As others have already pointed out, there are many problems inherent with trying to preserve electronics in a working condition for such a long period of time. All of the components (down to the smallest level) would have to have been designed and manufactured for long-term stability, as would the data storage media holding the BIOS, operating system, apps, and user data. If this prerequisite is not met, it'd simply be a crap shoot as to whether any of it would work after 50 years sitting idle, no matter how you chose to store it. Doubly so, since the systems in question are hardly in fresh-from-the-factory pristine condition to begin with.
Besides, I fear that the methods of preparation and storage that would be needed to give the system a real chance of booting up, would be beyond the means of a small school project like this. You'd have to back up not only the OS and data disks, but the BIOS EEPROM and *every* other ROM or ROMlike chip in the system, including those on video/soundcards, hard/floppy/CD/DVD drive circuit boards, the display controllers in the the monitor, etc.... and back it up multiple times to media that has a chance of surviving for decades (I'm talking factory-stamped CD/DVD-ROMS, not user-writable discs).
Then you'd have to make sure those media are stored in archivial fashion: properly packaged and stored under carefully-controlled conditions of temperature and humidity in a dust-free, pollutant-free environment, perhaps even going so far as to seal them in an inert gas. And you'd have to do the same to the computer hardware, preferably NOT in the same physical location or container, as the electronics could degrade and affect the data storage media.
It would be far easier to merely preserve the hardware and storage media as inert objects for museum display, with no expectations of keeping them in working order. And even then, you'd have to be prepared to deal with toxic by-products leaking out of the electronics over time.
Either way, this would be a project better suited for a major university or privately-funded museum than for a small school. If you really want to press forward with it, I'd suggest contacting one of the larger museum institutions for suggestions and/ or assistance.
I base this on absolutely nothing, but my primary suspect is the cheapskate power supplies that these devices come with. However I've never cared enough to test it out.
I think you're right. This seems to be especially common on D-Link routers. I used to run a DI-624 which was stable for years, until one day it just started rebooting itself. Did it infrequently at first, but progressed to the point where it rebooted continuously and was unuseable. Poking around, I discovered that the AC adapter (power brick) was not only VERY warm, the plastic shell was actually deformed a little on one side. I replaced the AC adapter, and the router worked good as new... until a few years later, when AGAIN it started rebooting, then stopped working entirely. And AGAIN, the AC adapter was at fault (totally dead this time). And again, replacing the AC adapter resurrected the DI-624.
It seems to me that the manufacturers of residential-class routers really skimp on the power supply, or at least D-Link does. The AC adapters they've bundled in recent years are smaller than a deck of cards, yet I'm supposed to believe that they can put out 3 amps of current at 5VDC indefinitely?
You think Kinoki foot pads are a scam? Well, I've got one that may just top that.
In magazines I've bought off the newsstands, I've seen an ad for a company purporting to have a machine that makes some kind of "enhanced" water, which supposedly has all kinds of miraculous health benefits. They have testimonials from people whose arthritic fingers were freed up, cancers beaten down, and the like. Now, the machine supposedly works by rapidly heating and cooling ordinary water, with the end result being that the angle of the hydrogen bonds is changed to 114 degrees (the natural angle is 104.4). The enhanced water is supposed to somehow be easier for the body to use in fighting disease. They even claim that adding a few drops to whatever else you drink can have healthful benefits.
Now, the ad doesn't come right out and say what this water processor costs, they instead urge you to write for more information. But, they WILL sell you a bottle of the enhanced health water, in a champaigne-style bottle no less, for something like $30 a pop.
As absurd as these claims might be, the REALLY sad thing about this is that the magazines they advertise in are SCIENCE-oriented... Science Illustrated, Popular Science, Discover, and others...
By the way, from what I've read, the machine is little more than a glorified distiller, and the pseudo-science claims of the company have been thoroughly debunked. (One such debunking: http://www.chem1.com/CQ/johnellisbunk.html.)
Can you even buy disc based DVRs in the US anymore? I was visiting the in-laws at christmas and thought I'd pick up a cheap DVR in the US (given the the US$ is so weak compared to the Canadian at the moment) and could not find one anywhere. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, some local Albuquerque shop - nothing and the same on their websites.
I just saw one at Walmart the other day. Think it was a Philips. I believe it had a 160-GB hard disk, as well as a SDTV digital tuner.
I think we've reached the point where for the majority of users there really is no point in getting a faster machine - back in the 486 era practically *everyone* would benefit from the fastest machine they could get, but now we have far more CPU power and memory than most people are going to need for quite a long time.
I think you're forgetting one important application, namely, games. Anyone who has an interest in using their PC for gaming (beyond basic stuff like Solitaire and Tetris) absolutely NEEDS the most powerful PC they can afford. The latest games incorporate more and more eye candy, and if you want them to look even remotely like what's pictured on the box (without turning down the graphics settings), you'd better have some serious horsepower under the hood.
Let's not forget all the media processing that home PCs get to do nowadays, either. Especially editing home movies... rendering a video file in a reasonable amount of time takes a pretty good CPU and lots of memory...
This is not true for digital images. They have the potential to last forever. As long as we have computers and networks we will always have the potential to view that image. That digital image has the potential to be as good 10 years, 100 years, even a billion years from now. Yeah, I know dvd degrade, harddrives go bad, and file formats will change. That maybe but physical digital media can be backed up and file formats can be converted. Film images can't. Once that image fades front the negative its gone.
The problem with digital images, though, is that while it may be possible to transfer images from older formats or media to newer ones, all too often, it never gets done. Transfer and conversion are only possible when the hardware for READING the old format is still available, and at the same time, the new format must be widely available. What's more, there must exist software capable of both reading the old format and writing to the new. And to top it all off, the people who are in a position to make the conversion have to actually do it, and not "put it off until later".
There are many, many examples of cases where people or organizations have had much difficulty converting their older data because they did not realize they had to until it was almost too late! And we're not just talking about photos, but all kinds of digital data. A company may realize it needs historical spreadsheet data from its early years... but it's been stored in VisiCALC files, on eight-inch floppies formatted with CP/M, and stashed in some forgotten file drawer in a closet for 25 years. Or you, personally, may realize 40 years from now that there's a digital photo of your parents you'd love to show to your grandkids... except it's stored on a CD-R, but the world has moved on to holographic storage cards or some other exotic media, you never got around to transferring it to newer formats over the years, and you can't find a working CD-ROM drive to save your soul...
At least with printed photos, the only equipment needed to view them is the Mark I Human Eyeball(TM). They may deteriorate over the years, but careful selection of ink and paper, along with proper storage techniques, will prolong their lifespan. And most day-to-day snapshots are really only relevant to the generation that snapped them, and maybe one or two generations down the line. Now, there may be some that would be relevant to our descendants, say, 200 years from now, mainly images that happen to be of people or events with generalized historical significance... a company's founder, a major landmark, a world-changing event... but for most of those, there will be people who care enough to make preserving them a priority, whether they are digital or printed. The rest of us often find it hard to maintain our family photos with such diligence....
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As others have already pointed out, there are many problems inherent with trying to preserve electronics in a working condition for such a long period of time. All of the components (down to the smallest level) would have to have been designed and manufactured for long-term stability, as would the data storage media holding the BIOS, operating system, apps, and user data. If this prerequisite is not met, it'd simply be a crap shoot as to whether any of it would work after 50 years sitting idle, no matter how you chose to store it. Doubly so, since the systems in question are hardly in fresh-from-the-factory pristine condition to begin with.
Besides, I fear that the methods of preparation and storage that would be needed to give the system a real chance of booting up, would be beyond the means of a small school project like this. You'd have to back up not only the OS and data disks, but the BIOS EEPROM and *every* other ROM or ROMlike chip in the system, including those on video/soundcards, hard/floppy/CD/DVD drive circuit boards, the display controllers in the the monitor, etc. ... and back it up multiple times to media that has a chance of surviving for decades (I'm talking factory-stamped CD/DVD-ROMS, not user-writable discs).
Then you'd have to make sure those media are stored in archivial fashion: properly packaged and stored under carefully-controlled conditions of temperature and humidity in a dust-free, pollutant-free environment, perhaps even going so far as to seal them in an inert gas. And you'd have to do the same to the computer hardware, preferably NOT in the same physical location or container, as the electronics could degrade and affect the data storage media.
It would be far easier to merely preserve the hardware and storage media as inert objects for museum display, with no expectations of keeping them in working order. And even then, you'd have to be prepared to deal with toxic by-products leaking out of the electronics over time.
Either way, this would be a project better suited for a major university or privately-funded museum than for a small school. If you really want to press forward with it, I'd suggest contacting one of the larger museum institutions for suggestions and/ or assistance.
I think you're right. This seems to be especially common on D-Link routers. I used to run a DI-624 which was stable for years, until one day it just started rebooting itself. Did it infrequently at first, but progressed to the point where it rebooted continuously and was unuseable. Poking around, I discovered that the AC adapter (power brick) was not only VERY warm, the plastic shell was actually deformed a little on one side. I replaced the AC adapter, and the router worked good as new... until a few years later, when AGAIN it started rebooting, then stopped working entirely. And AGAIN, the AC adapter was at fault (totally dead this time). And again, replacing the AC adapter resurrected the DI-624.
It seems to me that the manufacturers of residential-class routers really skimp on the power supply, or at least D-Link does. The AC adapters they've bundled in recent years are smaller than a deck of cards, yet I'm supposed to believe that they can put out 3 amps of current at 5VDC indefinitely?
You think Kinoki foot pads are a scam? Well, I've got one that may just top that.
In magazines I've bought off the newsstands, I've seen an ad for a company purporting to have a machine that makes some kind of "enhanced" water, which supposedly has all kinds of miraculous health benefits. They have testimonials from people whose arthritic fingers were freed up, cancers beaten down, and the like. Now, the machine supposedly works by rapidly heating and cooling ordinary water, with the end result being that the angle of the hydrogen bonds is changed to 114 degrees (the natural angle is 104.4). The enhanced water is supposed to somehow be easier for the body to use in fighting disease. They even claim that adding a few drops to whatever else you drink can have healthful benefits.
Now, the ad doesn't come right out and say what this water processor costs, they instead urge you to write for more information. But, they WILL sell you a bottle of the enhanced health water, in a champaigne-style bottle no less, for something like $30 a pop.
As absurd as these claims might be, the REALLY sad thing about this is that the magazines they advertise in are SCIENCE -oriented... Science Illustrated, Popular Science, Discover, and others...
By the way, from what I've read, the machine is little more than a glorified distiller, and the pseudo-science claims of the company have been thoroughly debunked. (One such debunking: http://www.chem1.com/CQ/johnellisbunk.html.)
I just saw one at Walmart the other day. Think it was a Philips. I believe it had a 160-GB hard disk, as well as a SDTV digital tuner.
I think you're forgetting one important application, namely, games. Anyone who has an interest in using their PC for gaming (beyond basic stuff like Solitaire and Tetris) absolutely NEEDS the most powerful PC they can afford. The latest games incorporate more and more eye candy, and if you want them to look even remotely like what's pictured on the box (without turning down the graphics settings), you'd better have some serious horsepower under the hood.
Let's not forget all the media processing that home PCs get to do nowadays, either. Especially editing home movies... rendering a video file in a reasonable amount of time takes a pretty good CPU and lots of memory...
The problem with digital images, though, is that while it may be possible to transfer images from older formats or media to newer ones, all too often, it never gets done. Transfer and conversion are only possible when the hardware for READING the old format is still available, and at the same time, the new format must be widely available. What's more, there must exist software capable of both reading the old format and writing to the new. And to top it all off, the people who are in a position to make the conversion have to actually do it, and not "put it off until later".
There are many, many examples of cases where people or organizations have had much difficulty converting their older data because they did not realize they had to until it was almost too late! And we're not just talking about photos, but all kinds of digital data. A company may realize it needs historical spreadsheet data from its early years... but it's been stored in VisiCALC files, on eight-inch floppies formatted with CP/M, and stashed in some forgotten file drawer in a closet for 25 years. Or you, personally, may realize 40 years from now that there's a digital photo of your parents you'd love to show to your grandkids... except it's stored on a CD-R, but the world has moved on to holographic storage cards or some other exotic media, you never got around to transferring it to newer formats over the years, and you can't find a working CD-ROM drive to save your soul...
At least with printed photos, the only equipment needed to view them is the Mark I Human Eyeball(TM). They may deteriorate over the years, but careful selection of ink and paper, along with proper storage techniques, will prolong their lifespan. And most day-to-day snapshots are really only relevant to the generation that snapped them, and maybe one or two generations down the line. Now, there may be some that would be relevant to our descendants, say, 200 years from now, mainly images that happen to be of people or events with generalized historical significance... a company's founder, a major landmark, a world-changing event... but for most of those, there will be people who care enough to make preserving them a priority, whether they are digital or printed. The rest of us often find it hard to maintain our family photos with such diligence....