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Old 1st Sep 2022, 9:26 am   #41
kalee20
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

I'd like to know that too!

I have designed equipment that's worked 30 years without service, so approaching a third of the target time. I'd attribute this to:

* Using components of established reliability - plastic film capacitors, conservatively-rated electrolytics, metal-film resistors (I routinely use Welwyn MFR4, MFR5 types, and vitreous wirewound for higher power).

* Avoiding open-type switches eg the make-it-yourself wafer switch assemblies and open relays

* Keeping temperature rises low (noting that adding a fan helps massively but itself adds a life-limited item)

* Laying out circuit boards avoiding closely spaced tracks, and narrow conductor widths

* Vacuum impregnating coils and transformers

* Building using leaded solder

* Wiring with high-quality wire (not PVC!), usually silicone rubber or Raychem/Tyco Type 44

Etc!

(NB I have to declare an interest in the Welwyn resistors as I work for a company which, like Welwyn, is now part if the TT group. Other brands are available...)
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 9:30 am   #42
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

In fact the founder Dan D'Agostino of the high end audio electronics manufacturer Krell took the company name from Forbidden Planet.

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 10:08 am   #43
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler View Post
For the multi-generational starship problem on a longer journey or if the acceleration isn't enough to rely on special relativity, take a factory along with you and keep re-making everything and recycling as needed. Take an R&D lab and you ought to wind up with better stuff than you started.

David
In the books by Alastair Reynolds, the starships only provide 1g of acceleration. For a long time to get close to relativistic velocity. The engines use some sort of manipulation of zero point energy. Because of the extended journey time of course some sort of crew suspended animation is needed.

The starships need to be repaired on a not infrequent basis. So even at this speculated technology level, they still need to be fixed.

I only mention that because Reynolds has a Physics PhD, and worked for ESA in Nordweik in space systems design. After his first novel was a success, he quit ESA and became a full-time author.

Of course approaching light speed is a strange and wonderful thing. If you can excuse the robotic female voice, and the somewhat grainy quality, this is mesmeric https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111018.html

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 10:43 am   #44
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

Hi to all,

Franco-German cultural channel ARTE aired two documentaries on the subject : what would it take to go to Alpha-Centauri and what technologies would be required to do this?
Every technology aspect was replied to by scientists actually working in each specialized field.
The solution was described as thus:
Entirely automated mission, no humans on board
Vehicle (a long metal girder structure), 2km long, assembled in orbit
Initial impulse by standard chemical rocket propulsion, then
Electro-ionic propulsion, accelerating for 25 years, reaching 15% of light speed
Gas cylinders for ionic propulsion, cast off when depleted
Electric power from portable Fusion drive reactors, cast off after use (vehicle gets lighter)
Central AI control, multiple redundancies, automated diagnostic of failed electronics & auto-replacement.
25 years of deceleration, insertion into orbit around Alpha-Centauri planet
Shuttle vehicle drops to ground, fleet of intelligent drones including under water ones.
Drones feed back data to craft in orbit, relay to earth
Total mission duration 50 years + 1 to explore + 5 for data to travel back to earth.
Mission planned as possible circa 2100 to 2156 considering technology advances necessary to make it possible.

ARTE has a phone/tablet/computer app for free viewing.
The 2 programmes are not currently available but are re-aired usually at yearly intervals.
May be available on DVD, like many of their productions.

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 11:13 am   #45
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

With the greatest respect, even though the answers have been interesting, the OP asked:

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Originally Posted by Electronpusher0 View Post
When I posed the question I naively though I would get replies that set out the measures to take to make them last 100 years.
Not 250 years, or even longer for an interplanetary mission!

Self-repairing assemblies, and time-dilation by speedy travel, are 'cheating' as to the spirit of the title, so Off Topic, surely?

I attempted to answer in Post #41
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 11:32 am   #46
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

I am quite happy that the thread has expanded to cover space travel, even using "cheats" like time dilation you have to accelerate and decelerate so 100 years is still a reasonable design goal.

Post 41 certainly sets out some excellent guide lines, but is it enough?

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 11:50 am   #47
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

Thinking about the non-repairability of integrated circuits, I am sure I read about someone in the early 1970s who had designed a mechanism to include some extra gates in an ULA or FPGA which could be brought into use if there were failures of the main gates, to essentially 'patch round ' the failure.

Might even have been Clive Sinclair who came up with the idea.
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 11:51 am   #48
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

Interstellar missions are effectively impossible with current technologies and understandings of physics, even if unmanned. The timescales are so great and the returns so small and speculative that the economics simply don't work.

Such missions require some sort of FTL technology, which may well never exist (that's certainly what Einstein thought).
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 12:00 pm   #49
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

TRy a book called " Rendezvous with Rama " Arther C Clark, 1973. Organic/mechanical spaceship that comes and visits then leaves. Completely rebuilds itself by "digesting " broken bits to make new bits.
Took my fancy when I was much younger. It still fascinates my imagination. Clark was one of the masters.


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Old 1st Sep 2022, 12:38 pm   #50
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Eventually, physics will come into play and we will no longer be able to make technology more powerful, faster and smaller but until then I guess we are stuck with technology that has a short life span. A 20 year old house is still 'new', a 20 year old car still serves it's purpose, a 20 year old mobile phone is scrap.
Exactly - it depends what you mean when you say "last". Technology progresses in ways we cannot imagine now - until the laws of physics come into play. Would I want a 100 year old sewing machine? -Yes we have one that still does what it was designed to do that is getting on for 90 years old. Would I want us all to be driving around in 100 year old cars even if they all still worked as designed and there was enough of them? No, there has been great progress since then. Would I want a 100 year old computer? The nearest would be an adding machine or typewriter . It was probably built to last for ever but I wouldn't want to use one. Would I want a computer built to the available technology standards of the Voyager probes? No they are much better now. My 1960s Fisher valve receiver is rated at 230W (at 120V). I wouldn't want to run it all day every day to listen to the radio as it would use too much electricity.

The item itself may last for a long time but technology would probably overtake it and you can't build in anything that can outlast that.
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 12:45 pm   #51
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Quote:
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Nonsense, said Flowers - it is all to do with turning them on and off frequently, and it is thermal shock that kills valves. Never turn the machine off, and it will be just fine.

That turned out to be the case.
I expect that's how myths (that continue to exist to this day in the computer world) come into existence. I don't know about the numbers and the research this particular case, but in general, measures like that are more about being able to predict the wear than to lower the wear per se.

Of course a valve will wear out when it's operated continuously, but it's easy to predict that after for example 50.000 hours, 80% of the valves will still work. Derate that accordingly and find a preventative maintenance interval.

On the other hand when operating valves intermittently, combined wear and failure due to inrush current will probably not be higher on average, but the spread will be larger. Also, valves might work loose from their sockets more easily - failure without wear.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg question. Running gear permanently will be beneficial in some scenarios to avoid thermal shock, yet the heat and hours of use will shorten the lifepan of many components. We have all seen the crispy insides of tvs, vcrs, stbs, amps etc. That were used extensively!

At the same time, gear left standing unused can also suffer, though that seems more true of electromechanical items. I am often surprised when plugging in TVs in storage for 10+ years and they work first time.
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 5:58 pm   #52
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

Quote:
Originally Posted by joebog1 View Post
TRy a book called " Rendezvous with Rama " Arther C Clark, 1973. Organic/mechanical spaceship that comes and visits then leaves. Completely rebuilds itself by "digesting " broken bits to make new bits.
Took my fancy when I was much younger. It still fascinates my imagination. Clark was one of the masters.


Joe
I have read it Joe, fascinating idea. I gave up on the sequels, Clarke had co-writers and did not check the finished book, several basic, fundamental, technical errors that Clarke would never have made as sole author.

Peter
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 6:00 pm   #53
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

I like the idea of voting logic, as a progression of the double redundancy/triple redundancy etc. safeguards...the gremlins still, on occasion, seem to find a way through all the trapdoors put in their way....i guess it's a function of a world where a huge number of processes are occurring every day. As Arthur said, coincidences must happen, because of the laws of chance...not despite them. (or something along these lines)

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 6:12 pm   #54
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

The "voting logic" or having multiple sources of the same data to guard against the failure of one source is all very well, but if all the sources-of-data are made by the same supplier and develop the same failure, you have 'issues'.

This very problem - with the Rubidium frequency-standards made by a Swiss company - really screwed-up the 'Galileo' satellite-navigation project half a decade back. Each satellite had several time-standards, bunches of which failed, rendering several satellites 'unreliable'.

The same failure affected Indian satellites.

https://spacenews.com/rash-of-galile...ming-launches/

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-...n-3697087.html

Source the components of your 'redundant' system from different suppliers!
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 6:49 pm   #55
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

Part of the problem is, that as you fix one point of failure you simply find some other failure mode that you had never thought of. Even if you think of a cause of failure, and test against it, you might not test in a particular scenario.

Example, I know of a couple of issues with circuits. The failures were seen once during testing (actually testing of updates on another part of the whole system), but were impossible to replicate (until I got involved). Both were triggered by a brownout on the supply. The second was only seen during multiple attempts to replicate the first.

The first was easier to investigate, as once the failure occurred, the device was essentially dead even after a power off reset. So the supplier was able to investigate and determined the system parameters stored in an area of flash was corrupt. Reflashing the device restored operation. The second was much harder as a power off reset restored operation.

In both cases the timing of the brownout was critical. The devices were designed to have essentially two modes, running and sleep. The brownout testing had been carried out in both modes, and always passed. Experience suggested to me that the problem was if the brownout occurred during the transition between states, as the device might well be performing housekeeping during that time. The first was easier to reproduce, and once I'd narrowed down the timing, I could reliably 'kill' it within a couple of hors of repeated testing. The second was trickier and wasn't houskeeping as such, but a similar issue with the combined power supply managment and bus communication controller locking up if hit with a brownout at the critical time during mode transition. But I still found a way to repeat it, and send the supplier of that device a script to use with test equiment so they could reproduce and fix it.

Unfortunately both problems had made it into the field but failures were rare and extremely rare, but were soon resolved.

So with potential failures like that, how could you be sure your system will last 100 years?
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 7:11 pm   #56
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

There's also the issue that the world as you designed your device for moves on over that 100 years.

I'm reminded of the UK's introduction of radio; initially a broadcast-receiver only really needed to receive one station - because that was all there was.

So simple was elegant/cheap. Then the BBC came along and Mr. Eckersley implemented his 'Regional plan' which meant that loads of people then found their early, simple/cheap receivers had to have selectivity to separate-out the regional and national stations. A single signal-frequency tuned-circuit was no longer good-enough.

[This issue was rather more pressing in the urban US, where their more-liberal approach led to a proliferation of stations and selectivity/resistance-to-swamping really pushed the move from TRF to superhet radios].

Designing for a 100-year lifespan, all very well, but your 100-year-old design can easily be overtaken by reality.

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Old 1st Sep 2022, 8:32 pm   #57
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Thinking about the non-repairability of integrated circuits, I am sure I read about someone in the early 1970s who had designed a mechanism to include some extra gates in an ULA or FPGA which could be brought into use if there were failures of the main gates, to essentially 'patch round ' the failure.

Might even have been Clive Sinclair who came up with the idea.
In the 1980's I was a patent examiner at the UK Patent Office and dealing with semiconductor memories. Sir Clive certainly filed a number of applications for memories. One that came across my desk was for a "Wafer-scale Memory" of the type where the memory is essentially a serial shift register. A location on the edge of an array of cells, interrogates an adjacent location which, if it is working, is added to the register. If not a different adjacent location is interrogated, and so on until the register is long enough. Thus any bad mrmory locations get by-passed.

By the time the application reached me, it had been successively assigned to Ternland and then to Anarmartic ( possibly it was the other way round). I remember it well because the necessary copies of the assignment documents had not been filed and I had to ask the agent for copies of them.

At that time, IBM and others were proposing matrix memory arrays incorporating redundant rows and/or columns that could be substituted for defective ones. I have no idea if any of these proposals made it into production.
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Old 1st Sep 2022, 11:31 pm   #58
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Nonsense, said Flowers - it is all to do with turning them on and off frequently, and it is thermal shock that kills valves. Never turn the machine off, and it will be just fine.

That turned out to be the case.
I expect that's how myths (that continue to exist to this day in the computer world) come into existence
It is not a myth. I don't trade in myths. For the record Colossus was designed to break the code from the German SZ42, an on-line cypher machine that transmitted at 80 baud.

I restored one of the only three known remaining SZ42 machines for Bletchley into full operating capability for the first time since it was captured in 1945.

And that is true and not also a myth.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to accuse you of making up stories. I only try to claim that's how myths come in existence, not that it's a myth itself, and then I do a bad job in explaining why.

It's clear that valves (having heaters) can notably fail (burn out) upon switching on, and can also work themselves loose by thermal cycling. So I very much agree that's not a myth and there would have been very good reasons (likely more than only those) to leave those computers powered on permanently. If only one thing, maintenance will become much more predictable (for example swapping all valves every 20.000 hours instead of one every 5 minutes, which would render the computer completely useless).

The myth in my eyes, is that tubes (or rather modern computers, or really any piece of equipment) hardly wear when they're powered on continuously. I don't think you even claimed that about valves, but it's claimed way too often for my comfort by small time systems administrators, etc. who once turned off some ancient piece of equipment that wouldn't come on after that anymore.

So yes, I meant that the mindless propagation of a true story turned it into somewhat of a myth.

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Old 2nd Sep 2022, 10:05 pm   #59
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

According to this advertisment from the October 1945 "Wireless World", the standard Mazda SP41 valve was found to be serviceable after 11,000 hours continuous service, hence its use in a subsea repeater for the GPO.
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Old 2nd Sep 2022, 10:49 pm   #60
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Default Re: How would we design electronics to last 100 years?

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Thinking about the non-repairability of integrated circuits, I am sure I read about someone in the early 1970s who had designed a mechanism to include some extra gates in an ULA or FPGA which could be brought into use if there were failures of the main gates, to essentially 'patch round ' the failure.

Might even have been Clive Sinclair who came up with the idea.
How about Ivor Catt?

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