Ask Slashdot: What Was Your Longest-Lived PC? 288
Replacing their main machine, long-time Slashdot reader shanen had a sobering thought. "Considering how many years it's lasted and adding that number to my own age, I wouldn't want to bet on who will outlast which." And this prompted a look back at all the computers used over a lifetime:
I've purchased at least 15 personal computers over the decades. Might be more like 20 and couldn't even count how many company computers I've used for various classes and work. Then there were the computer labs filled with my students.
But this ultimately led them to two questions for Slashdot's readers:
(1) What was the brand of your longest-lived PC?
(2) What is the brand of your latest PC and how long do you expect it to last?
Some answers have already been posted on the original submission.
But this ultimately led them to two questions for Slashdot's readers:
(1) What was the brand of your longest-lived PC?
(2) What is the brand of your latest PC and how long do you expect it to last?
Some answers have already been posted on the original submission.
- I think the longest-lasting computer that I used on a daily basis as my main device was a Lenovo ThinkPad R500. I bought it in 2010 and used it until 2019. It still worked when I retired it, but it was getting a bit slow.
- The longest lived was a PDP11/34A. Made in the late 70s or early 80s, it was still running when I sold it in 2005. Did a couple of component-level repairs, and I reckon there's every chance that it still runs today. Not sure if it counts as "personal" though. I have a polycarbonate Macbook from 2007 still going strong, so I guess that makes the answer "Apple".
There's also an interesting story about a long-running server from days gone. But what's your own answer to the question? Share your own stories in the comments.
What was the brand of your longest-lived PC — and how long do you expect your current PC to last?
This is a weird question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Excluding laptops, my computers have all been Ships of Theseus.
Re:This is a weird question. (Score:4, Informative)
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I build all my own, and my oldest is still running, made in 2000. It had a motherboard and CPU upgrade about 5 years later, so that doesn't really count as a 23 year old computer. I made my main current work computer in 2010 and it is running strong (Intel i7 980X extreme). It is still on Windows 7 for compatibility with older scientific software that I use. My current gaming computer is only around a year and a half old (Ryzen 9 5900X). I haven't had a computer die on me since the 1990s. All built with re
Re: This is a weird question. (Score:2)
Yeah. And self made. So around 20 years and still going. And Carewolf brand I guess
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What do you man "longest lived"?
I'm writing this from my 13 year old thinkpad W510. Definitely the PC I've had in longest actual use. I bought a new desktop a while back which gets occasional, bursty use when I need more power (deep learning, video editing, that kind of thing), but this machine gets the most use right now of my home machines.
I've got a BBC master and a Jupiter Ace which as fat as I know still boot (not checked in a while, and I don't even have a TV tuner any more for the Ace).
I've got some
Re:This is a weird question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhat off topic (and shamelessly reply-posting near the top of a now-long discussion), but I have to say - I really enjoy these sorts of Slashdot posts. They feel like the "old" Slashdot; you really get a real feel for the wide range of people here (and their history/experience).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm in the Apple desktop crowd still running my 2013 iMac with SSD and 32GB RAM and not having any issues with the speed nor operation for my day-to-day activities.
The only downside is that some music software I'd "like" to use, but don't actually "need" to use, requires a newer version of macOS than I currently have and that's becoming a motivation to upgrade. I don't think you'd get as long out of MacBooks as you would from iMacs or Studios just because they're scaled down spec-wise from the start to acco
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I was humming on iMac from 2006 for decade and another half. Occasional upgrades - memory, CPU, SSD. OS/X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard - solid and praised.
Got off, funny, for the iMac 2007, upgraded to the CPU, which can take Mojave, prepared by dosdude. It is stable and usable without online software updates (these were interfering, if taken, I believe). Got mini M1 out of curiosity - could swap any minute as a main seat, yet ole iMac is lovely integral unit, still in use.
I think you could follow my route of choosi
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I had a B&W G3 from 1999 to 2016. I upgraded the CPU and ran up to OSX.3 or 4, then installed Yellow Dog Linux on it after Apple stopped supporting the PowerPC chip. It served as my Linux box and I ran old OSX in emulation to support a project for several years. Sadly, I couldn't afford to replace it and buy a gaming PC (in a box of parts), so it got relegated to being a backup server. That gaming PC is still running and is my current Linux backup server. For historic reasons, that mac was named Spooky
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Interesting story. Thanks for reminding - there is recapped by me G5 around here, as well as mini with PowerPC, it all started here from, as to Apple in the house. Will have in mind option to convert them into Linux stations. Somehow Linux became rarely used here after all these turmoil years. First stopper for departing stations here is ceased browser support. Gave some tries for enthusiast Mozilla builds on PowerPC, but they were not enough. Supported (?) Linux could cross this length, it's all about soft
Re:This is a weird question. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gotta respond to that one:
Because building a computer properly is hard work and takes a lot of time. Plus the cost of mistakes while learning. While I'm glad I paid the price in time and money, now I'm willing to pay the expert for the well balanced, optimized, and (hopefully) properly tested boxen.
So the main reason for responding again on the related topic is because you reminded me of the time I fried a new monitor... I was playing games with video modes on a newly self-built box.
And I don't think my questions were at all weird. Rather carefully considered, in fact.
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Still, if the PSU fails, for example, you (hopefully) won't throw the whole thing away and buy a new one. Then, say, the HDD fails, and you change that, too. And so on.
After some time, all you are left with is maybe the case and the optical unit, if you don't use it much.
Also, the question was "Why on Earth would anyone who can build their own PC go out and buy some pre-built garbage?"
Because building a computer properly is hard work and takes a lot of time.
I find researching what to build is more daunting than actually building it, simply because most respectable PC hardware sto
Re:This is a weird question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it takes a lot of work and effort? Researching what you want, getting all the parts, assembling, etc., this can take a good amount of time. Sure you get exactly what you want, but the time and effort might be wasted if say, your parents just wanted a computer to surf the web. Or in the common situation of something screwed up, and now you need a PC to do work on.
I get the itch to build a PC every few years. Then I go through the process, and usually at the end of it, I'm done and spent and "never again". More than a few times I've sat there fixing issues and wondering why I didn't just pay the $50 to have the store build it for me. It's amazing how fun it can be to get the idea to build it, but when it comes down to getting it all ready and working, what a drag it becomes when your GPU and motherboard won't work together and you're going to the store for the nth time trying other GPUs.
I would say that my last two itches were solved by work - they needed a build PC and the only prebuilts were Intel jobs and would cost around $20,000. I offered my opinion on say, buying a Threadripper and basing off that. The first was a 16-core Threadripper at the time when 10 and 12 core dual Xeons were the top end and we built it at a time where we spent about $7000 on parts instead of $20,000 on a 10/12 core Xeon. The second one happened around 2021 when we built around the 64-core Threadripper - I think in the end it cost $20,000, but we had it outfitted with 256GB of ECC RAM, 4x 2TB NVMe SSDs plus 2x 8TB SATA SSDs. It later got upgraded with 2 more 8TB SATA SSDs, so it had 40TB of SSD storage.
Of course, when it was all put together, one of the built in thermal probes was off by a large margin so that needed to be debugged - I didn't want to risk that machine if something was overheating. Another few weeks were spent by someone with the software bits - I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 on it to play around with (it was a build PC, so it ran Linux), but people were tweaking things until it broke one day and I had to tell them how to reset back to factory defaults. In the end, we quit messing with it and put it into service.
The oldest PC I have still working was a work laptop - a Lenovo IBM ThinkPad T60 - it is old enough to still have the IBM ThinkPad branding on it. I had it since like 2008 or 2009 or so and was my daily driver in 2010-2011 when I needed it for project work and working offsite. (This was a time when people getting laptops for work was rare in our company, and I had the laptop long enough by then it was not worthy of going back into the floater pool so it became "mine"). It got retired in 2017 or so when I got a "new" laptop (2015 Dell XPS) just because it was getting slow - it got upgraded RAM, the hard drive replaced with an SSD, Windows XP replaced with Windows 7, the heatsink replaced twice (notorious fan failures), but was a high end laptop at the time with discrete graphics. It still works and I took it home with me alongside some spare parts from other T60s that got junked along the way.
The oldest PC I have would be the family 486 we bought brand new in 1993 or so, but it hasn't been powered up in 10 years or so.
Almost forty years... (Score:2)
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Yeah I still got my HP calc. Had to do a few repairs on her over the years (hard to find people to do that, but they are out there). I think my longest surviving actual personal computer though would probably be that trusty old 2011 macbook. Only retired her last year. She served me well, but it was time to move on to something that , well frankly, wasnt hanging together by gaff tape (literally I had self repaired that thing so many time half the internal screws where threaded, so that thing had a bit of sn
Your own worst enemy (Score:2)
You had an Amiga and an Atari ST??? But weren't they mortal enemies, did you fight yourself in the school yard?
Home built (Score:5, Interesting)
Er, other than laptops, who here buys a pre-built PC?
My PCs tend to be like the ship of Theseus though, changing parts over time, due mostly to upgrades, so it's hard to put an age on them. Years ago, I used to lose power supplies every so often, maybe see some RAM go bad, but never let my drives get older than 5 years.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, I made the exact same Ship of Theseus reference above. :)
I did stop caring about drive age when I went to a RAID-6. Which is itself a great example of a Ship of Theseus when it comes to computer hardware (though it's been really rare actually that I've needed to swap out drives... only two of the six thusfar, and they're over half a decade old now. It'll probably still contain a number of original drives when I swap it out simply due to obsolescence / needing more space)
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Mine is all original. Pentium with 256 M of RAM, running XP. SCSI bus CD burner that uses a carrier. Can't talk to other computers on the home network because it's running SMB 1.0. It will also boot into linux, but I haven't done that in so long I've forgotten what version - pre-grub.
Re: Home built (Score:2)
When XP came out 256MB of ram would have been extremely little.
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Similar here, but I usually change main board, CPU, GPU, RAM, drive and power supply at the same time. That is enough to call this the birth date of the "new" computer.
My previous main PC (still around as fallback if the current one breaks) was put together in 2011, with a GPU and RAM upgrade at a later date. It was replaced in 2022 with a "new" PC where I combined an old case with new innards. It also was the one that lasted me longest in the role of everyday workhorse.
So being generous about the details,
Re: Home built (Score:2)
That's a bit silly, the GPU is quite independent from the other components and is the only component that needs a refresh more often than the rest.
Re:Home built (Score:5, Interesting)
Just checked that my oldest case (Nexus) that is still in active use was bought 2004. So about 18 years ago. Inner parts, except the case fan have all been replaced since. The case fan has stopped working a couple of times, but I have inserted some oil and it has kept running.
But actually I think that my USB-keyboard, which I only use as an USB-hub nowadays is perhaps the oldest active component still use. I got it for free as a second hand product, so I don't know the exact year, but it came to market around 1999.
My current computer is pretty much from 2013 except few parts that have been replaced since then, e.g. larger SSD drive. Next time I have to buy a new mother board so I can get M.2 drive, so I will probably buy all parts as new.
Re: Home built (Score:2)
The motherboard is the PC. If you change that, you've changed the PC.
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The oldest item in any of my computers are hard drives. My oldest drive is a boot drive with over 17 years power on time:
My Amiga 1200 (Score:2)
They were all long-lived (Score:3)
Not one of them ever failed.
Every one was replaced with a newer, faster system I built myself.
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I don't know what you mean about built on the 8088 but a clone I would be very well surprised. While IBM shipped the schematics with those systems, parts were hard to find. The first clones I remember were with the 8086 and 80268.
I still have a original working 8088 IBM PC, it's not powered on anymore since there is no practical use
Depends (Score:3)
Does the question imply that the long-lived PC had to remain my daily driver for the entire time? That doesn't affect the brand of my answer, but it does affect which specific device I list.
If not, the answer is my 2006 MacBook Pro.It was my daily driver for several years, but got replaced by a second-generation MacBook Air when those came out. However that MBP continued its life as our home media server until ~2018.
The longest one computer has served as my daily driver was ~7 years - a 2015 MacBook Pro. It still runs fine, but last year I bought a new one and gave the 2015 one to my wife (she typically uses an iMac, but wanted a laptop for something crafts-related).
I'm hoping my current Mac will last for 6-8 years.
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Could I ask a couple of questions:
1/ What's the battery situation with such old laptops? (Replaced? Or running purely on mains?)
2/ What's the OS situation? (Presumably not current?)
Longest lived Ship of Theseus (Score:3)
To my "longest lived" PC the Ship of Theseus [wikipedia.org] paradox is very applicable: It's one of my servers, basically the fileserver which is now approximately 20 years old... just that none of the parts are. One could argue that the data, or at least some of it, is the part that lived throughout the 20 years, which is, funny enough, apt for the Ship of Theseus paradox since the "value" of the ship is in its ephemeral ideal values, not the mundane construction parts it is comprised of.
The current PC (Score:3)
It's a Dell Optiplex with an Ivy Bridge i5-3470. Got it off-lease years ago for like $200, put a GTX 1070 into it and it still does the job.
Like most people on /. I'd consider myself a power user/enthusiast/nerd but... it's just good enough. Easily fine for hobby-level development, photo or video editing (at least 1080p, 4k isn't great), CAD, runs Stable Diffusion and recent games like Cyberpunk or Far Cry 6.
Haven't even considered upgrading until Covid hit, and then it was too late with new GPUs being almost impossible to get at reasonable prices, which made building a whole new PC not really worth it. No, scalpers/Nvidia, I'm not giving you a thousand bucks to make my games shinier.
2013 MacBookPro (Score:5, Informative)
Battery is still holding up after 1431 charge cycles.
The keyboard and the sd card reading failed but with an external keyboard I can still use this every day for +8 hours.
As usual, the notebook outlives the charger.
Especially Apply charger cables are notoriously bad.
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same here - is now my travel laptop
13" MBP retina - spec'd it with 16GB and 1TB at the time, now on its third battery and on High Sierra. Wondering about converting to POP-OS as I have moved to System76 for my desktop and power laptop - the promised land - linux on the desktop that actually works.
The MBP still has the best keyboard - before the disastrous efforts of 2016.
Home made, 9 years old (Score:3)
Ubuntu 22 hangs frequently, think it just runs out of memory and swapping swamps it, which is a shame.
Re: (Score:2)
Upgrade the RAM, that's cheap at this point DDR3, right? You can probably get second hand stuff if you're really stretched. I've got an i7 Q820 with 16G and it's fine if a little slow these days. Also make sure you have plenty of swap even if you never intend on using it. If you hit the limit without swap it's much, much worse speed wise.
I have 5 old PCs, still working. (Score:2)
Though I'm not currently using all of them, I have five working PCs at home:
[Listed, I think, according to age.]
1: HP a6130n, 8GB RAM -- No OS at this time, but has previously, and will, run Linux.
2: Dell Inspiron 530a, 8GB RAM -- Windows10.
3: Dell XPS-420, 8GB RAM -- Windows 10 (main Windows PC).
4: Dell PowerEdge T110, 32GB ECC RAM -- Mint 21.1.
5: DIY System: ASRock Z77 Extreme3, i7-3770, 32 GB RAM -- Mint 21.1 (main Linux PC) w/Windows 10 VM.
I bought and upgraded the Dell T110 and inherited the
A Sony Vaio laptop (Score:2)
Macbook Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
HP ProBook 470 G1 (Score:2)
This 17â beast of a laptop was purchased in early 2014 and is still my primary driver. So almost 10 years. Iâ(TM)ve replaced the keyboard and battery. But itâ(TM)s looking a bit weathered.
ATARI 1040 STFM and AMD K6 (Score:5, Informative)
I've still got two really old machines that I occassionally use. An Atari 10SFTM which runs C-Lab Creator (think of this as the great grandad of Logic-X). I even pimped it out a few years ago and bought a GoTek USB floppy emulator, a SatanDisk hard drive emulator (uses SD cards), a Unitor interface, a USB mouse adaptor and a VGA screen adaptor. So it now has 4 x virtual 512Mb hard driives (on two SD cards), 3 x MIDI ins and 6 x MIDI outs. Works like a champ and I still use Creator with my old hardware synths/drum machines as it's blindingly fast to work with and the MIDI timing is impeccable.
As well as that I've still got my first PC which originally came with an AMD K6 CPU, 16Mb of RAM and a 3 GB hard drives. Again I pimped this out a long time ago and it now has 256 Mb RAM (max) and two 10 Gb Quantum fireball hard drives. Originally it came with WIndows 98 but it's currently set to dual boot Windows 2000 or an old version of Slackware (default). I've not tried booting Windows 2000 for a long time now but the Slackware install still gets a spin now and again as the machine lives upstairs and I occasionally power it up to play some music whilst I'm working up there.
There are a lot of perfectly good, perfectly usable, computers out there, which can run some really good programs which have been long abandoned by the manufacturers.
Personally I'd like to see copyrigh law amended so that, once a manufacturer stops selling/supporting a program, the source code has to be made open source - at the very least *all* the file formats for user created data files. That way anyone wanting to keep running old "crap", or recover their own data, can do so under their own steam (or pay someone else to do it for them).
At least you wouldn't then be in the position that your own data is effectively locked up in someones secret container so you can't use it any more.
P.S. Oh hello Apple, yes I am referring to you and your failure to keep suporting old Logic 5.1 file formats.
Re:ATARI 1040 STFM and AMD K6 (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I'd like to see copyrigh law amended so that, once a manufacturer stops selling/supporting a program, the source code has to be made open source - at the very least *all* the file formats for user created data files. That way anyone wanting to keep running old "crap", or recover their own data, can do so under their own steam (or pay someone else to do it for them).
At least you wouldn't then be in the position that your own data is effectively locked up in someones secret container so you can't use it any more.
I second making file formats, including disk formats, public. That ensures old files can be read in the future, not just by users but historians.
I choose based on availability of parts (Score:2)
This being said at home I've only had laptops (plus a headless server) for the past 25 years. I choose the hardware based on availability of parts which means 3 things: the parts being standard and replaceable with anything else, being able to purchase the original parts from the maker for a while
i5-3570 for nine years (Score:2)
Self assembled using an Intel DZ77RE-75K motherboard. Think that was the last discrete ATX motherboard product Intel made. Used daily, long hours, for nine years: 2012-2021, in two different states and three houses.
Upgrade intervals have been getting longer. The machine prior to that lasted 4 years. Before that I did full upgrades as frequently as 18 months, back to my first self assembled machine; a 386. Before that was a white box 286 and a Packard Bell 8086. At the moment the oldest is a 2016 HP
Re: (Score:2)
More...
That i5-3570 system never died. I just needed more performance. Still have the components for it. Failures included a EVGA NVidia GPU (which didn't surprise me) and a Seasonic power supply (which did.) Incidentally I had another Seasonic PS die in a 2016 machine I built. Starting to wonder about this...
New one from 2021 on is a i7-11700K and a RTX 3070 TI on an Asus TUF Z590 board with 64GB RAM and a bunch of Samsung flash drives. I expect at least another two years before the spouse gets i
My own oldies are Toshiba and IBM (Score:3, Informative)
I feel like I should provide more background, though I also feel it's kind of irrelevant. To the Theseus fans, I stopped building my own machines about three decades back. I guess the black box mentality pushed me out, but too much time twiddling with optimization and I'm willing to leave that kind of stuff to experts who have optimized more machines than I ever will. (I even did OS internals a couple of times, but I wouldn't dare these days... Just black boxes now.) The closest I want to get to Theseus might be a Notebook or Mac Mini with an external display... I really like the big display.
The machine that is dying is a Toshiba desktop that's had heavy daily use for somewhere over 10 years. (Let's not get too specific there, eh?) I don't regard Toshiba as a living option, though my wife insisted on a Dynabook for her primary machine a while back. Can't be too long ago since that machine accepted the Windows 11 upgrade with only minor problems.
However the longest-lived machine I'm still using, though only a couple of times per week, is an old IBM ThinkPad. Circa 2006? IBM is out of the PC business and my experiences with Lenovo have been mixed, including at least one later ThinkPad that's already died and even ignoring the Chinese factor. But maybe someone around here can help me retire that old IBM tank? What I'm using the ThinkPad for is a database app that I wrote around 1981. (There were actually at least two instantiations before that, with data going back to 1971.) Now that's the back end (with around 150 updates per year) and there's a separate front end and query interface in PERL for the Web that I wrote around 1998 or so. It isn't a proper database now, but if I was going to port it I'd want to start with some related source code to mangle... Maybe Python? I hate the idea of doing anything like that with JavaScript... (The PERL was actually a little contact database thing that the late James Liu (of Sun) gave me a copy of...)
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Re: (Score:3)
At least
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Well, that was what killed my 2001 2xAthlon MP1800 machine, after 12 years of service. It wasn't too slow, it just didn't have SSE2.
Though I think it was a fair run. And of only desktop machines I have with a defined life-span. The rest are basically still running from some late 90s config.
2001 PIII (Score:2)
Just one? ... (Score:3)
Still got my old "cheese grater" macPro 5.1 which is now 13 years old. Haven't booted it up in a while, but it still works.
One of my latest PC's is a mac mini M1 which I expect will last a decade.
I dare say there's going to be folk who still have working 286's, commodore 64's, ZX81's etc.
What IS my longest-lived PC (Score:2)
I've got a self-built box with an Intel Q6600 in an MSI mobo that began its life in 2007.
It's had a variety of upgrades - OS, newer GPUs, a USB3 card, SATA3 card and SSD to replace the HDD - but it's still running fine and does everything I need it to do.
Of course, it doesn't have a TPM so the latest iteration of Windows won't run without much sodding about, but I'll worry about that when W10 drops out of support.
Franklin Ace 1000 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Going a little off the beaten path I have a Franklin ace 1000 that was made in 1982 (my family acquired it used in 1986) that is still going strong. the Ace 1000 was an unlicensed clone of the Apple 2 plus that had a better keyboard than the real 2+ but you have to buy the color chip for it as a separate purchase. Franklin thought they could avoid being sued by apple doing this but they were still forced put of the computer business in 1985. https://computeradsfromthepast... [substack.com]
Franklin copied the Apple ROM which lead to Apple's lawsuits and ultimately made historic case law that said computer programs can be copyrighted even though they are not "printed." Some later Franklins also ran CP/M out of the box. VTech took a different approach and used a clean room approach to creating a clone and licensed MS-Basic, which Apple also used and did not have an exclusive license, so they were able to avoid the same fate as Franklin. The VTech Laser was not 100% compatible but significantly
Apple MacBook Pro 13" 2010 model (Score:2)
Commodore 64 (Score:5, Interesting)
Still have and use mine to this day.
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2013 - 2022 (Score:3)
2013 - 2022
Intel i7 3930K 6 core / 12 threads
Asrock X79 Extreme6
32GB RAM Kingston HyperX LE
Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD
2x 3T HD mirrored Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM01 (in Raid 1 mirror)
GTX770 4GB
W10 Pro
750W PS
Heavily used, kept on 24/7
Very decent specs for that time and there was still no pressing need to replace for capacity or performance until it started crashing more and more frequently with random stopcode. Replaced RAM and PS without effect and gave
up.
Built new one with i9-12900F keeping only HDs (!) and cloning boot SSD to 4G keeping the OS after struggling with UEFI. This one sleeps at night to lower energy costs.
Re: 2013 - 2022 (Score:2)
Oh, forgot Sony Vaio VPC-F12M1E from 2010 that's still occasionally used. Received a SSD and new battery though.
My 2 cents (Score:2)
I've had the same PC since '99 (Score:3)
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But the castors on the case are still the same though...
Tyan server board (Score:2)
With dual PIII.
It was built shortly before the millennium, and died within the past few years (caps finally gave out).
If I had more knowhow, it probably could have been repaired, but there were quicker machines available for the use case.
I don't so much think of when any of my current machines will die, but when I can no longer get software/driver updates and it will be easier (and quicker) to run programs in VM..
I have an Intel Dual Core board that will hit the trash heap as soon as anything acts up as I c
most endurable (Score:2)
Longest lived laptop was a tie between a Dell Inspiron which lasted 7 years from 2008, and an Acer that lasted 7 years from 2015.
I'm hoping my current kit lasts me until I die. I may not report back.
2010 Mac Pro - 11 years (Score:2)
A 2010 Mac Pro was my daily machine until 2021. For the last few years I used it probably less than my work provided MacBook Pro (also use a windows ThinkPad for astronomy, games), but it was always on, upgraded to 32GB Ram, 3.2Ghz Xeon, esata, usb 3.0, 1gb SSD, 6Tb HDDs, serving as my media server. As soon as I realized that with my new power tariffs it was costing me £50 a month to power it, I got an M1 Mac Mini instead that used 7 instead of 150W at idle...
The Mac Pro was dual boot win/os X a
My longest lived PC was an IBM PC 5150 (Score:2)
It was old when I got it, and it was still working when I cannibalized it
Two machines really (Score:3)
The other machine I once had that ran forever was a Sun Sparc 2, that I finally retired in 2004, when it was 12 years old. It was still running fine, but I got tired of maintaining my own DNS and Sendmail server, so out it went.
Depends on how often you move (Score:2)
If hadn't moved so frequently and therefore had to get rid of excess stuff, I would probably still have my C64 (from the mid 1980s) and Atari 1040STF (from the early1990s) around. But as it is, my oldest PC is a Samsung "Netbook" from around 2010, still running the Windows XP home edition it came with. My wife has the same model which I bought used much later (2015?) but is running Linux on it.
Unfortunately it has become difficult to find a recent Linux distro that still runs on 32 bit hardware with only 2
ZX Spectrum +2 (Score:3)
Managed to get my hands on one in 1989 and I still power it up for the lulz from time to time.
Build my own, but... (Score:3)
several Macs (Score:2)
My oldest machines are several Macs. My current desktop PC is a 2017 iMac 27" and it's still doing fine. My notebook is a 2015 MacBook Pro. Battery isn't what it used to be, everything else still works perfectly.
The two before that are now used by my wife, who mostly uses some light spreadsheets, a financial app for her business and web+email. I'm not sure about their exact ages, but the MacBook Air was bought in 2014 and the iMac in 2011 give or take a year. Same story with them: The MacBook Air doesn't la
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>> Battery isn't what it used to be, everything else still works perfectly.
Not interested in changing the battery? Or not able to?
Asking because I'm thinking of making my next machine a MBP. Have used (DOS then) Windows almost exclusively my entire life, but not a fan of how Windows is evolving.
Trash Can (Score:2)
My daily drivers are:
2013 Mac Pro D700 64GB 6 Core
2012 Mac Air 11 8GB
The Trash Can is still a perfectly good machine, and the Air still works ok as an Ultra Lite will I wait in the vain hope that Apple might one day bring out another 1kg laptop. Amazingly after a decade the battery still works well.
In both cases longitivtiy is greatly helped by maxing the graphics and memory option. If your buying a machine to last over a decade, you should max both of these.
Macintosh IIci (Score:2)
Introduced 1989. The company I worked for had a few of them, with Radius 68040 accelerators. Once they were replaced, I took one home and used it as my main machine until 2004.
1999 Power Mac G4 (Score:2)
Intel Core i5 2500 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Similar migration, but wanted to get away from intel and Nvidia that I was using at the time. Ryzen seemed the logical choice. No regrets, the GE and U series is more than enough for my needs.
Compaq from work (Score:3)
The other machines were always self built, one started with a Duron (900?) and ended with some AMD 64 multi core CPU (Sempron?), starting as desktop (late last millennium?), then server after the above Compaq, it got replaced by a faster desktop. It finally got replaced by a hand me down Intel Atom 10W (?) D525MW low power system in 2015 or so. The case lasted about 15 years, the innards roughly about 5+...
The faster desktop (AMD 64, forgot which one, Phenom?) is decommissioned since the FM2+ Asus A88X-pro with A10-7800 CPU which is still in active use today. It's practically unchanged since I built it in 2016. That makes about 7 years. Considering it's got trouble with 4k videos from my drone, it's perhaps time to upgrade, AM5 but I'm waiting for serious APUs (ECC and 35W) to become available, the office graphics cores in the current AM5 CPUs are likely enough, but the next iteration will live for another 7 years at least, same case and PSU, new motherboard, RAM and APU, so I'll want a serious step up...
That Intel hand me down system came in a nice thin Silverstone case (the reason that FM2+ is also in a Silverstone case), which is still in use today, since Feb 2018 the motherboard is a gigabyte GA-AB350N gaming WiFi which I decided on after this review: https://www.phoronix.com/revie... [phoronix.com] because if Gigabyte sends that motherboard for Linux tests, it will do okay for my Linux use. Well, after about 5 weeks and as many BIOS updates... And it didn't boot with my 2400G, since the BIOS was too old, I had to get another CPU to do the update that would boot with my CPU... It's been running as a headless server until the office room got turned into the first kid's bedroom, since then (Christmas 2019) it's also a home cinema PC with a projector.
Since earlier this year, it's running with a Ryzen Pro 5750G, 35W (instead of 65W). I killed the external PSU by accident during the upgrade process, so it's a bit a Frankenstein machine with a silent PSU on top, cables going in through the bent open side.... From the Intel Atom to the Ryzen 2400G was a speed increase of about 10x to 16x, plus it went from 4GB RAM to 32GB. From the 2400G to the 5750G gave a core increase of 4x, which run faster, higher clocks and higher IPC and cooler too, max 35W instead of 65W. Plus my ECC is finally in use, I paid through the nose in 2018 for 32gb of ECC ram to find that AMD non-pro APU's don't do ECC ... (Yes, regular Ryzen will do ECC, but not APUs... This wasn't widely known in 2018...)
Counting the case, that's about 9 years, just the motherboard it's 5. I'm counting on this one to keep up another 5 years, gkrellm tells me it's waiting for my input in low frequency mode, running my vnc sessions for my desktop, the movie playback desktop (vnc so I can remote control, no keyboard or mouse), the music desktop (running mpd for playback, desktop for configuration management, the occasional YouTube music playback, etc.), virtual machine with VPN client for torrents and geo limited streaming access, a VPN server,...
my longest lived... (Score:2)
My longest lived PC was an iMac that I bought refurbed in 2006 and used daily until 2016 when I sold it to a friend of my dad. When I last spoke to him was 2019 but he was still using it too.
The "bigger" iMac I bought in 2016 to replace it is still running strong too.
Both answers macs (Score:2)
2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
There hasn't been any reason to change major components since 2009.
The only components that have evolved are GPUs (only if you're into games) and super-fast NVMe SSDs. Easy upgrades to add.
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5C-A01US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Score:2)
DEC AXPpci33 home built (Score:2)
My Mac Plus or My Server or my Laptop? (Score:2)
I've got a working Mac Plus (a 512K upgraded to such) in the basement. I fire it up once a year or so just to prove it still works, although I boot it from an SD card connected via a hard drive emulator. I don't use it regularly, though.
I have a 2008-era PC that originally built as a Hackintosh (just for fun, as I've always had real Macs), but it's been a Linux file server since 2011 or so. As a file server, I'm unsure whether or not to call it a "personal computer," because it's not really personal, if you
2005-2020 Dell Power Edge 420 SC (Score:2)
I worked at Dell at the time (and employee discounts were limited and NOT great, so this was *my* money)- the 420SC, PowerEdge "value line" of servers (internal code names for that generation were Ford cars, imagine the cheapest Ford in the early 2000s). The server was mostly a rebadged desktop, to make it a very inexpensive machine, but ended up being quite different from the desktop. Still, the design was to put good, but inexpensive, parts together. Minimize the initial BOM price, but also minimize the a
Sharp MZ-80K (1979), Hewlett-Packard HP-85 (1980) (Score:2)
I got my first Sharp MZ-80K Personal Computer [wikipedia.org] (released in kit version in 1978, and in assembled version in 1979) in 1980. It has a 2MHz Sharp LH0080A CPU (Sharp's Z80A version, under license by Zilog) with 48kB RAM and a build-in black and white CRT and a cassette drive. I still have two of those, which are fully functional. I now use the z88dk assembler/compiler [github.com] to program it, and a cheap MP3 to cassette interface to load the binaries. I als
Not dead, just obsolete (Score:2)
It's hard to answer the question because almost all of the Macs I've owned have been retired and recycled not because they died, but because they were thoroughly obsolete, usually after 8 to 12 years.
By the time Apple stops supporting them with software updates, they're usually getting pretty slow for modern software. Most of the time, I'll rebuild them with some flavor of UNIX and use them in a secondary role for a while. Eventually, I'll be ready to refresh my daily driver again and "newer" systems will t
My oldest or my newest (Score:2)
Hard to say. My be my Dell Precision T3610. Made in 2013 and upgraded a few times. Currently has 64GB RAM, 10 core Xeon CPU, 2TB SSD and 6GB of secondary HD storage. I will almost certainly use it for at least a couple more years.
Or it could be my oldest, an Apple II+ (also upgraded a few times). Got it in 1981 and used it as my main computer until 1985. Kept using it for a few more years for gaming and embedded development for several more years.
How about antiques that still run? (Score:2)
Do you mean my North Star Horizon circa 1981? Still runs. Still plays Zork and Adventure. Or do you mean my Dell XPS13 circa 2015. I replaced the battery once, so far, and hope to get 2 more years out of it. It's a Core i7 with 64 MB.
I like to get 4 or 5 "Moore Units" out of a PC. By that time the software guys are finally outstripping the hardware's capabilities although that used to happen a bit quicker in the old days.
Mid-2010 Desktop MacPro (Score:2)
Dell tower (Score:2)
In 2011 I figured or found out that Dell refurbs weren't a bad deal, and you could upgrade them. So I got a Dell 580 tower refurb with a 1 TB platter, 6 GB DDR3, i5-760, and a 1 GB Radeon HD 5450. The kicker was that I couldn't upgrade the power supply, so the sent me a computer with a 250W supply. It would just shut off if I did anything intensive. So it got a 550 W supply asap and over the years I've upgraded the ram and video card, but it's still going, running Win10.
That hasn't gotten a ton of use over
BBC Micro: 40 years of regular use (Score:2)
Back in late 1983 I wrote some code for a local auction company that wanted a quick and easy way to put message up on some LED matrix displays, with some function keys programmed to include a few template messages like "... please go to the white telephone." which could have names inserted. The code ran on a BBC Micro [wikipedia.org] and I programmed to code into an EPROM so that it would run each time the machine booted. In 1992 they called me up and asked me to change some of the template messages; when I installed the u
what brand... (Score:2)
Hitachi 1TB hard disk ... (Score:3)
My home server is actually a PC. It is on all the time, on a UPS, and only gets rebooted for kernel or hardware upgrades.
From somewhere in 2010 till Feb 2022, the disk in it has been running for over 11 years continuously, until I decided to upgrade the PC with more current components (e.g. SATA III, USB 3.0, Ryzen, motherboard, UEFI, ...), and a case too.
It was an Acer Desktop, circa 2010 AMD Athlon II X4 with 4GB or RAM, and no UEFI.
According to SMART, as of late January 2022:
Model Family: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B
Device Model: Hitachi HDT721010SLA360
Firmware Version: ST6OA31B
User Capacity: 1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Here are the relevant entries from S.M.A.R.T:
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 086 086 000 Old_age Always - 101024
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65
That 101,024 hours is 11.5 years of the disk spinning continuously with 65 power cycles over that period.
And per tune2fs, this ext3 file system was created on July 2010!
Last mounted on: /
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Inode count: 60317696
Block count: 241244080
Reserved block count: 12062204
Free blocks: 125567107
Free inodes: 58960270
First block: 0
Block size: 4096
Fragment size: 4096
Reserved GDT blocks: 966
Blocks per group: 32768
Fragments per group: 32768
Inodes per group: 8192
Inode blocks per group: 256
Filesystem created: Mon Jul 19 15:48:26 2010
Mount count: 2
Maximum mount count: 23
Last checked: Fri Dec 31 15:44:08 2021
Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
Next check after: Wed Jun 29 16:44:08 2022
Lifetime writes: 13 TB
And the disk was only half full (~ 500GB).
I am impressed that a spinning disk can last that long.
The Hitachi disk was copied to another disk that was created as an ext4.
A Gateway from the Windows XP era. When? (Score:3)
Another way of looking at this Slashdot post about "longest lasting computer" is what kind of computer setups are repairable and enjoyable. I bring this up because I think that the 'tons of consumer crap computer and printer culture' is winding down. Think of the amazing technological accomplishment of inkjet and xerographic printing... and the way Hewlett Packard forced the entire industry (afaik) into a deliberate land of consumer waste.
My oldest system is a Gateway 'top of the line' gaming case computer. It has elaborate cooling and multiple connector cables. I have a 5 1/4" floppy drive that I am going to install one of these days. It is slow to boot but and the Samsung display does not strike until the office warms to 60 degrees F. With a 512 M solid state disk it clip clops along nicely. The downside of the Gateway is it burns 130 watts.
My main workstation is 12 years old (Score:3)
I bought a socket-2011 system back in 2011. I don't think there's anything original in it anymore other than the case, but it's still using the same model motherboard. Everything else has been upgraded or replaced over time. My most recent upgrade was going from a 6-core/12-thread I7-3930K to a 12-core/24-thread Xeon. I've added faster/more RAM (64GB), I've upgraded to two SSDs in RAID1 for the boot drive. I've gone through quite a few video cards and power supplies - those just don't seem to last, they burn out with about the same frequency. I've added an 8-drive RAID10 with an LSI card, and 2.5gbit NIC. I even had a 40gbit Infiniband card in there for a while, using it to directly connect to my file server.
It was an absolute beast when I bought the system, and it's served me well. With the new Xeon CPU I'll keep it going on Win10 for another few years. The TPM module I added wasn't recognized so I can't install WIndows 11
I'll probably keep this system going until the motherboard dies, because a replacement is more expensive than a brand-new modern motherboard now, then sell off everything else as parts.
12 years as my gaming daily driver (Score:3)
I built my i7-920 system in February '09. It was my primary PC used for gaming until I built a replacement i7-11700K system in March '21.
As with many people around here, it was updated over the years. I honestly think the only original part left may have been a SATA cable or two. I upgraded from the standard X58 motherboard to the Classified NF200 version using EVGA's StepUp program (so within 90 days of buying it). I eventually replaced the i7 with a hex-core Xeon. I upgraded to bigger and faster RAM, SSDs, and GPUs along the way. I switched from 120mm tower coolers to AIO watercooling. I even upgraded the PSU and changed cases. Since it was built in the aughts, it even got an upgraded DVD-RW and BD-ROM addition.
Essentially nothing remained of what I had originally installed in '09, but I was still using my X58 system in '21. It's actually still sitting across the room, fully functional, even though I don't use it anymore. I mentioned it in several comments [slashdot.org] shortly after I built it, because a bunch of people were complaining about how Intel was changing sockets every 5 minutes while AMD stuff was perpetually upgradeable. I won't be surprised if I never have another "single PC" last me as long as this one did.
Re: (Score:2)
I still have every Raspberry Pi I've every purchased (think there's about 10 of those now!), and I have an original 2012 model B with 256MB RAM running PiHole... I have had to replace the origina
Re: (Score:2)
What did you build again?