Discussion At what point should older PCs be retired?

[Gt403cyl]

Fair point. It's one hell of a purchase to upgrade the entire system altogether.

The machine was built in 1998, and part of the controls are sent from a PC in a profile and then manually fine tuned as it runs the job.

To update the machine to a new one could run up to $4M or about $1M used for a couple year old machine. Each machine has specialized proprietarty software and connections (cabling) so yeah basically they are stuck with the XP machine until they spend the big money again.

 

[whm1974]

I did some work for a friend who is a small business owner, and he has a classic PC, a Micron Millennia 2000 PC, running Win95 or maybe Win98.
He needed a new IDE DVD-RW (of which I had recently picked up a couple, somehow). So I was able to help him.

But I was honestly a little afraid to operate on a PC that old. I didn't dare tip the case over, because the HDD dust filter internally might have been full, and that might have spilled dust onto the platters and crashed the drive, eventually. (Learned about that issue from a sage old PC tech.)

He needed it for a piece of machinery for his small business. I told him he should upgrade, but his mega-$$$ software that goes with the PC and machinery, requires a dongle, which plugs into a port than many new motherboards and PCs don't have. (Some mobo makes are still making "CSM" boards, that support ser/par, you just need a breakout cable/bracket. Good to have, sometimes, when you need them.)

Speaking of DRM dongles, am I the only one who think such dongles should be outlawed?

 

[Gt403cyl]

I did some work for a friend who is a small business owner, and he has a classic PC, a Micron Millennia 2000 PC, running Win95 or maybe Win98.
He needed a new IDE DVD-RW (of which I had recently picked up a couple, somehow). So I was able to help him.

But I was honestly a little afraid to operate on a PC that old. I didn't dare tip the case over, because the HDD dust filter internally might have been full, and that might have spilled dust onto the platters and crashed the drive, eventually. (Learned about that issue from a sage old PC tech.)

He needed it for a piece of machinery for his small business. I told him he should upgrade, but his mega-$$$ software that goes with the PC and machinery, requires a dongle, which plugs into a port than many new motherboards and PCs don't have. (Some mobo makes are still making "CSM" boards, that support ser/par, you just need a breakout cable/bracket. Good to have, sometimes, when you need them.)

Definitely good to have things like that handy, fortunately my situation only requires a pci slot, but the software also restricts it to an XP based machine....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Speaking of DRM dongles, am I the only one who think such dongles should be outlawed?

Keeps "crackers" employed. BTW, didn't the Library of Congress, allow for a DMCA exception, to "patch" software that uses hardware dongles, to be allow to bypass the dongle, and transfer the software to a newer PC that way. (I guess, if you own a legal copy of that software of course.)

Edit: I might as well mention this while we're on the subject.

I'm actually NOT AGAINST "dongles". Done correctly.

For example, UnRAID licensing. They use a (generally, branded) flash drive, with serial and WWN info, that's hashed to give a GUID, which is then used for licensing, via a cryptographic process to generate the keyfile to place onto the flash drive, so that when the OS on the flash drive boots, it knows that it is licensed, and then cannot be transferred between flash drives, because of the UUID/GUID, etc. (They do have provisions to re-assign the license key to a different flash drive with a different UUID/GUID, if you give them the prior license key and e-mail you used to obtain it, and the new flash drive's UUID/GUID. Combined with phone-home, it would prevent one license key from "multiplying" on the internet, and effectively, it stops piracy, WITHOUT REQUIRING THE USER TO CONSTANTLY RE-BUY / RE-LICENSE the software, every time they upgrade or replace the PC.)

I really wish that Windows was licensed that way, in a manner in which the license could be effectively portable between PCs, rather than licensed "by the PC's motherboard and accompanying hardware".

It's really annoying, when your mobo goes, or it's time to upgrade, or whatnot, and you need to BUY A NEW KEY.

Hardware eventually fails, and it would be nice to be able to keep a "personal Windows installation" on a flash drive, that you could potentially carry in your pocket, and plug into any PC to use. (Yes, you can use a Linux boot USB, which CAN do that, and then use a Virtual Machine, with a Windows disk image, to effectively accomplish the same thing, but it's not completely the same, because there's a linux and VM layer there, which can interfere with hardware monitoring tools, and gaming.)

That's the beauty of it with UnRAID, if your server dies, move the HDDs and the USB boot / OS / licensing flash drive over, and bang!, you've got a working, licensed, machine again.

 

[Flayed]

I think the time to retire hardware is when you get fed up waiting for it, either to boot up or load applications or when the applications you use perform badly.

 

[C1]

If the system(s) work sufficiently to do what needs to get done then dont mess with it.

(Otherwise, keep fix'n t till it's broke.)

My daily work is on an old pentium M 1.73GHz XP and it's more than fine for what I have to do (graphs, charts, newsletters, finance, taxes, etc. plus includes lots network stuff too).

I'll keep using it till I cant. When something breaks (like the LCD CCFL burned out once) I just bought a factory rebuilt replacement LCD on eBay & replaced the screen myself

In the case of the OP, if one wants more performance, then IDE SSDs are available on NewEgg.

More than enough replcement and upgrade parts are available for old IDE/PCI machines such as USB port, SATA port, etc. PCI cards. There's even ISA stuff avalable.

I dont know what it is about people. They seem to want to have new hardware. (I think that it's the for status and competition.)

But for many stand alone cases/operations, it's the software that matters most.


https://www.quora.com/Why-did-NASA-...moon-given-that-we-are-sending-rovers-to-Mars

 

[JackMDS]

I have few Desktops, I do large variety of work related tasks (the only things I do not do is "Mining" and "Killing" on screen caricature figures).

So.. I always have one state of the Art Deskop computer (GPU is always whatever good is availble for around $200).

The oldest Desktop in use is i5 2500k with GTX 660.

Over 90% of what I do (and I do Engineering and Medical realted work) can be perfectly done with the ""old"" Sandy bridge CPU.

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Then again, that just raises the question of what to do with those refurbish once they finally crap out and die.

Recycle it!



P.S. I also do not buy every 9 months new Nike just because the color changed from "Retro" brown to "Frogie" green. --.