The longest you've ever used a single system?

[Topcat]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I have SP3 images for XP Pro (both Dell SLIC (OEM) and "Royal" for pre-SP2 COA stickers) on my server. If you want copies, let me know. Pretty much never use them any more...

I'd take one just to have it.

[ratdude747]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I'd take one just to have it.

I'll work it out with you then. The "Royal" image also has 3Ware drivers (up to the 9650?) slipped as well (and maybe a fakeraid driver too?) since back then, that's what I was using them with (9500 and 9550 cards in particular) and futzing with flash drives got old.

[bigbeark]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

My wife's last Desktop was an MDG (Clone) with an Intel 775 P4 motherboard and a very slow Celeron FSB400 one-core CPU. This was bought in 2005 I think. It was in use til about 2013, when she got a Dell Laptop. I still have the case which has a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 Sticker on it.

I took the Intel motherboard out and put into an old black metal mini-tower Dell case which had a Socket 478 Dell motherboard that had died. I added the fastest socket 775 P4HT CPU I could find. This board would not take Core2. I gave this machine, keyboard and Monitor to a friend whose mom needed a computer. Last time I heard it was still working.

I'm using the MDG case with a CORE 2 8400 on an Intel DG33FB motherboard right now!

[SluggerB]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I'm typing this from my main PC which is a 2009 Athlon/AMD770 build.

It's kinda the PC of Theseus by now with a only the motherboard, Case, and CPU cooler surviving from the original build. But it does everything I need it to just fine.

[TechGeek]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Figured I'd kick in a few other systems here.

Every one of my primary Tech Room systems (except for my APCUPSD server) have been in continuous service since December 2017. The APCUPSD server went out of service in September of 2018 and was out of service between then and June 2020 because I didn't have a UPS to attach to that system.

The firewall system is really showing it's age at this point. It's an excellent little machine for what it is (Advantech UNO-3072LA w/ Intel Atom N270), but it's time is running out as more and more Linux distributions kill off x86 support. And given that the i486 architecture is on the chopping block, chances are, i586 is likely not far behind. Either way, it's slated for replacement sometime this year. It was previously used in a hospital lab from 2009 through 2017 when I got it.

The Main Office Computer sports an AMD FX-series CPU and is beginning to show it's age. But an upgrade to 8GB of DDR3 will certainly keep it going a few more years, especially considering it has a 64-bit CPU. But when time gets ahold of it on 8GB DDR3, that will mark the end of that system's service life.

My main computer is also just starting to show it's age, especially with the CPU. It's still got a few years of service life left in it for me, and even past then, it would make a good workstation/gaming/video editing system for someone else who's just starting off.

Some updates to the above systems:
Advantech UNO-3072LA: Permanently retired. See HERE for that thread.
Main Office Computer: Retired. Replaced with another AMD-based HP system from 2012-ish. Bumped the RAM to 8GB and swapped the HDD from the old system over and it's much faster now.
Main Computer: CPU OC'd to 4.6GHz.

[Phaihn]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

My current system i have been running since 2014.

So far i think my i7 system is almost as old as my pentium 4 was. That had since 2004 used till around 2010.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Do we count "new to me" systems? I'm still running S775 machines 24/7.

Had a 64-bit P4 owned from new in lineup semi kept up to date though not powered up all the time up until earlier this year where I disassembled it.

Still have a 32-bit P4 and Athlon XP set up in cases, complete and ready for use, but is not in the active lineup. The P4 is stable but the Athlon is not.

My slowest machine still in service: Yes I'm still using a 32-bit Atom N270 netbook and its software is still being kept up to date, still running Firefox. Running Linux on it, and as expected, it's really sluggish, though it still works for what I need it to do. Thank goodness there are still websites that haven't gone loco with javascript.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

more and more Linux distributions kill off x86 support. And given that the i486 architecture is on the chopping block, chances are, i586 is likely not far behind.

X86, per-se, isn't a dead architecture, because AMD introduced X86-64 and Intel introduced EMT 64. But, of course, the original X86 arch, will get killed off, most notably i386, i486 and i586. Heck I think i686 is getting killed off too in the Linux distro world. Yes, soon, we'll only have X86-64 and EMT 64. (Intel's X86 with 64-bit capability)

[brethin]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I still run a 8088 system I use it now and then for really old hardware testing isa cards.

[Uranium-235]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

You didn't specify architecture. My Galaxy S5

[momaka]

The longest you've ever used a single system: my Dell Optiplex 170L

Yes, I'm doing a silly thread revival. Sorry!
But!
.
.
Happy belated 10th anniversary to my Dell Optiplex 170L!
I thought its "birthday" is today, January 20... but I was looking at the wrong file. Looking at the boot.ini ...


... I'm 10 days behind. It's January 10th - this is when I installed Windows XP SP2. So it's been 10 years since I started using this as a main PC back in 2013, just when I had moved to a new university. The system itself, of course, is much older - circa 2005, I believe (being a "late" model socket 478 Pentium 4 with HT.) And in 2 years, the hardware will be 20 years old! Aside from a few minor hickups noted in my previous post in this thread (here), this machine has been flawless and unstoppable.

The OS itself (Windows XP SP2) already is over 20 years old. Considering I can still get on the internet with this thing and do most household admin stuff just fine... it's crazy! Granted this is all thanks to people who made updated browsers for Windows XP. I'm currently running an older version of Mypal. At some point a few years back, I thought I would have to retire it. This is no longer in the plans... at least for now. And even if I do "retire" it, it will still sit connected as a "spare" / secondary PC next to whatever I deem to replace it as a main rig. But so far, I haven't found any hardware in my hoard that ticks all of the boxes that this thing does.

With that said, I won't be able to run it as a main PC forever, at least not as-is. In fact, hard drive space is already becoming a really big concern here:


^ Yes, I have approximately 1% of free space left or less. And most of the data on this HDD is just more or less "essentials" that I use frequently - namely documents, pictures, music, datasheets, manuals, some drivers for older stuff, and a few "classic" movies. My music and pictures library are the largest space consumers by far, though... followed by the classic movies. On that note, I've been thinking I might have to delete one or two of the classic movies to buy me some more time with this HDD. I could also clone and update the HDD to something bigger... and I might just do that, now that this HDD has done 10 years. But IDK, on the other hand I kind of also want to see how long this PC will go for. As mentioned previously, I don't have any data from the HDD's SMART attributes, so I don't know how many hours it has done. Seems like SMART is either locked or corrupt (always was, though - since I found it from day 1.) Funny enough, Event Viewer in Windows has also been reporting warnings with "Bad Blocks" since day 1, too.

... so I'm not very worried.

Anyways, perhaps I still should do some hardware upgrades on this PC as a 10th "birthday gift". I was actually planning to do that last week, but got caught up in other stuff. Would be interesting to see how far / much longer I can push this machine.

[diif]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I installed Win 7 on this PC in Jun 2012.

[Topcat]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

This one is still in use; infact this post created from it:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8901

Built in 2010....It was mothballed for a little while...but still active, so in February it will be 13 years. It began with XP64. It's currently running Server 2016 standard until that goes EOL or the system dies; whichever comes first....but I'll lay odds the OS goes EOL before this freight train dies.

Then there's still this one, still cranking along since 2012.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19940

[TechGeek]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Main workstation system at home is certainly the longest-running system in my fleet. It's seen a few upgrades since my last posting about it. Bumped the RAM up to 32GB (max that the motherboard supports), upgraded the heatsink fans to Noctua iPPC-3000s, added a 2nd GPU (GTX970 SC 4GB, video rendering only, no displays attached), and added an SSD for /home. The HDD that it replaced was starting to show some trouble signs, so I relegated it to being just for Steam games.

As of right now, it's still rolling with no end in sight, and I'll keep running it until it either suffers a major hardware failure or I rebuild it.

Also, my old main laptop, the Asus Q550LF, developed quite a few problems, most of which hinted at an upcoming chipset failure. It got retired from service and stripped for parts, and now my Dell Latitude E6520 got a fresh lease on life. The SSD from the Asus got carried over, as well as the RAM and wireless card, it got a new 96Wh battery, a backlit keyboard, as well as a 1080p display with mic and webcam.

Also, my dad's desktop has been running nearly unchanged since 2010 or so, so that's the longest-running box in the whole house.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system: my Dell Optiplex 170L

Looking at the boot.ini

unfortunately, i cant do that on my systems because i edit the boot.ini file regularly to change the default os to boot because its a dual boot os system.

im also a pc computer nomad meaning i change to a different system every few weeks or months depending on a whim on what i want to do. sometimes a p4 system, sumtimes another p4 system, an athlon 64, another a64, a core 2 duo or quad etc. i dont have a fixed main system.

hard drive space is already becoming a really big concern here

fwah! how u still survive on an 80gb hard drive i have no idea! that board support 48bit lba or not? time to get a 500gb ide drive and forget about it and ever needing to upgrade your hard drive ever again!

Seems like SMART is either locked or corrupt

smart could have been disabled in the bios hence why it dont work. or the smart chip could have just been focked.

Event Viewer in Windows has also been reporting warnings with "Bad Blocks" since day 1, too.

windows has trouble reading and writing to the sectors on the drive. better be careful as this can result in loss of valuable data! im surprised u're still using a wonky drive on your main rig as a main drive. dont u run a hard drive checking utility regularly? to do a surface scan verify or a read scan of the sectors to ensure everything is in working order?

[nobbnobb1]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

What an interesting thread. My home server is the oldest machine I've ever had, and now that it's nearing 13 years....I'm starting to wondering if maybe I should start proactively planning for a replacement. The hard drives have about 90,000 hours on them but have no signs of failure.

It's an AMD LE-1250 machine with an Antec EarthWatts EA380 and some 1TB WD Green drives. It's super cool running and nothing gets hot in there, probably contributing to it's long life. It started off running Windows Home Server, and now it's running Windows 10 with Storage Spaces for drive pooling. Not the fastest, but I've been lazy to upgrade and it does everything I need it to. Probably when Windows 10 ceases to be supported I will finally have to upgrade because it can't run anything more than that.

I did a quick inspection last year and there was only one bulging cap I noticed on the motherboard of which I replaced. Power supply caps all looked good. What I didn't like was they used that infamous yellow glue in the power supply, but to my surprise none of it had turned color, likely due to the fact that this PSU runs super cool.

[momaka]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system: my Dell Optiplex 170L

What an interesting thread. My home server is the oldest machine I've ever had, and now that it's nearing 13 years....I'm starting to wondering if maybe I should start proactively planning for a replacement. The hard drives have about 90,000 hours on them but have no signs of failure.

Wow nice, that's quite a bit of hours.
I only have one HDD with almost 100,000 hours, and that's an old Hitachi IDE (but not from the failure-prone era.)

It's an AMD LE-1250 machine with an Antec EarthWatts EA380 and some 1TB WD Green drives. It's super cool running and nothing gets hot in there, probably contributing to it's long life.

Haha, who would have though that combo would work so well. That's so good to hear!
Normally WD Green drives aren't known for their reliability, especially 24/7 operation, where they stack a ton of head retract cycles.
The EA380 is another surprise contestant. Many threads about them on here with bad caps. Typically the 3300 uF OST RLX on the 12V rail goes bad. But you're probably right that the cool-running nature (and likely also low-power usage) of the AMD LE-1250 has allowed it to not have its caps fail yet.

What I didn't like was they used that infamous yellow glue in the power supply, but to my surprise none of it had turned color, likely due to the fact that this PSU runs super cool.

Yup, that'd do it. Otherwise, with high heat output, that glue goes crispy and conductive in no time.

unfortunately, i cant do that on my systems because i edit the boot.ini file regularly to change the default os to boot because its a dual boot os system.

Heh, I always thought about doing a dual-boot PC just to try it... but never bothered due to having so much junk hardware that I don't really needed to.

im also a pc computer nomad meaning i change to a different system every few weeks or months depending on a whim on what i want to do. sometimes a p4 system, sumtimes another p4 system, an athlon 64, another a64, a core 2 duo or quad etc. i dont have a fixed main system.

Well I have 3 main systems, technically. Actually 4, if I have to be precise.
#1 is the Dell Optiplex mentioned above, which I use for most any general tasks, music, and pictures. But it's too old to do Youtube and some other more heavy online stuff. This is where I have a "helper" system... so system #2 - something powerful enough just for that task (mostly YT watching and finding new music, really.) With this one (#2), I'm kind of a "PC nomad" like you - I switch it out based on what I want it to do, the time of the year (weather/temperature-related, i.e. do I need more or less heat in my computer room), or just plain straight when it croaks (like my nVidia GeForce 6100 -based ECS MCP61PM-AM did recently.) #3 is my main "gaming rig"... and that too is switch out every once in a while. Lately, it's been a Precision T-7500 workstation/behemoth rather than the Optiplex 790 I have posted about in the "Post Your System" thread. And #4 is typically just a mirror of #1, but in laptop form. Up until 2018, that was a Dell Latitude C500/600 old Pentium 3 laptop. Its HDD went corrupt in 2018, so that's when I decided to retire it. Otherwise, I could have kept going with it as system #4... even though it was getting to be a major PITA to do anything with it online. Luckily, I got an nVidia-less Pavilion dv6000 that's proven to be pretty nice so far and a good replacement for the C500/600. I still have the C500/600 laptop, but I now use it more as a general workbench PC, particularly for testing audio gear or looking up datasheets.

fwah! how u still survive on an 80gb hard drive i have no idea! that board support 48bit lba or not? time to get a 500gb ide drive and forget about it and ever needing to upgrade your hard drive ever again!

Don't ask.
Then again, I've always self-tortured myself with small HDDs, I don't know why.
No, I'm not surviving purely on that 80 GB HDD, LOL. -Not by a long shot. I have several portable 2.5" HDDs and also several 2.5" "random" drives (with a USB adapter) that I use for storing big stuff, like movies, game ISOs, and a backup of my music/pictures collection. So the 80 GB in that Dell is only tasked with holding the most frequently used / needed stuff... and 80 GB is not enough for that anymore. On the plus side, having a smaller HDD is nice, because I have to keep it tidy (well, somewhat ) and know where mostly everything is. With big HDDs, people just tend to throw junk on there and forget it. I can't afford to do that here.
And yes, you're right, that motherboard does support 48-bit LBA. In fact, it even has two SATA (I) ports, so I can easily go to a larger SATA HDD. But on the other hand, I want to keep that PC original... well as original as I set it up back in 2013. The true original HDD was only a 40 GB WD. No way I can go with that little space anymore!
So I might go the SATA route at some point. The only thing that stops me is the fact that the PSU has only molex plugs, and I don't want to add cheap molex-to-sata adapters, some of which have been known to burn up / catch on fire (was a thread on BCN somewhere.) This means the best I can do is a 120 GB Western Digital SATA HDD that has both SATA and standard molex power (selectable with a jumper.) Well, either that or use a 250 GB IDE (I only have 2 of these.)

smart could have been disabled in the bios hence why it dont work. or the smart chip could have just been focked.

Smart is enabled in BIOS. Like I said, I tried that HDD in a few other PCs, and they cannot read its SMART either. So either SMART is disabled on the drive somehow, or the area that holds the data is gonzo.

windows has trouble reading and writing to the sectors on the drive. better be careful as this can result in loss of valuable data! im surprised u're still using a wonky drive on your main rig as a main drive.

It's been doing it since day 1 of the installation when I checked the logs in Event Viewer. Not that this should inspire too much confidence. But if it hasn't failed in 10 years yet, I suppose it's not doing too badly. (famous last words before HDD failure? )

Well, the registry did get corrupt once. But luckily I didn't disable System Restore on this PC (one of the very few times I do this), so I just selected "Last Known Good Configuration" and all was good. Another time, Windows complained about something to do with a corrupt hardware profile... but again, I just told it to use last good settings and all was well.

At this point, I'm just milking it to see how much longer I can get.

dont u run a hard drive checking utility regularly? to do a surface scan verify or a read scan of the sectors to ensure everything is in working order?

NOPE.
I have several HDDs that won't even pass the first sector if I do a quick surface scan... yet I've been using them for almost as long... though granted not in anything close to a main PC and not very frequently. One of them is a Seagate with several thousand bad sectors I think I have its SMART posted in a thread around here somewhere too.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Yep I still am using a 2T disk with a ton of bad sectors. It's encrypted so if it fails I can jettison it without batting an eye.

 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct  0x0033  148  148  140  Pre-fail Always    -    409
 9 Power_On_Hours     0x0032  027  027  000  Old_age  Always    -    53693
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032  001  001  000  Old_age  Always    -    365
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032  200  200  000  Old_age  Always    -    162
198 Offline_Uncorrectable  0x0030  200  200  000  Old_age  Offline   -    15

Not a healthy disk! Alas I did not get this disk new, but it shouldn't have failed like this.

My 2TB WD Green that I'm using in my PVR is going on in the years...

 9 Power_On_Hours     0x0032  001  001  000  Old_age  Always    -    85892
193 Load_Cycle_Count    0x0032  001  001  000  Old_age  Always    -    628765
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032  200  200  000  Old_age  Always    -    0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032  200  200  000  Old_age  Always    -    1

Again I disabled head unloading way too late, but at least it's still alive...

I thought my 120G disks I had a lot of hours on (70K POH) when I took them out of service, but this WD Green has exceeded them finally. Incidentally, the 120G disks are once again back together in array...

[nobbnobb1]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system: my Dell Optiplex 170L

Haha, who would have though that combo would work so well. That's so good to hear!
Normally WD Green drives aren't known for their reliability, especially 24/7 operation, where they stack a ton of head retract cycles.
The EA380 is another surprise contestant. Many threads about them on here with bad caps. Typically the 3300 uF OST RLX on the 12V rail goes bad. But you're probably right that the cool-running nature (and likely also low-power usage) of the AMD LE-1250 has allowed it to not have its caps fail yet.

I'm equally surprised because at first I was also concerned about the head retracts. I have the WD Greens to spin down aggressively for power savings and per SMART, they've racked up over 300k load/unload cycles. Not a single issue for so many years.

I also forgot to mention, the main OS drive is an 80GB Seagate EE25 Extreme Environment drive. It's basically a ruggedized unit designed for extreme 24/7 environments. 60k hours on it so far, but what's even more surprising is that this drive is even more aggressive (audibly) with the head retracts. I don't know if I trust the SMART attributes, but it's reporting over 4.6M (yes million!) head retract cycles. That can't be right??

Regarding the EA380, I too was concerned after reading about all the horror stories. I do try to go in there and inspect once in a while, it quite literally looks like new. Zero discoloring of the yellow glue. I measured the system and it draws <60W which is 15% of the full capacity. The fan runs super slow and you can't feel any heat coming from the back. I'm sure if this power supply ran closer to full load all the time, it probably wouldn't have lasted this long.

[jiroy]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

It should be XP for me , or even 95a , 95b , 95c , or 98 , but case strange , it's windows 10 !! .. When I've got my Asus ROG , I was worried about all the things in my previously main device , a Toshiba Icore 3 , so I said to myself , why not swap the hard drive and see if it can boot an Nvidia system !! . Chances are usually dependent on many factors , and yet , w10 booted and after some restarts and updates , it works smoothly .

Just to note , it's not the first swap for this system specifically .. It was also swapped from an older laptop , another Toshiba if I remember well , lol .
The only bad side , I feel now that the hard drive is deteriorating .. Not the so expected reflexes from a 16GB memory system , but it's okay as performance .
One more thing , all programs (86 app.) are working fine , except the Adobe photoshop 2016 .. Strangely , it freezes occasionally , and I thought it sensed the difference in VGAs affordable extensions , but I think another clean install when time's available should do fine .

Finally , I should make a full disk copy soon , just in case .