How long will Amigas last?

[spirantho]

Not so fast! What about A1200s and A600? Their motherboards are the same as peecee motherboards, because everything except the Kickstart roms are surface mounted, and most of the chips are the ones with those tiny pins. Just try to repair that.

If some caps break, then you'll be able to change these on a peecee motherboard easily enough.

Bottom line: It's mostly the same kind of technology, and what you can and can't repair relies purely on what's broken, and whether or not you have the skill to fix the problem.

The 4000 uses the same SMT chips .... that didn't stop me fixing it.

The point is that Amigas have standardised parts that are the same in all machines, I.e. all AGA machines use Paula, Alice etc.... so there's lots if them about.  With a PC, you need to replace a particular part that will have been used a lot, but also thrown out because they're commodity parts... and it's very difficult in such a fast changing market to find a donor machine with exactly the right replacement part. To repair an A4000, just buy an a1200.

Not only that, but people are designing FPGA replacements for Amiga chips, but who's going to do that for a VL82C107FC or something?

Replacement parts for Amigas will be available long past the parts necessary to keep ok PCs running. It's not the skill to repair a machine that's lacking, it's the parts. Anyone can learn to repair machines, but very few have their own manufacturing plants! Thank goodness for FPGA though, this way there its hope even when thee originals have all gone.

[olsen]

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?

I don't remember the exact details, but according to research I read about, the printed circuit boards are bound to degrade 30-40 years after they were manufactured.

Collectors of video game consoles, especially the earliest kind made in the 1970'ies (Pong, Tank, Space Invaders, etc.), are likely the first who will be affected by boards breaking down. Unlike the components soldered onto them, replacing the boards may be very difficult. The earliest single layer boards may not pose much of a challenge, but fast forward to 1985, the Amiga 1000 board may do.

Anyway, you might want to check out what video game console collectors have learned about the matter.

[gertsy]

The main thing that will kill all equipment is the capacitors. They will only last about 25 years (less if you use them a lot). And when they go bad, they cause other things to fry. Replace all the electrolitic caps in your unit (and it's power supply) and run those things past your retirement age.  (All warrantees are off if you get an unprotected power surge the house though)

Plaz

I got a ZX81, ZX Spectrum and C64 that all scoff at your 25yo capacitor limit. Average of 30YO and counting.....
Agree capacitors are the soft point over all the other components...
It's a pity she wont live forever, but then again who does?

You should be wary of experts that advise how long things will last.  I remember the line that cassettes and computer tapes will only last 5-7 years maximum.  30 years later, still loading fine.

I heard that 2000 years ago Roman jewellery experts used to say that bronze broaches would only last 100years max. I don't suggest you bury your A1200 in a peat bog though....

[Plaz]

From my personal experience, it is much better to leave them on 24/7.  Letting them sit or turning them on and off causes failures.

Sitting in less than ideal conditions causes corrosion. Keeping a system always warm and running in such an environment can help stop corrosion problems like in chip sockets.

But at the same time this dries out the caps faster. Caps help regulate voltages. Also switching circuits give a "kick" at startup. Once the kick is in, it's not needed until next startup. So.... long running trusty equipment finally has a loss of power for any number of reasons. You try to power it back on, a switching circuit tries to kick, but shorts out instead because of a dry cap. It now fries many more components long with it. Once again giving rise to the legend of "leave it running". If instead the system had it's worn out components replace ahead of the failure.... it would run for a long long long time despite repeated power cycles.

My experience.... 32 years in equipment repair.

Plaz

[Plaz]

I got a ZX81, ZX Spectrum and C64 that all scoff at your 25yo capacitor limit

 I don't call it a limit, more of an average. Also the size and manufacture has much to do with it.  2200uf cap... 15y maybe.  1uf cap perhaps 35y. Point is, if you want to keep your cool old electronics.... replace those dudes.

My most enjoyable references for component lifespan is in the arcade boxes I repair from the 70's

Plaz

[spirantho]

I got a ZX81, ZX Spectrum and C64 that all scoff at your 25yo capacitor limit. Average of 30YO and counting.....

I bet you many of those capacitors aren't actually the capacitance they were 30 years ago, though.

Seriously, change all the caps in your Spectrum, and the 7805 regulator while you're at it, and see what the display looked like when it was new!

[Darrin]

Seriously, change all the caps in your Spectrum, and the 7805 regulator while you're at it, and see what the display looked like when it was new!

Considering that most people were using Spectrums on 20" second hand ex-rental TV sets manufactured in the 1970s, a blurred, fuzzy and flickering display is what most of them got when their machines were new.  Aging caps just help to retain the effect.  

(I used my C64 on a back & white portable TV for years as our only colour TV was in the living room)

[spirantho]

Part of the "effect" of original Spectrums is also that they die quite often, and not changing the caps will certainly help that. To be fair, I've not actually seen a Spectrum damaged by bad caps (though I have seen ones that don't work because of them - but they've not affected any other parts) - but I prefer to be safe.
Some effects are best avoided.

[b41d3r]

@som99.

Thanks, I was thinking about buying one of these mechanical keyboards. Even if I prefer the real M look, I can cope with a little of modernity.
Do these blue switchs give you a real M keyboard feeling ? Because I tried some new mechanical keyboard, especially for gamers, and I was greatly disappointed. Maybe the switch doesn't do everything !
I consider it important to work on a good keyboard. As being an intensive computer user it's vital. Such a shame, I can't find an azerty Unicomp keyboard in my country. And too bad, all the ancient keyboards of our aged computer models can't be found today. Vintage is the trend. So what are they waiting for ? In fact, I even thought that it could be a good idea to launch a factory producing old keyboards of every vintage brands (commodore, amstrad, sinclair, ...)
I'll have a look at your recommendation.

[paul1981]

(I used my C64 on a back & white portable TV for years as our only colour TV was in the living room)

So did I...and then once or twice per year I'd take the C64 downstairs and hook it up to the huge (20" or something) colour tv and it was like "WOW!! COLOUR!!". All the games were like brand new again...had to play them all to see how they'd look.
I still have that same B&W ferguson portable.

[B00tDisk]

Somewhere around here I have an old Slot-1 Pentium-II board (remember those?) that lived inside my server for a while back in the late 90s.  The board itself was 1996 vintage, not much younger than the newest A1200s.  Don't recall what the occasion was but around three, four years ago I put power to it and it fired right up and ran memtest86 just fine.

So make of it what you will.