How long will Amigas last?

[lassie]

Someone mentioned the other day that Amiga and other old consoles and computers will slowly die. Do you think that our old amigas and computers will work in 5 years or 10 years? it is a scary thought, if all our beloved computers will stop working. But mayby we can keep them going with some love.

Amiga 4000 030 18 mb ram, 16 giga hard disk
Amiga 2000 030 9 mb ram, 1 giga hard disk
Amiga 2000 68000 5 mb ram, 500 mb hard disk
Amiga 2000 68000 9 mb ram 1 giga hard disk
Amiga 600 4 mb ram, 4 giga hard disk
Amiga 500 1 mb ram
Amiga cd32
Commodore 64
Commodore 64c
Commodore 128
Commodore 128D

[Kesa]

My A500 from 1990 that i was given is working fine. But it is a little grubby though...

I am personally not too worried about it. If mine breaks down i will keep the case and buy one of Mike J's FPGA Arcades  

[b41d3r]

Hi,

I'm sure at least they will have lasted longer thant any modern computer.
I know what I mean, I'm currently seeking an IDE drive for my crashed laptop that cost 1500 euros.Guess its age ? seven years only.
I expect that emulation will provide us in pleasure of using our old system.
What concerns me is that I'd love to continue to use my "keyboard". What I like in retro computers is the unique feeling they give you compared to these untasty modern design.
One of my dream, is that all old keyboards of our beloved computers (of all brands) will  be released one day as an alternative to those current slim planks.

[lassie]

Hi,

I'm sure at least they will have lasted longer thant any modern computer.
I know what I mean, I'm currently seeking an IDE drive for my crashed laptop that cost 1500 euros.Guess its age ? seven years only.
I expect that emulation will provide us in pleasure of using our old system.
What concerns me is that I'd love to continue to use my "keyboard". What I like in retro computers is the unique feeling they give you compared to these untasty modern design.
One of my dream, is that all old keyboards of our beloved computers (of all brands) will  be released one day as an alternative to those current slim planks.

Yes i will give you right there was more class and stile in the old computers :-)And the newer stuff are very poor made i have had 3 playstation 2 and 2 laptop they all broke down before they were 5 years old

[AAACHIPSET]

Someone mentioned the other day that Amiga and other old consoles and computers will slowly die. Do you think that our old amigas and computers will work in 5 years or 10 years? it is a scary thought, if all our beloved computers will stop working. But mayby we can keep them going with some love.

Amiga 4000 030 18 mb ram, 16 giga hard disk
Amiga 2000 030 9 mb ram, 1 giga hard disk
Amiga 2000 68000 5 mb ram, 500 mb hard disk
Amiga 2000 68000 9 mb ram 1 giga hard disk
Amiga 600 4 mb ram, 4 giga hard disk
Amiga 500 1 mb ram
Amiga cd32
Commodore 64
Commodore 64c
Commodore 128
Commodore 128D

my  a500 bought approx  1987 ..many upgrades  still runs  good...keyboard died ..replaced ..thats all ..so  25  yrs..so far

[carls]

Well, there are "breadbox" type C64s out there still working fine... Simple construction, high longevity. Aside from battery leakage the keyboards, disk drives and I/O ports are likely to die first because these parts experience the most mechanical stress. Ten more years? Perhaps not without a few spare parts... But who knows what will happen in ten years' time. Minimigs for everyone?

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I had an A1200 that was on for 99% of the time from 1993 to 2007 (by then in a tower) never had a fault or anything - until I sold it.  Probably because it was always on.

The 2000s never seem to die - pretty heavy duty construction.  Power supply may slowly die or the fan might make noise, but they're easily replaceable.

I have had my share of used A500s which had various problems.  The chips in such machines aren't really pushed to any thermal limits, so other than accelerators or disk controllers, I can't see why they couldn't last for a very long time, whatever very long time means.

[Darrin]

I picked up a PET and a dual floppy drive unit for it a couple of months ago.  The PET worked perfectly and the floppy drive needed a quick head cleaning.  I'm sure they'll still be working in another 10 years.

The biggest threat to the life of an Amiga (battery aside) is the user poking around in places he doesn't need to be.  

[desiv]

Yeah, my Vic 20 and Apple //c are still running great, as is my A1000.

Treated well, these machines will last quite a while..
Now, there were some problem CAPs in the A1200s, and all CAPs eventually can have problems, but I know people with original Apple ]['s that are still running with the original CAPs..

They do need to be kept away from moisture in storage tho, that can be really bad for these poor old guys..  

desiv

[som99]

What concerns me is that I'd love to continue to use my "keyboard". What I like in retro computers is the unique feeling they give you compared to these untasty modern design.
One of my dream, is that all old keyboards of our beloved computers (of all brands) will  be released one day as an alternative to those current slim planks.

Ive been stubborn and hated new keyboards for ages, but aprox 6 months ago I decided to give a Swedish keyboard manufacturer a chance and bought a mechanical keyboard with Cherry Blue switches and im never going back.
These switches make a click every time they are pressed and I love that, they also needs to be pressed all way down to register a key also require you to release it all way up before you can make another keypress (you can hold them down ofc).

Also it's not as big as a hangar ship, normal sized keyboard with the classic key layout so no reversed enter button or one key backspace, that I love. The keyboard is black and got baclight but it's easy to set how bright you wan't it to be with buttons or turn it off.
I also like not to have 436 extra quick buttons to open the calculator in Windows ^^

This keyboard gives me the old IBM M series feeling and I love it, also it's quite robust at it's weight of 1,27KG's
I also love that it's not  an USB keyboard but PS/2 and you can press all keys at once and every single press registers.

I love it, and will never buy a Rubber dome keyboard again.

It looks like this, but you also get "wrist rest" can use if you want (don't know the english name of em).


Review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQHF-BoelJk

And talking about our hardware to die, well I give my computers some love, and im planning on changing all caps on them in the near future to 100 Celsius plus ones, not needed since there is no problems with em yet but just to be safe for atleast 10-20 years more

ERDIT: Just for the fun of it I went down in my basement and dug up my first Pong console, it's an Videomaster Olympic and it still works BUT I need to replace all the switches and both Potentiometers, two of the switches are dead (the ones for game mode) but the power on/off one works but are stiff, the Potentiometers used to control the paddles are near dead and needs to be replaced but I get picture
So mabe it's time to give this old pong machine some love, it has no digital score system so you get two metal balls you use to count score
here it is:



You guys from Australia might recognize it since it was fairly popular there

[motrucker]

I picked up a PET and a dual floppy drive unit for it a couple of months ago.  The PET worked perfectly and the floppy drive needed a quick head cleaning.  I'm sure they'll still be working in another 10 years.

The biggest threat to the life of an Amiga (battery aside) is the user poking around in places he doesn't need to be.  

Those drives may be belt driven. The belts will eventually wear out or get brittle, but little else will break down.
I still have an old Timex Sinclair computer from 1979 that works. That's the oldest machine I currently have.

[Darrin]

Those drives may be belt driven. The belts will eventually wear out or get brittle, but little else will break down.
I still have an old Timex Sinclair computer from 1979 that works. That's the oldest machine I currently have.

I just added a PETdisk (SD Card based floppy emulator) to the system.  I need to get around to doing a review of it for the Commodore Free magazine.  Nice bit of kit.  Acts as a giant floppy drive (more like a hard drive as far as the PET is concerned) and stores your data as files on a FAT32 formatted MicroSD card.  Can be configured as device 8, 9, 10 or 11 and has a pass through connector for other devices.

[persia]

My oldest computer is a homebrew z80 from late '76/early '77.  A friend and I built it as a project for a university class.  It still works.  We made it deluxe for '76, two 5.25 floppies and 64K of ram.  Scarfed the keyboard off an old dead univac terminal....

[Darrin]

My oldest computer is a homebrew z80 from late '76/early '77.  A friend and I built it as a project for a university class.  It still works.  We made it deluxe for '76, two 5.25 floppies and 64K of ram.  Scarfed the keyboard off an old dead univac terminal....

I'm glad computered came self assembled later otherwise I'd still be trying to assemble a VIC-20.  My soldering skills suck.  

[paul1981]

@som99

WD-40 will fix those switches and potentiometers. There's a good chance you won't need to replace them - if you use WD-40.
I've bought plenty of pots back to life with WD-40. Don't ever use switch cleaner on a pot though, as it will fix it at first but then a few days later it will be 10 times worse than it was.
Of course, a pot with a totally worn-through track isn't any good, but unless it's had a really hard life then this is unlikely.