My two cents:
If we are talking about 1970s and '80s machines, they tend to run pretty hot, related to the PSU technology. Things like electrolytic capacitors "don't like this" and may contribute to cascading failures. PSU failures are apt to fry some chips, some of which may be hard to come by. So, better keep them cool = off.
If you consider machines from the 2000s retro, continuous run, avoiding the stresses caused by system start, may help keeping them alive. (I've a MacPro running since 2008, with no failures, apart from failing 3rd party ECC DDR3 RAM. Some of this RAM has even failed twice, the RAM originally shipped by Apple is still fine, though. This machine has only been ever off, when I've been on vacation.) – Machines from the 1990s and early 2000s are pretty much the same, but typically suffer from poor capacitors and/or batteries. So…?
Something I didn't see mentioned but a consideration: what's the quality of your electricity supply? I live in a location with a lot of summer thunderstorms and even with a surge protector and lighting arrestors I'm nervous about having stuff plugged in unnecessarily during storms, having seen devices destroyed by it.
That may be a factor, excellent point. Electric supply is pretty good and there hasn't been a major outage, since I was a child. Also, power lines are buried (under ground), here. (But I have surge protection, just in case, and am running all related equipment from the same protected outlet.) Which also means, I have no idea.
Power them from a pure sine wave inverter connected to a battery thats being charged. Aka a good UPS
That's not good enough - everything attached to the computer (including network gear, unless it's fiber) must be powered by the same UPS, or you have pathways for lightning current to enter.
Some UPS for consumers even have an ethernet through-port so you can connect your internet cable from the wall to the UPS before it touches your router.
I've read that electrolytic caps dry out faster if they aren't holding a charge. Temperature is a concern, but I have a surprising number of devices that worked fine before I left them unplugged for a few years and then didn't work when I powered them back up.
It’s almost as if the question is vague on purpose to stir up responses!
It’s almost as if nobody has actually read the question! The OP says in the first sentence that the machine is from 1998, and that they’re going to use it about an hour per day.
Still, the attraction, it got the attention for, may be the more general question.
Apple will always have the best RAM. They get to pick from the donut of wafer, and have testing processes rivaling that of the fabs.
Especially with older disk drives if you don't power them up for a long time (months) the bearings may seize, at which point you may have to use the hair dryer trick to try getting them to work again.
I have a 42 year old apple //e that had been in an uninsulated attic in Boston for 30+ years. It booted fine and all the 5 1/4" floppies worked. I know that C64s need the caps replaced and the org external power supplies can catch fire. I'd be really surprised if 1990's pcs failed. There was a period of transition to non-lead solder where many pcbs from that era suffered shorts from whiskering but everything else should be fine. Electromigration tolerances in the 90's cpu families was even more strict than today.
My understanding is that every electrolytic cap will eventually dry out. The capacitance drifts as this happens, so the quality of the cap and the sensitivity of the circuit to incorrect capacitance will greatly affect how long it takes for the device to fail. The late 90s was also when a large quantity of low-quality electrolytic caps were manufactured.
1990's PC's have Varta bios batteries soldered on that leak and destroy the motherboard. Or they have Dallas real time clocks with dead batteries.
if you never turn the computer on, why does it matter if it's hypothetically still functional? boot it occasionally, the only thing that keeps a machine alive is someone caring for it
"I intend to use it for about 1 hour per day."
>why does it matter
Because you aren't a cat whose owner is called Schroedinger.
Am I, or am I not? Who could tell?
I switch most of mine (70-80s) on a few times a year and of them I use a lot (weekend game dev); I have to replace capacitors quite often, but outside that they all work. Unlike more recent (2000+) pc stuff which is all dead. All Sun and SGI stuff still works well though.
Honestly emulators work better than the real thing 99% of the time, so I don't feel the need to play with flaky and dusty 30yr old hardware
Real hardware is still necessary to verify functional equivalency and correctness.
Also, there's no way you're going to emulate an interlaced or noninterlaced analog SVGA display, especially the sounds of mode changing, tearing, proper vsync, palette cycling, or setting the border color. Or MIDI music as it came from an AdLib, Roland, SB, or a GUS.
Yeah, but they don't emulate the smells, the sound of fans spinning up and the gentle breeze they generate, the beeps and boops, the tick tick tick hard drives make, the long travel of keys on that old keyboard with a slightly sticky shift (gotta be from that coffee I spilled in '97).
I miss the scraping hard drive noises with a flickering “HDD” light and a mysterious “Turbo” indicator when my 90s PC had to work hard
Turbo was all about slowing down a 486-/Pentium-class machine to work with programs and some ISA cards that required a slower CPU and/or XT bus speeds.
Yes, but old computers also do not do that, because they no longer work. (And if they do, it's not with some 30 year old hard drive.) Maybe 80% of the working computers I have put on the shelf do not even boot after a few years. It's a fair question, I think. Maybe electronics just lose their spirit.
FS-UAE emulates even the floppy/HD head sounds and scrapping the media too.
These were all very nice, and reminiscent of the time
Then you remember you need to install Windows 9x or 2000 on it and the CD-ROM reader is kinda flaky, and you barely can download anything with IE 6, so now you would need an TLS bridge or use a usb-drive. Oh yeah and don't forget you need a small partition formatted on FAT32
Game speed too.
Simh does.
Or that click of death that plagued zip drives.
My Dell had one in college. Everyone thought it was cool until the click-CLICK click-CLICK. Dell replaced it twice. Then I gave up. When did I ever really need to transfer 100MB anyway?
Some machines do not have emulators. Notably, most SGI workstations have custom hardware that's poorly documented and very complex.
Call me when you can emulate that 30 year old solder smell, among other things.
I once made some rosin for soldering by dissolving the stuff made from tree sap for stringed instruments in isopropyl alcohol, and I think this is pretty close to the smell you're after. Fairly certain it's still not ideal to inhale the fumes from it, but it must be at least slightly less harmful than additionally vaporizing some heavy metals.
(This works reasonably well as flux for through hole sized components, possibly smaller if you're more skilled than I am, but you do have to clean up any excess afterwards because it's very sticky.)
Lead does not evaporate at the temperatures used for soldering.
Is that true, I have always heard that a tiny bit of lead is in the fumes. Either way I still think that one should avoid breathing soldering fumes as a general rule, no matter how pleasant they may smell.
Old components are still (and will be) manufactured, since so many old tech depends on it, like refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, microwave ovens, ...
Some old components will be, sure, but there are some chips that aren't manufactured anymore. There's no one blanket rule.
I doubt it would be impossible to replace a Pentium 2 machine in most of the western world for at least the next 20 years.
I worked at a company that decided to do a new design because the chips for the old one had been out of production for decades and a solid percentage of what was still available on eBay was sitting in the warehouse to be scavenged for new production.
That's true, but in many cases, it's not the integrated circuits (ICs) that fail, because they tend to be quite reliable. It's more often the capacitors, resistors, storage devices and power supply components that degrade over time. Capacitors, in particular, can fail due to heat, aging, or voltage surges, which can lead to failure in devices even if the ICs are still in good condition. Power sources can also fail due to wear on these exact components.
I've seen enough electronics repair videos that it seems the default for troubleshooting absent other conspicuous damage is to start checking the electrolytic capacitors.
There was a time when Gigabyte started selling more robust motherboards with quality capacitors that would last much longer. After seeing so many old motherboards dying from blown capacitors I was very happy to get one. Those motherboards so far held the full length of their meaningfull life until the CPU just got too slow to use for anything. Still try to look for that type of capacitors when I build new stuff for friends and family.
The Gigabyte line is called "Ultra Durable" and have solid capacitors instead of the electrolyte ones.
> It's more often the capacitors
And the electrolyte can and will start to leak and foul the ICs around them, if not by ruining the traces/pads, then they can also foul the legs and/or find their way into the chip package itself, so the ICs will fail as a secondary issue.
So better to turn it on sometimes, without power cycling so much, to keep the electrolyte fluids wet, to extend the equipment life. Let it rot and dry and it will.
That's not how it works.
Electrolytics which have not had voltage applied in a long time (decades) may need gradual reforming, but if they aren't hermetically sealed they will dry out no matter what --- and heat will accelerate that process.