Marius Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Hi Yes I know... I am a but neurotic person ... I am really addicted to all my Atari stuff and related items. I'm collecting all kind of spare parts, to be sure in future of a long and happy Atari life. Some components are harder to get, or a bit too expensive to buy giant amounts of them. So I was wondering: When there are no 'crazy' things like too much current, or short-circuit and that kind of problems. What is an expected lifetime for such IC's in regular use? Is that 5 year? 10 year? 2 year? I know my Atari's do last a long time... but most of them haven't been running for ages. Thanks for any feedback! Marius p.s. the IC's I described are components of my blackbox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Integrated circuits encased in plastic or ceramic should last indefinitely. It's only when something takes them out where you begin to experience problems. Too much current as you mentioned as a result of a power supply or regulation failure. Chips that get too warm as a result of too much current or if they're designed to run warm, will have a shorter lifespan for sure. If you're REALLY worried about your components blowing up, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. Some tips: Replace electrolytic capacitors every 10 years and when you do. Same with regulatory transistors, diodes and bridge rectifiers. Learn how to read schematics and use a DMM if you don't already. Knowing what kind and how much voltage and current should be going will also help track down potential power supply related issues. Lastly, securing heatsinks on chips that get warm or hot is a great idea too. Heat sinks come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, so plenty to choose from. Heatsink compound between the IC and heatsink is a must too. I've used crazy glue before to secure chips and have never had a problem. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted February 12, 2011 Author Share Posted February 12, 2011 Learn how to read schematics and use a DMM if you don't already. Knowing what kind and how much voltage and current should be going will also help track down potential power supply related issues. What is a DMM? For the rest: thanks for your answer! i suppose Electrolytic Capacitors are available for the next 50 years? Thanks M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcokitt2000 Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Learn how to read schematics and use a DMM if you don't already. Knowing what kind and how much voltage and current should be going will also help track down potential power supply related issues. What is a DMM? For the rest: thanks for your answer! i suppose Electrolytic Capacitors are available for the next 50 years? Thanks M. DMM digital multimeter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 What is a DMM? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimeter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bob1200xl Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 The biggest problem with ICs is the thermal stresses that come from heating (operating) and cooling over the years. This can cause poor joint contact or internal failure. Re-seating will usually fix the first, the second is a failed chip. Not to worry - chips are so reliable that they don't even spec Mean-Time-Between-Failures. They spec Failures-In-Time, how many failures you will get in 100,000 years! Bob Hi Yes I know... I am a but neurotic person ... I am really addicted to all my Atari stuff and related items. I'm collecting all kind of spare parts, to be sure in future of a long and happy Atari life. Some components are harder to get, or a bit too expensive to buy giant amounts of them. So I was wondering: When there are no 'crazy' things like too much current, or short-circuit and that kind of problems. What is an expected lifetime for such IC's in regular use? Is that 5 year? 10 year? 2 year? I know my Atari's do last a long time... but most of them haven't been running for ages. Thanks for any feedback! Marius p.s. the IC's I described are components of my blackbox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Not to worry - chips are so reliable that they don't even spec Mean-Time-Between-Failures. They spec Failures-In-Time, how many failures you will get in 100,000 years! Sorry, but there ain't NO IC NOWHERE that's lasting 100,000 years. My instructor in IC design at the Uni worked for Texas Instruments - he used the same material in class that TI does for their entry level engineers, and he was big on stressing all the things that make life "interesting" for folks working on ICs. Ion dispersion in the substrate GUARANTEES an IC won't last 100 years, much less 100,000, and that's just sitting in a bin! Once you actually USE the IC, other factors come into play that make ICs die in anywhere from 2 to 20 years, depending on the operating conditions and materials used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Not to worry - chips are so reliable that they don't even spec Mean-Time-Between-Failures. They spec Failures-In-Time, how many failures you will get in 100,000 years! Sorry, but there ain't NO IC NOWHERE that's lasting 100,000 years. My instructor in IC design at the Uni worked for Texas Instruments - he used the same material in class that TI does for their entry level engineers, and he was big on stressing all the things that make life "interesting" for folks working on ICs. Ion dispersion in the substrate GUARANTEES an IC won't last 100 years, much less 100,000, and that's just sitting in a bin! Once you actually USE the IC, other factors come into play that make ICs die in anywhere from 2 to 20 years, depending on the operating conditions and materials used. Well 2 to 20 can't be right or none of us here would be using our real Ataris since my newest one is from 87. Plenty of IC based equipment from 1975 is still running quite fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Well 2 to 20 can't be right or none of us here would be using our real Ataris since my newest one is from 87. Plenty of IC based equipment from 1975 is still running quite fine. Depends on how much it's used. It probably does still work if it sat in your closet for the last 20 years, but it certainly didn't last 10 years if you used it 8+ hours a day. I replace ICs in my Atari more often than that. Some ICs are better than others due to better design of the support circuitry; for example, the POKEY - the A400/800 did little to no buffering on the POKEY outputs, so it goes dead much quicker than say the ANTIC. I've yet to have a POKEY last 3 years of ~8 hours a day usage on my A400. Later models buffered the serial better to avoid the issue. Current is the number one enemy to ICs - the higher the current, the more likely the IC will die sooner than later. It's mostly due to electro-migration of the metal making the IC interconnects. There's been a LOT of money dumped into trying to make processes for interconnects using exotic metals cost effective to help deal with the issue. In the meantime, they work on lowering the current. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 I'd guess that the smaller the process size, the less time it'd last. Our old stuff is absolutely gigantic compared to modern-day stuff, hence the 25+ years life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bob1200xl Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 The dispersion that occurs during ION implantation affects the substrate? Well, I hope they don't ever fire off any 20 year-old missiles... Seriously, I didn't invent FIT reliability. It is what it is. 50 FITs is about 20,000,000 hours MTBF. Or such. Bob Not to worry - chips are so reliable that they don't even spec Mean-Time-Between-Failures. They spec Failures-In-Time, how many failures you will get in 100,000 years! Sorry, but there ain't NO IC NOWHERE that's lasting 100,000 years. My instructor in IC design at the Uni worked for Texas Instruments - he used the same material in class that TI does for their entry level engineers, and he was big on stressing all the things that make life "interesting" for folks working on ICs. Ion dispersion in the substrate GUARANTEES an IC won't last 100 years, much less 100,000, and that's just sitting in a bin! Once you actually USE the IC, other factors come into play that make ICs die in anywhere from 2 to 20 years, depending on the operating conditions and materials used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+poobah Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Once you actually USE the IC, other factors come into play that make ICs die in anywhere from 2 to 20 years, depending on the operating conditions and materials used. Yet my 32 year old Atari 800 still work flawlessly... Hmmmmmm I suspect that ICs of that vintage, protected from bad power will likely outlive us. There is quite a bit of research being conducted to come up with better means to estimate the lifetime of ICs, and stick some fairly solid numbers onto the "bathtub curve", especially with more modern ICs with *much* smaller and denser features where some of the effects mentioned above really come into play. As a reference point, a typical A8 IC was a 5 micron process (5000nm) today's new stuff is about 40nm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 which makes me ask the question... if you never apply power to an IC, will it ever break? sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 which makes me ask the question... if you never apply power to an IC, will it ever break? sloopy. Hmm - how would you know? I'll go out on a limb and say it will work forever. Just don't power it up and let out the magic smoke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 @chilly willy Well I know at least three people who used their atari for 24h / 7 in the last 15 year and they still work without error. That are atari computers running a bbs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 @chilly willy Well I know at least three people who used their atari for 24h / 7 in the last 15 year and they still work without error. That are atari computers running a bbs Guess who... I usually stay out of topics if I don't have enough knowledge about it, but I dare to say, without any theoretic back-up, that 2-20 years is way off. And I mean really WAY off, and I'm glad you are as I only have old stuff (computer/audio/transmitter/receiver/whatever). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 Guess who... Ehm... Stephen J. Carden? I usually stay out of topics if I don't have enough knowledge about it, but I dare to say, without any theoretic back-up, that 2-20 years is way off. And I mean really WAY off, and I'm glad you are as I only have old stuff (computer/audio/transmitter/receiver/whatever). Next thread: what is the expected lifetime of harddisks bought from TXG Greetz M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Next thread: what is the expected lifetime of harddisks bought from TXG Usually somewhere between 7 minutes and the 1st back-up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Next thread: what is the expected lifetime of harddisks bought from TXG Usually somewhere between 7 minutes and the 1st back-up. sounds like a conner drive, those things were so unreliable you could set your watch by them... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 (edited) I have calculators with ICs from 1973 that are still going strong. They run off more than 5V but with much slower clocks than the Ataris. Edited February 13, 2011 by ClausB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 sounds like a conner drive, those things were so unreliable you could set your watch by them... 1 Conner (SCSI), 1 Miniscribe (SCSI), and an MFM one, which may be a Seagate ST125 or something like that. It was a 5,25 and made a lot of noise! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 sounds like a conner drive, those things were so unreliable you could set your watch by them... 1 Conner (SCSI), 1 Miniscribe (SCSI), and an MFM one, which may be a Seagate ST125 or something like that. It was a 5,25 and made a lot of noise! miniscribe were hit and miss, some were very reliable, some were garbage... i especially liked them cause the head servo had an external track 0 sensor, and you could watch the head servo go back and forth... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 I'd guess that the smaller the process size, the less time it'd last. Our old stuff is absolutely gigantic compared to modern-day stuff, hence the 25+ years life. Yes, and most newer stuff tends to run much hotter too (high clock speeds), there's only a handful of console/home computer ICs from the 70s and early/mid 80s that used heat spreaders, let alone dedicated fans. (totally passive ventilation in many cases at that -at least if the PSU was external) We had a similar discussion on Sega-16 a while back, and a few others on AA before too. Capacitors are the weakest link in old electronics, a few other discrete components (voltage regs, sometimes transistors, diodes, usually not resistors) tend to be more problematic than the LSI chips, but all ICs are perishable. (the silicon lasts forever, but the dopants and such that make up the logic and interconnect -I think more so the interconnect- will degrade over time) Even with very old chips that get no or practically no use, they're probably not going to last hundreds of years in the best cases. (aside from painstaking cryogenic preservation or something ) The smaller the IC process, the sooner the degradation. (take modern high-quality technology and apply it back to single layer 2-5 micron manufacturing and you'd have some really long lasting chips though ) I'm not positive on the 70s/80s tech, but it may very well be possible that a good percentage lasts close to a century. Hell, electrolytic capacitors in such systems (or TVs or other equipment for that matter) are generally LONG past their expected expiration date, yet a very high percentage of systems are still working fine without recap. (especially those that weren't abused -but even then quite a few) Though part of that is probably that the systems are rather tolerant to degrading (namely drying) capacitors vs newer systems which are far more sensitive. (a fair amount of the early/mid 90s Sega systems have notable capacitor problems -especially the game gear) The sheer size of some capacitors used on the earlier models probably plays a role too. (much greater volume to surface area ratio) In terms of hardware that gets regular use and in as far as ICs (from CPUs to ROMs to ROM to discrete logic), normal wear and tear with various risks of voltage spikes, overheating, etc will all be far more likely causes of failure than gradual degradation of the chip's circuitry alone. (like how I destroyed the chips in my light sixer ~9 years ago by using reverse polarity current -unfortunately they blew -quite literally- along with one or 2 games before the voltage regulator gave out -the motherboard is still perfect otherwise after the reg was replaced -swapped in another systems's chips- but I've still yet to find a crappy VCS to complete both systems I have with another set of TIA+RIOT+6507 -the overload blew the package right off the top of the chip for one of them -TIA or RIOT, I forget which) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bf2k+ Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Believe it or not... Keeping them clean helps them to last longer! Dirt building up on chips causes over-heating = shorter life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Believe it or not... Keeping them clean helps them to last longer! Dirt building up on chips causes over-heating = shorter life. Same for keeping the whole system clean: less dirt and dust= better ventilation. For that matter, removing the RF shielding (where not integral) can be beneficial as well. Keeping the ICs clean can also help avoid corrosion in extreme cases. (as long as you clean only with distilled water, alcohol, or just dry cleaning -or dedicated electronics cleaning stuff -though that's mostly the same too) The region you live in will be a factor too. (and/or the conditions of your house -or wherever it's set up or stored) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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