22 Feb
2003
22 Feb
'03
7:40 a.m.
PC: no,
you throw away a subsystem and get a replacement. The
problem here is that any given subsystem (e.g., a video card) is
only on the market for maybe two years; after that you can't get
an identical replacement. Original-spec PDP-8 replacement parts
were available for over 20 years.
While not quite the same as 20 years, you *can* still get identical,
new, many year old 'replacement' parts for PCs. It's probably easier to
One thing I'm slightly suprised about is that
you're not claiming that
it's easy to service 'real computers' at the component level. Of course,
That is one definition of 'real computer' that I sometimes use :-)
-tony