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Commodore C64 Survives Over 25 Years Balancing Drive Shafts In Auto Repair Shop (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: One common gripe in the twenty-first century is that nothing is built to last anymore. Even complex, expensive computers seem to have a relatively short shelf-life nowadays. However, one computer in a small auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland has survived for the last twenty-five years against all odds. The computer in question here is a Commodore C64 that has been balancing driveshafts non-stop for a quarter of a century. The C64C looks like it would fit right in with a scene from Fallout 4 and has even survived a nasty flood. This Commodore 64 contains a few homemade aspects, however. The old computer uses a sinusoidal waveform generator and piezo vibration sensor in order to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain or force by converting them to an electrical charge. The C64C interprets these signals to help balance the driveshafts in vehicles. The Commodore 64 (also known as the C64, C-64, C= 64) was released in January 1982 and still holds the title for being the best-selling computer of all time.
It is exactly what we should expect from solid state components. Demand no less!
...when things were built to last. I tried my C64 about two months ago, which had been collecting dust on a bin for over 20 years and it worked just like the day my parents got it for me. Including the datasette and 1541 disk drive.
It's not the solid-state components that I'm worried about. It's the capacitors in the power supply, and the mechanism in the floppy drive. Either this machine has regular maintenance (and several spare power supplies on hand), or it has an amulet of +20 Luck.
The 1541 floppies were definitely not as sensitive as later 3 1/2 floppies (which got corrupted if you looked at them funny), but they weren't invincible, dust and fingerprints could still cause problems.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
youth like it's a museum piece? Please?
I still have the pinch I used to make these floppies double sided cutting the notch on the side. When I explained my daughters what this was for, they looked at me like if I just explained them how I squashed rocks to make fire...
Most electrical strain comes from power-on.
If the unit runs 24/7 (which there is little to no reason to think this system could not do), and the program read from the disk stays in memory the entire time (because the system is never turned off), then the mechanical parts in the drive wont wear down because they are only used when the program is initially loaded, and the capacitors in the PSU dont have much stress on them, because they dont get power cycled all the time.
Hell, i've recently explained the concept of "dial up" to a millennial. Got the exact same reaction in response.
I highly doubt C64 is the best-selling computer of all time. Wikipedia estimates 10M-17M C64s were sold. It of course depends on what is a computer: for example, many smartphones have CPU(s), memory, storage, and even display. According to this page, in 2011 Apple sold 72M iPhones: https://www.statista.com/stati... . Also, 10M Raspberry Pi computers were sold till 2016: https://www.raspberrypi.org/bl.... I guess Arduinos have similar numbers, but they are hard to track because of clones.
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
That likely wasn't soot from exhaust, it was brake dust. Automotive exhaust unless it's diesel has a very low soot footprint, you're talking 20 PPM or less in counts even back in the 90's. I was an apprentice in the 90's when the switch over from non-metallic aka full asbestos to semi-metallic happened. And you'd find that shit everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The vic20 we used for alignments was full of it, it would get into tool cabinets, into air lines if they'd been hug for a while, it would even clog your compressor air-intake. Exhaust was almost always vented outside(or with the doors opens) since you have a CO hazard in enclosed spaces.
Until the real dangers of asbestos were known, simply knocking the brakes loose was the standard practice even into the late 90's. Meaning when you broke them loose you were kicking asbestos and other particulate into the air, and of course breathing it in. Then we started spraying down the drums and rotors to mitigate the dust problem. I go for chest x-rays every 3-4 years to check for mesothelioma and for good reasons.
Om, nomnomnom...
Communism produces a more ingenious, crafty workforce that can think outside the box, simply due to necessity because of shortages in materials and spare parts. People who could keep your plastic car running with shoestring and rubber band (provided that's available, if not, substitute) were highly sought after and could actually make a comfortable living for communist conditions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That works/worked* in the car industry where a car that's twenty five years old isn't typically much less advanced than one twenty years old. But in our industry?
Commodore's problem was more that they took an age to substantially improve the Amiga and make those improvements available. The A500 was more or less an A1000 in a keyboard case and was still being sold as one of TWO Amiga models five years later. And the A2000, the other model, wasn't more powerful than the A1000 (or A500), it was just more expandable. In the same year they finally relented and released the A3000, a 32 bit Amiga, but priced it way out of consideration for most people.
None of this was the engineers' fault it should be pointed out. While it took a while to come up with a better base chipset to replace OCS/ECS, the engineers were still belting out some fantastic designs, most of which were squished by upper management. Commodore Management's response to the increasing obsolescence of their low end model wasn't to replace it with something better, it was to replace it, at the same price, with the A600, a machine that was worse in almost every respect (well, it did have an IDE interface...), and which had been designed as a replacement for the Commodore 64.
Had the A3000 replaced the A2000 in 1990, with a similar upgrade given to the A500, I think Commodore might have stood a chance.
* OK, there's a reason I put 20 years there and "worked" - the car industry is genuinely going through a development phase which is nice to see.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You've never heard of isopropol alcohol?
No, and neither have you. Isopropyl alcohol on the other hand...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The worst part is you couldn't program C++ on the C65.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Is the quality of the balancing compared to the modern equivalent device shops use. Is it still accurate after 25 years? Was it ever accurate or as accurate as a modern device can calculate?
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!