The computer built to last 50 years (2021)

The major problem I see with this is that while the computer itself might still boot, the world around it will have changed so radically it will effectively be useless.

You can see this with machines much younger than 50 years, they can't support the encryption required by most modern websites, interfaces age out of regular use: used a 24 pin parallel port lately? How about a modem?

Even software with long support for ancient machines eventually find it impossible to support older hardware, so you would be stuck with whatever the last release of software was available and likely any vendor would be long dead.

Machines don't age out because they stop working, they simply become obsolete to the surrounding environment. The article glosses over this problem by saying you could stick to simple use cases like email or word processing, but if you can't transfer the data off the machine, you are boned.

  > For most typewriters, restoration is only a matter of taking the time to do it. There’s no complex skills or tools involved. Even the most difficult operations could be learned alone, by simple trial and error.

What. Let's say an internal piece failed because of mechanical stress caused by lack of lubrication or a jammed foreign object. How do you figure out "by simple trial and error" which piece failed, why it failed, what the original piece was supposed to look like, and finally repair it, without expert knowledge and precision tools? At a wild guess I'd expect it'd take me a few years to do this reliably, using consumer-grade tools, from stock materials which are not already the exact right size in any dimension.

  > By contrast, we have to change our laptops every three or four years. Our phones every couple of years. And all other pieces of equipment (charger,router, modem,printers,…) need to be changed regularly.

This is conflating "have to" in the sense that it's hard to get useful work done because software no longer runs optimally (or at all) on older hardware, and "have to" in the sense that it's literally broken. I don't "have to" change my laptop any more than someone in the 1950s "had to" change their typewriter for the latest model every few years.

As a side note, a quick search through the article revealed no mention of why you'd want to do this. For fun, sure, but something like this is going to need a business case and lots of cash to be done properly.

It does feel dangerous, somehow, doesn't it, to have the web of technology be so complex? Even something like an automobile- once cars were simple enough that you could take them apart, put them back together, and have a decent chance of doing it right. But now the parts and the computer controlled systems are so complex that you really can't. All the equipment that got left in Afghanistan is a case in point: the Afghan government could never use it, because it was too tightly tied into the whole US infrastructure and support network. Without the satellites and the special maintenance crews it was all useless. Whereas the Taliban had antique gear left over from the Soviet Union, and it was repairable, and it worked.

Joseph Tainter actually links this exact phenomenon to the collapse of civilizations. The theory is that every time a society reaches a crisis, they tend to solve it by making infrastructure and social systems more complex. But more complex means it needs more energy, more education, more expensive maintenance to run. Eventually things reach a tipping point where the social systems are so complicated that adding to the complexity actually makes things worse instead of better. At that point the high energy equilibrium point is unstable, and the system must shift down to a lower complexity equilibrium that requires less energy - oftentimes, much lower. This manifests as collapse. It would be fascinating if this desire that you see manifested often in popular culture for things to be simpler, less systematized (homesteading, anger at government and banks, calls for degrowth) was some kind of subconscious understanding that things were approaching just such a tipping point.

So I get the sentiment. At the same time, our devices are really only useful because of the networks of servers and the billion dollar chip fabs that make them. You can't have something like the modern internet without all that stuff. So I don't see this really working, at least in the short term. That said, you can do a lot of interesting stuff with a low powered machine, and I'd love to play around with one. It would probably run a unix shell just fine. Not sure about emacs though..

The Commodore 64 was introduced 40 years ago. I’m not sure 50 years is that long or hard for a computer to do? This article is written like 50 years is undicipherable hieroglyphics territory.

I can still remember LOAD “*”,8,1 like it was yesterday. And original Commodore 64s still run today.

I think that the computers built to last 50 years are not really computers, but other things which contain or use a computer.

Word processor, car, calculator, camera, space telescope...

My HP-11C is going on 36 years old, flawless, and is reportedly Turing complete [1]. Echoing the @dbtc comment that there are likely many special purpose computers that are closing in on this.

[1] https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv020.c...

(If this is inaccurate about the 11c, and I'd love to hear why, then in a few years I'll see how my MacSE is doing. Just doing a casual assessment due to...late night.)

> The machine will be built to communicate in written format. It means writing and reading. That covers already a lot of use cases. Writing documents. Writing emails. Reading mails, documents, ebooks. Searching on the network for information. Reading blogs and newsletters and newsgroups.

Really, this is most of what I use my phone for. Even the sites I read voraciously are mostly text (where I can get it anyways). Except the occasional streaming during some bored moments, my smartphone experience would be improved by less images and video.

Sounds like a fun project. I'll dump assorted thoughts on the topic too:

- Building a laptop (and not a desktop/workstation computer, or a blade/server hardware) makes the task much more difficult than it has to be.

- Even modern Debian is supposed to run on Pentium 1, so that's hardware from 25+ years ago (I suspect the main memory would be a bottleneck though). But now that Moore's law doesn't seem to apply anymore, and unless there will be some unexpected breakthroughs, at least the same 25 years seem fairly easy.

- As anecdata, I've built a computer about a decade ago (had no hardware issues at all since), and another one a couple years ago -- and their specifications are very similar.

- I guess replacement parts may be more of an issue: with hardware interfaces changing, it becomes quite a bit harder to find older ones, just as with any appliances.

- As for interfaces for talking to the outside world, I think so far they change (with breaking compatibility) slower than internal ones, though it can be an issue too. Maybe can be mitigated with analog interfaces where applicable, open hardware and GPIO pins for future hacking, and general attempts to keep compatibility. And adapters, of course.

I think some on here (that are just saying my Amiga or TRS-80 can already do that) may be missing the greater point even though they're not necessarily wrong.

I don't think the author is just talking about the computer, but kick-starting an entirely new movement from like-minded folks.

1.) This would of course need to include a pretty simple computer that has parts which could be replaced for decades. I'm thinking about something as potentially simple as a C64, but without all of the video chip stuff. Maybe closer to Ben Eater's computer, but a step up.

2.) This will need the right amount of peripherals. At minimum I think you'd need to be able to interact with an SD card, keyboard, e-ink display, battery, and the internet. I'm sure you may need something else as well. SD card isn't a requirement though. Maybe something else that is simpler, but still functional could work?

3.) This will need the right amount of software. Obviously Linux is out as an OS unless it is massively stripped down. If the hardware is as restrictive as a C64 or worse, then you'd have to do something very simple that is hardly an OS. I think a Forth layer over the hardware would be perfect. It would have some basic functionality as well as some applications like a very simple text editor, BBS, some kind of way to do text only web pages (not a web guy, so no clue if this would work), and maybe perform simple calculations. The original iOS from the Rebol guy (Carl Sassenrath, not Apple) had this interesting concept of sharing code over the internet. The core would be incredibly simple, but people could always add on whatever they wanted.

I'll add that I often think about getting to use a computer like this for everything not work related. There are some interesting ideas out there showing what computers could have been.

The problem I see is that... I like having a phone and a laptop. Since we will never be able to fully participate in the modern world without them, unless society changes majorly, I would rather use the device I already have.

An ideal forever computer would just be a very reliable modern laptop with a replaceable battery and a software suite that people somehow agree to maintain for the next few decades.

It's possible now that we are at the good enough stage. Basic everyday tasks are no longer a challenge for CPUs, so in theory current laptops should be good till they break.

If I were to actually want to build something myself, it would be a pi4 based cyberdeck powered by lithium titanate batteries.

The author is a software guy, which is good, because most of the cool stuff he proposes can be done in software.

I think this is a noble idea. One thing that makes it difficult is that a computer is designed to execute arbitrary programs. People will always be tempted to "improve" whatever the specification is for this forever computer.

A related thing to think about is what it would take so we don't lose the ability to view old documents or run old programs. Presumable header info in documents, saving versions of programs and having emulators for old machines would by part of the solution. I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort to enact, but it is probably worth thinking about.

I grew up programming computers without network connections.

I don't think the current generation would think of such a device as a 'computer' any more than they would consider a rotary-dial a 'phone' (seen closer to a telegraph).

I tend to agree to the point in that the point of computers is the softness of software. If it never changes then it could be hardcoded and be like a typewriter but then I wouldn't think of it as a computer, which to me is like a Turing machine and program/data tape, not a particular hard-coded state-machine.

My son is using the Apple ][+ my dad bought in 1979 to play games, learn assembly language, and he even wrote a school paper with Apple Writer. Not quite 50 years yet, but getting close.

You can still go online with a 1980's Amiga, send emails, write a novel, etc... Most of which is being talked about here.

Hell you'd be surprised how much you can still do on a old 386 with win 3.1. Pretty much anything word processing was perfected in that era, those old versions of office still work just fine.

While you could write all you wanted with an apple ii, I wouldn't really call that as usable as something like an early version of word which is very familiar for anyone that used word pre ribbon.

Right now, I don’t see how a general purpose computer could last 50 years. The article refers to it being modular, but you’d have to replace so many parts… would it still be the same computer?

There's no component of a fifty year old computer I'd want to use today. Maybe when we've reached the limits of Moore's law, perfected display technology, wireless networking, and hit the limits to communication bus performance designing computers to last fifty years will be more appealing. Doing that today would just mean more waste when all the components become obsolete and it's cheaper to replace than upgrade.

I could easily see a Sandy Bridge based laptop still being usable after 50 years, as it being able to run more modern software for the time. But with that being said C2D based hardware has no plans on slowing down anytime soon and still can be used on a daily basis, depending on what hardware graphics it has.

This is one problem (of many) that will have to be solved before we can have "generation ships" for interstellar travel.

A sturdy laptop with replaceable batteries running emacs. I can see that lasting for 50 years.

Can electrical circuits last 50 years?