RANT: cost of spare parts vs total replacement cost

[Bob Eager]

Bought it off my brother in law for a song - he didn't appreciate it.

[tony sayer]

In article , Tim Streater scribeth thus

Damm!, The wife's one was built in 1971 the same year she was born!.

Mind you a few mods and re-capping (essential for ones of that vintage and makes it perform better) will see it and the QUAD LL speakers that go with it around for a long time to come yet;)..

[MM]

Was the song 'You Belong To Me'?

don't write tunes like that any more...

MM

[Adam Funk]

Good idea.

[djc]

My IBM model M "Manufactured in United Kingdom 12-08-1988" still working.

[Martin Bonner]

Not quite (but close). Right: You understand the idea that many memory chi= ps are made on a single slice of silicon perhaps 6" across. The wafer is t= hen sawn up into the individual chips and tested. =20

The problem is that the bigger the individual chip is, the more likely it i= s to have a error, so the lower the overall yield is. Uncle Clive wanted t= o make a single memory chip from the whole wafer (which would then be used = as screamingly fast hard drives). The chances of getting a perfect wafer = are effectively zero, so the whole thing had to be able to cope with a cert= ain level of faults.

... so it wasn't really to "save money", it was to be able to make a /reall= y/ big chip at all.

[Bob Eager]

Mine is, of course a Model 'M', used daily. I have the 1989 one at work but that's only used 5 days a week.

[Jules Richardson]

Agreed.

Although I try not to buy new things if I can find something old that achieves the same aim; with the older things schematics are often available for electronics, or the thing is simple enough that I can implement a workaround, or over-engineered enough that it doesn't break in the first place, or I can outright make replacement parts if spares are not available etc.

... plus keeping stuff out of landfill and not requiring that a complete replacement be manufactured and shipped to me is also quite eco- friendly :-)

cheers

Jules

[Jules Richardson]

Mine's November '86, but it wasn't bought new by me and so doesn't qualify, I think. I've got no end of ancient gadgets kicking around that I look after and keep running, but I'm not sure what the oldest that I bought (new) personally is.

cheers

Jules

[Mark]

Huh my 1929 Ariel ?

new by my uncle, still goes as good as new after 83 years.

-

[grimly4]

[grimly4]

Hmm... Murphy 62B Navy receiver, hard to date it, but around 1950. Still going strong last time I plugged it in, but PO had re-capped a lot of it. All the valves worked wonderfully well and it's as sensitive as a very sensitive thing on a sensitive day in Sensitivetown.

[Gib Bogle]

Thanks! This is the version I know:

[Gib Bogle]

Sorry - this is the one - same singer, better version.

[Gib Bogle]

Show-off! But do you commute on it?

[Gib Bogle]

My first PC was a Zenith Z100. This came with a big set of ring-bound manuals describing every aspect of the system, and two complete printouts of the BIOS code. Why two? Because this machine could be booted either as 8-bit CP/M using the 8085, or 16-bit ZDOS using the

8088 (this was just before MS-DOS came out). The complete info provided

• a scope enabled me to track down a m/b chip problem that nowadays would result in the machine being junked.

[geoff]

"Mah Wullie..."

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Used near every day and lives outside? My SD1 is/does.

[geoff]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

I've had three SD1s - good workhorse

[AJH]

Didn't come out till about 66, super5 and crusader sport were earlier.

AJH