Advice on extending the life of classic PCs?

[Galahad]

For everyone who has an older PC set up for all your classic favorite DOS games -- do you have any advice or tips you could mention as to the proper care of your classic PC to extend its working life as long as possible (other than regular cleanings)?  The reason I ask is because unfortunately, I recently had one of my favorite older PCs die on me after 10 years of faithful service, since the motherboard finally went bad.  Luckily I do have several other classic gaming PCs, but I was hoping to get some advice to see how I can do to keep these guys running for the long haul. 

Some things I've been doing include keeping the PC I'm currently using powered and running 24x7, using a surge protector, and avoiding cold booting and unnecessarily turning the PC on and off whenever possible.

[Cloudschatze]

My main 486 was once owned by a local financial institution. It had been a desktop PC for three years, after which it became one of the special-use, "portable branch" systems, eventually making it to the auction block years later. Best $6.00 I've ever spent.

The case has numerous scratches and gouges, and has borne the weight of (at least) ten other stacked systems.

It's been rattled and shuffled around to who-knows-how-many special events.

Once, I tried to clean some permanent marker off of the front bezel with acetone (Don't ask - I have no idea why.), leaving a nice, melted spot.

I've removed the cover at least fifty times, and every boot is a cold one.

It's still going strong at 12+ years,

And it's still the best $6.00 I've ever spent.

I'm sure there's a moral here, somewhere.



As far as real advice is concerned, other than keeping the system pretty much dust-free, I wear an electrically grounded wrist strap when working with any electronics.

[MichalN]

I've never used special anti-ESD measures and I have yet to fry any electronics after 15 years of PC use. Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe ESD is not all that dangerous.

Galahad: I own a number of old PC (and non-PC) systems, some about 20 years old. The good news that electronics generally lasts very, very long. Now for some tips:

- The environment where you store your PC(s) is the most important factor. Dust is not nearly as bad as humidity and extreme temperatures. You can get dust out, but not rust.

- Do check your PC's insides every once in a while for battery leaks and the like. Some PCs have batteries that may leak, and the leak can cause lots more damage than just a dead battery.

- The mechanical parts are the ones most prone to failing. That includes fans and disk drives. The older a PC, the fewer fans it has, lowering the chance of failure. In my experience, the part most likely to fail is a hard disk, followed by a power supply. A CPU or memory chip OTOH is extremely unlikely to fail on its own. CRTs tend to wear out with age and will eventually fail as well.

- Some PCs used materials (plastics, esp. foams) that deteriorate with age. Plastic may become brittle and foam can disintegrate into sticky goo. Luckily, this rarely affects a PC's functionality.

- Do keep backups (disk images) of any floppies that came with your system. Pre-recorded floppy disks last very long (most 20-y.o. floppies I have are 100% error free), but if there is an error, it may be very hard to find a replacement.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of PCs become obsolete years if not decades before they stop working. Most of my old PCs I got for free because they were going to the scrap heap.

[Galahad]

Thanks to MichalN and Cloud for the helpful feedback and suggestions 

[glendower]

The hard drive will eventually fail... that's always bummer. You might want to keep a compatible hard drive around (I'm sure you could scrounge up a small HD for little money).

Use your main drive to make images of your DOS disks so you can re-create them at any time. You could even burn those images to a CD and keep it somewhere safe.

Get a more-than-you-need heatsink/fan for your CPU (something made for a socket A athlon, for example). Heat is always the enemy of the CPU and will take it's toll over the life of the processor.

Maybe you could even find a heat spreader for your RAM-- I'm sure that they don't make any for 30 or 72pin simms, but you could probably get some little heat sinks, some Arctic Silver epoxy and fix them on the individual chips.

Get a hard drive cooler.

Put an extra fan on the case.

I'm sure that your system will last a while w/out all of the extra cooling, but it will probably last longer with it

There is also a risk that capacitors will begin to fail on your board... not sure what you can do about that... get an extra 486 mother board and keep it around *just in case*.

Good lucks!

[Patrick Chang]

Why nobody mentioned Uninterruptible Power Supply?


PC

[jmg]

number one failing point with old MOBOs= caps.
HAven't seen this too often on old 486 boards, but on newer pentium, especially PIII boards, caps go after 8~10 years.
Nothing you can do to prevent it, but it's relatively easy to fix-- just find the same size cap from radio shack, get a desolder tool, yank it out, and solder the new one in.

[Zemus]

I replaced the HD in my old computer with a 2GB CompactFlash card. Less noisy and much easier to back up as well.

[Laust]

I have recently gone that route too (4GB CF card). No more messing with networking under DOS to transfer files and even though I'm not impressed by the transfer speed (it's a "133x" card, but performance is far far from that), it still feels faster than the harddrive because of the diminished seek times.

[Rhizome]

number one failing point with old MOBOs= caps.

What makes you say that? As far as I am aware, they don't suffer from the "capacitor syndrome" that modern computers have for a few years now.

[mace]

capacitors go bad after a while, there is no stopping it. The heat in PC's speeds that process.

If you're going to replace the caps, the best thing you can do is replace them with 105 degree types, and maybe low ESR, like the panasonic FC series. Those last a long time.

[jharris01]

The hard drive will eventually fail... that's always bummer. You might want to keep a compatible hard drive around (I'm sure you could scrounge up a small HD for little money).

Sorry to bring this topic back from the dead but I wanted to contribute:

SATA to IDE adapters: On ebay you will find SATA to IDE adapters (and the other way around) which can be useful if you want to use newer SATA drives on an older IDE-based PC. They cost about 4-5 buckazoids.

[ebondefender]

Here's my own personal list of ultimate DOS uber happiness:

1.) Never let your PC get struck by lightning. (This happened to mine twice.)  Thankfully there was no fire and I only lost two motherboards and three hard drives. And I didn't die! 

2.) Dust it out regularly. Dirt is your enemy.

3.) Keep it cool, dry, and ventilated.

4.) Never try to wear your PC as a hat. It's heavy and it hurts.

5.) Never use the FDISK command under Dos without reading the manual.

6.) Do not attempt to touch your tongue to the processor's heatsink.

7.) Never play for more than 59 hours straight. It's unhealthy. I personally have never done this. Really.

8.) Always, always choose Roland!

[BlueMax]

Don't smoke at your computer (or anywhere near it....  or anywhere EVER.)

In all seriousness, you think dust is bad?  Smokers' dust is yellow (instead of grey) and sticky like goo.  Nothing will gum up moving parts quicker (short of sabotage!)

Some folks here have done away with aging, dying hard drives by using compact flash cards instead.  I might like to try that someday...

Wow...  I remember Tandy offering 10MB internal hard drive for $1000 - now you can get 8GB on a tiny SD card for under $20. 

[ebondefender]

Some folks here have done away with aging, dying hard drives by using compact flash cards instead.  I might like to try that someday...

That never occurred to me! I could rig up a compact flash-to-IDE drive. 
Then again, I do have twin 40gb old Maxtors in my Dell Optiplex, a.k.a. "The beige behemoth of DOS-ly awesomeness." I think I'll try hooking it up to my RGB input on my 40" HDTV mwahahaha....

*mad scientist moment here*

[Shadow Lord]

number one failing point with old MOBOs= caps.

What makes you say that? As far as I am aware, they don't suffer from the "capacitor syndrome" that modern computers have for a few years now.

Or the PSU. I am currently trying to repair the PSU on a 486 system and one of the failed parts was a capacitor that had blown.

[endre1952]

I use a 4GB CF hard drive in both my 386 SX-40 and my Amiga 1200 computers. Noiseless in more than one way (you don't hear the hard drive activity in your Sound Blaster's output).

[endre1952]

By using a cheap CF-to-IDE adapter.

http://cgi.ebay.com/44-Pin-IDE-CF-Compact-Flash-Card-Adapter-Bootable-/390217663902?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5adac9059e

[sNaKe]

don't use CF cards with Windows, it's I/O will kill them in reasonable time

As far as real advice is concerned, other than keeping the system pretty much dust-free, I wear an electrically grounded wrist strap when working with any electronics.

ah you did work at IBM through the 70' and 80's, did you?

[xargos]

Or the PSU. I am currently trying to repair the PSU on a 486 system and one of the failed parts was a capacitor that had blown.

While all capacitors will eventually fail, capacitors in the PSU are more likely to go than the ones on the mainboard.  Especially in older systems they will likely be exposed to more heat than those on the mainboardas well as more strenuous use.

I've seen exploded caps in power supplies, but so far I haven't found them on mainboards that were not build with poor quality caps.