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Comment by acherion | Hacker News Reader

Some old components will be, sure, but there are some chips that aren't manufactured anymore. There's no one blanket rule.

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I doubt it would be impossible to replace a Pentium 2 machine in most of the western world for at least the next 20 years.

I worked at a company that decided to do a new design because the chips for the old one had been out of production for decades and a solid percentage of what was still available on eBay was sitting in the warehouse to be scavenged for new production.

Pentium 2s aren't the only retro computers out there. There's many different computers, especially in the 1980s, that have components that are just simply not made anymore -- break one of those components, and you'll have a hard time repairing / replacing them.

That's true, but in many cases, it's not the integrated circuits (ICs) that fail, because they tend to be quite reliable. It's more often the capacitors, resistors, storage devices and power supply components that degrade over time. Capacitors, in particular, can fail due to heat, aging, or voltage surges, which can lead to failure in devices even if the ICs are still in good condition. Power sources can also fail due to wear on these exact components.

> It's more often the capacitors

And the electrolyte can and will start to leak and foul the ICs around them, if not by ruining the traces/pads, then they can also foul the legs and/or find their way into the chip package itself, so the ICs will fail as a secondary issue.

So better to turn it on sometimes, without power cycling so much, to keep the electrolyte fluids wet, to extend the equipment life. Let it rot and dry and it will.

That's not how it works.

Electrolytics which have not had voltage applied in a long time (decades) may need gradual reforming, but if they aren't hermetically sealed they will dry out no matter what --- and heat will accelerate that process.

I've seen enough electronics repair videos that it seems the default for troubleshooting absent other conspicuous damage is to start checking the electrolytic capacitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

There was a time when Gigabyte started selling more robust motherboards with quality capacitors that would last much longer. After seeing so many old motherboards dying from blown capacitors I was very happy to get one. Those motherboards so far held the full length of their meaningfull life until the CPU just got too slow to use for anything. Still try to look for that type of capacitors when I build new stuff for friends and family.

The Gigabyte line is called "Ultra Durable" and have solid capacitors instead of the electrolyte ones.

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