a classic SCSI or expansion box with a big SCSI, on. Same situation if you have functioning dssi drives. Let them spin. Don't have to read/write or full boot just get to Chevron prompts and do a show dev to get it all spinning.
- metalman 2y agoyes