28 Apr
2005
28 Apr
'05
10:34 a.m.
> It's even starting to be less easy to find
common 'baby-AT'
> 286/386/486 motherboards these days. Most of the stuff has
> been recycled. The 'junk' now being scrapped in the
> mainstream is Pentium I stuff.
I expect that the volume of pre-386 showing up is indeed
dropping, but are you sure that the decline is actually
that steep rather than what there is being swamped by
the volume of Pentium systems being scrapped?
Given the cost of a new PC these days, justifying a new
one to replace a two or three year old P3 is pretty easy.
Even in the early Pentium era, prices had dropped so much
that there were plenty of them flying around. In the early
1980s, PCs cost a good deal more and did a good deal less,
so there were far fewer of them being built in readiness
for the great recycler in the sky ...
Antonio
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Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org