[wplug] OT: Down Memory Lane

Diana A. Clarion dclarion at fnordnet.net
Sun Oct 16 13:17:39 EDT 2005


#1:  Oh, indeed!

I will, however, make a case for #2, as well.

Even years ago, you could spend a very few dollars for absolute crap.  I can
remember a cheap sound card I purchased from JDR about five years ago which
barely ran, and then only on one WinCrap 95 system.  Then, too, were sone
pre-built systems purchased in 1997.  *Very* touchy, those.  One *had* to have
the memory sticks installed in a specific order; if you switched them in their
slots, the box sat and looked at you funny (I have *no* idea why.  The sticks
were identical).

Then, too, there might be #3:  Higher operating temperatures.  You can run a
486 fanless, with proper heatsinking.  I have a feeling that I'm going to need
a flask of liquid nitrogen for the next machine I build.  Hell, I can *watch*
the chip temperature rise when building gcc or glibc.  The other cards on the
board are the same way...

DAC

On Sat, Oct 15, 2005 at 08:23:14AM -0400, Christopher DeMarco wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2005 at 06:35:49AM -0400, Zach wrote:
> 
> > Why is it that stuff built 20-25 years ago is still running fine
> > without maintenance and with all original parts yet so often we see
> > a new PC system or component (video card, mobo) die within a few
> > years or even months from purchase date!? Maybe we really are buying
> > more for less. We get more processing, graphics, etc.. but their
> > lifetime is less perhaps.
> 
> 1.  The stuff you get today has WAAAAAY more components than does Ye
> Olde Stuffe, hence more more tickets in the MTBF lotto.
> 
> 2.  It's possible that the huge market growth has brought with it
> shoddy goods - whereas twenty years ago a mfg of crap might have been
> too obvious to survive, perhaps today the pool is big enough to
> obscure (or the mass-market ignorant enough to not identify)
> poor-quality goods.
> 
> My money's riding on #1, though.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Christopher DeMarco <cmd at alephant.net>
> Alephant Systems (http://alephant.net)
> PGP public key at http://pgp.alephant.net
> +1-412-708-9660



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-- 
Diana A. Clarion, Goddess of the Network
http://www.fnordnet.net/~dclarion



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