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El Reg reports
A chap named Ross, says he "Just switched off our longest running server".
Ross says the box was "Built and brought into service in early 1997" and has "been running 24/7 for 18 years and 10 months".
"In its day, it was a reasonable machine: 200MHz Pentium, 32MB RAM, 4GB SCSI-2 drive", Ross writes. "And up until recently, it was doing its job fine." Of late, however the "hard drive finally started throwing errors, it was time to retire it before it gave up the ghost!" The drive's a Seagate, for those of looking to avoid drives that can't deliver more than 19 years of error-free operations.
The FreeBSD 2.2.1 box "collected user session (connection) data summaries, held copies of invoices, generated warning messages about data and call usage (rates and actual data against limits), let them do real-time account [inquiries] etc".
[...] All the original code was so tightly bound to the operating system itself, that later versions of the OS would have (and ultimately, did) require substantial rework.
[...] Ross reckons the server lived so long due to "a combination of good quality hardware to start with, conservatively used (not flogging itself to death), a nice environment (temperature around 18C and very stable), nicely conditioned power, no vibration, hardly ever had anyone in the server room".
A fan dedicated to keeping the disk drive cool helped things along, as did regular checks of its filters.
[...] Who made the server? [...] The box was a custom job.
[...] Has one of your servers beaten Ross' long-lived machine?
I'm reminded of the the Novell server that worked flawlessly despite being sealed behind drywall for 4 years.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Friday January 15 2016, @03:41PM
at my dept as a grad student, there was an i286 box named after the man who built it ("Fred", say). It had software on it to work with an experiment constructed for it on a microscope, and perform data capture and analysis.
That machine might well still be there.
This is why Microsoft is so desperate to get everyone onto a subscription. We simply don't need to upgrade a machine once it starts working. There is forced obsolescence via crippled software.
So long as a machine is not constructed out of inferior components (I bet we all had a machine with those faulty capacitors - I had one monitor, a TV and a PSU!!), a good chance that 10 years is not a radical length of time.
But you'll need a UPS....poor power, ruins computers...
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Friday January 15 2016, @03:53PM
Did you go to your local electronics shop for the replacement capacitor to repair the tv and monitor? Those are hilariously braindead easy to fix since they're usually in the internal power supply of the device, which is generally a very simple board as far as the soldering skills required. I made some easy money over the last 10 years finding dead monitors, spending a buck on a capacitor, and then selling them for 30-40 bucks. Keeps that stuff out of landfills too, at least, for a while.
I didn't try PSUs. I would much rather just replace one of those than risk taking out a motherboard due to poor soldering skills on my part. The few motherboards I tried I never had any luck repairing, but then again, that's to be expected. There's just too much going on there.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday January 15 2016, @04:22PM
I did something socially responsible. I printed up a note, and donated the monitor and TV, pointing out the fault. I repaired the PSU, but it failed for another reason.
That was 5 years ago and I am *still* getting emails from Amazing trying to sell me another PSU.
They were old, and I guess I was lucky to get some use out of them.
Properly made hardware will last a long time, if it works for the first month!