[HECnet] No connectivity to arsgea 4

[Thomas DeBellis]

Well, as a matter of fact, I myself told myself this, based on my 
anecdotal experience of 45 years in the field.  Since it's an anecdotal 
observation, it can't be taken as scientific.  Moreover, your point is, 
of course, correct.  And as soon as I sent the below, I wanted to 
qualify it both in terms of manufacturing purpose and duty cycle.

Even with moving parts, 'professional' equipment will typically last 
longer than consumer.  I have a highly venerable IBM X8668 server from 
about 2000 that is fine, yet it has moving parts; a six drive RAID 5 and 
the fans.  Those drives have never broken; I think we've had to blow out 
a fan.

However, I should qualify this with the fact that the unit was almost 
never shut off ever for over 12 years and was on a triply redundant 
conditioned power supply during all that time.  So, no power up flexing, 
Etc.  As a matter of fact, any machine that I care about here is on a 
conditioned power supply (at least an APC Smart UPS).  My remark might 
have been better put in that context; the power up surge flexing is what 
eventually will do anything in.

To be fair, you're not the first person who has retorted to me about my 
squatness with regards to electronics, my brother (who does the hardware 
support) being very high on that particular list.  I'm quite happy 
(often delighted) to blithely reply, "Yeah...  They don't do much 
without me programming them, do they?"
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 1/22/21 11:53 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
>   I don't know who told you that, but he/she knows jack point squat 
> about electronics.
>
>   Materials migration and diffusion across junctions causes 
> semiconductor components to fail, tin whiskers cause shorts, some 
> types of capacitors dry out and/or have their electrolyte deteriorate 
> or crystallize, resistors drift, heat/cool cycles cause PCB flexure 
> resulting in cracked solder joints, corrosion in air creeps into 
> connector pin interfaces and forces pins apart, the list goes on and 
> on and on.
>
>   To be fair, some of the above-listed failure modes do in fact 
> involve things moving, though imperceptibly so, my point stands.
>
>               -Dave
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On 1/22/21 11:41 AM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>>
>> 10 years used to be nearly unheard of for retail machines with moving 
>> parts.  When nothing is moving, then supposedly there is nothing to 
>> burn out. 
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