You just don't imagine, how huge landfills are, and how small was number of computers in 1980s.

I mean, in 1980s, only first world seen computers in large quantities. In 3rd world, computers was exotic until late 1990s or even 2000s. So for example, China have not desktop computers culture, they jumped from analog culture to smartphones.

In some countries like Russia, computers before middle 1980s was toys for military, because they gives magic possibilities, like make supersilent submarine screw.

Large share of first world computers of 1980s-1990s, was "donated" to countries of 2-3 worlds, because first don't want to pay for utilization, and others are agree to got new for them technology "for free".

Important thing, that old-new technology means, it will not have official support, no spare parts, no upgrades, so large share of old computers become donors of old parts for other old computers.

Only in 1st world, people pay really much attention, to save history, to make right collections of old tech, which are alive, not just static empty cases.

And old tech does not survive without care.

So you could assume, 99% of old computers which not so fortunate to become part of some collection, are now dead.

For archeology, I'm in Ukraine regularly talking with collectioners and with engineers, and even now with military, who now regularly got pieces of Russian hardware from 1960s to current.

In many cases it is just impossible to figure out something more than approx time period, when piece of hardware made; in some cases could re-engineer what hardware done.

Found an Ars article that has some sales figures over time: https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/

Basically the industry was already shipping million computers yearly at the beginning of 80s and >100M units at the end of 90s. So I wouldn't say it's all that small numbers here

> industry was already shipping million computers yearly at the beginning of 80s

This is true for 1st world, which is just about Billion people. In the rest world (now about 5 Billions), computers was not seen much, before end of 90s.

You may not believe, but I know lot of people older than 40, who does not have any pre-smartphone computer experience. And their smartphone experience also limited, they don't use any downloaded apps, only what preinstalled and simple enough for them.

Imagine, large share of civilization have opportunity to meet AI, but have not any digital experience before.

Compared to the global volume of garbage, it's pretty small.

Think about the waste streams they were embedded in. Any typical household would probably not emit more than one unwanted computer a year, even into the 90s. So you'd expect that the density of C64s or Atari 800s or whatever to be very low in the landfills. I.e. each one would likely be surrounded by a whole lot of utter crap, all of it moist and probably not pH neutral, and 30 years in that environment .. "it ain't gonna be pretty"

OTOH, it was extremely common for people to discard them by yard sales, or give them to an nephew etc, donate them to others. Even ones put on the curb for the trash collection sometimes got scavenged. So a lot of these things had 2nd lives. Point of this being that over time there were instances of collectors who would amass piles of these things, and when such an individual decided to declutter, maybe, just maybe you'd find a whole lot of hardware buried together. But such concentrations would be the exception, and the state of preservation would still be abysmal.

Personally, I think the time and effort would be better spent recreating new hardware per the old specs.

> Any typical household would probably not emit more than one unwanted computer a year,

Without trying to look it up, I suspect corporate desktop computers in the time period (IBM PC/XT/PS2, Compaq luggable, AT&T 6300) were a very significant part of the waste stream, and I think most of those just went directly to landfills, with only a few "2nd lives" when sold to employees.

My high school got a large donation of corporate junked computers circa 1998 (was used for an after school technical program in computer repair), and I'm sure the corporations took a nice write off. Larger companies with enough computers to matter for this purpose likely have ways to get rid of capital equipment that aren't just throwing it away, and there's no reason computers wouldn't fit into that.

For those computers that did end up in landfills, I imagine they wouldn't be very salvageable, there's lots of crushing processes that happen on the way to the landfill, and while most of the other trash will get crushed first, cause metal boxes are pretty sturdy, it doesn't take much to crack a motherboard and then it's not nearly as useful.

Still have my original Atari 2600 and NES system. There’s 2 items that never made it to a land fill

The vast majority of computers were commodity boxes that are extremely well documented, emulated, and the ones that exist today are in private collections.

The interesting stuff is also being held by private collectors in large amounts.

Around 2000-2010, a lot of the interesting 80s and 90s stuff started becoming cheap and was snapped up by any interested party, the rest was landfilled. If you are getting into this now, you are too late - hit up ebay and pay inflated prices.

Speaking of landfills, most of those computers had RTC on board, and were powered by batteries, which tend to explode and "rot" away the board. It's likely very few of them will be salvageable in an easy-to-repair way if they sit for another 20 years.

> Speaking of landfills, most of those computers had RTC on board, and were powered by batteries, which tend to explode and "rot" away the board. It's likely very few of them will be salvageable in an easy-to-repair way if they sit for another 20 years.

Yup. During the lockdown I had time to waste and checked various YouTube videos and they scared me enough that I started checking my old computers for batteries. Found one in an old Apple computer (I forgot if it's a Classic or Classic II or Plus: one of those "inside" a 9" CRT) and indeed the battery had started leaking. I took it out, cleaned what I could, and the computer was still working. But a few more years and it would have been badly damaged.

And it's not just batteries: capacitors may sometimes start leaking and destroying the PCB too.

> hit up ebay and pay inflated prices.

Alternatively get involved the with retrocomputing communities. A lot of people are much more reasonable about prices, especially some of the more knowledgeable people I've met. I'll probably be selling off an SGI Indy and some T1/E1/Telecom equipment soon.

But yeah, anything particularly cool or pre-80s I've lost a lot of money on ebay. Occasionally a neat deal. I got a fully working very nice condition X-terminal for like $20 and got it (inconsistently) working with a modern Linux server over modern Ethernet LAN.

Slightly OT: But do modern computers have RTC? If not, how is time keeping done?

Yes, they still do.

So is the RTC battery still a problem in modern computers?

Yes, but modern computers tend to use CR2032 batteries that are less prone to leaking.

Or they're laptops which have their own battery issues (swelling and fire)

I've noticed that some motherboards power the clock through mains power even when turned off.

This is desirable because the mains frequency is much more accurate, long-term, than the crystal frequency. So the very best designs use a design which is mains powered as much as possible, even using a rechargeable lithium coin cell that is slowly recharged whenever mains is available, but then switch over to the crystal when no mains is available.

This sounds good for simplicity when AC power is almost always available - it would be interesting to see what the best solution is for each use case. The time synchronization from AC can drift by a second or more over one day, but it is controlled very well over longer time periods. So if you’re switching back and forth between it and quartz, especially at regular intervals error could somehow accumulate.

An interesting thing is emergency power supplies don’t always precisely control this, so after a disaster sometimes all AC connected clocks in an area drift by the same number of minutes.

NTP or radio synchronization is probably better in many cases since those are absolute rather than relative references. And GPS should normally be the best although there are cases where 1, 2 or all 3 of those might be unavailable.

accuracy isnt really important anymore for consumer gear - as long as it's accurate enough to have the month right over a few years of inactivity, it'll pass the certificate checks required to do ntp over ssl - which most modern systems do by default

That's only applicable for systems with a network connection. Many things still don't and shouldn't.

We are talking about modern computers. Not embedded devices. That is a whole separate category :)

Wouldn’t this require a specialized PSU to pass along the 50 or 60Hz AC frequency in some way?

A buddy of mine’s company still runs off of an old 486PC in a closet. Their entire company’s business records/inventory/etc are all in some DOS program that “is perfectly fine” and needs no upgrading. The owner is something like 700 years old and has decided that if that computer ever dies, he’ll just close the company. <hangsheadinshame>

Not an expert, but Qemu [a] emulates 486 systems and I think might boot a disk image taken using DD [b].

The dilemmas are:

1) Dare I disturb this hardware, particularly if it hasn’t been power-cycled for years? (calculated risk - but you need some kind of plan for when the inevitable failure happens if jobs are at stake)

2) Am I confident to attach the disk to a unix box and take an image? (Find and ask a unix guru - but it’s fairly straightforward)

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU

[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

Wouldn't it be cheaper to run an emulated DOS box on modern hardware? I can't imagine an old 486 is very energy efficient.

I suspect it's more of a know-how issue. Any changes means the guy will probably need to get up to date with new tech. Mainly a waste of time for him if every thing is working fine.

It might not be very efficient, but I doubt the energy use is large. 486s only used 3-5watts or so, nothing compared to later pentium chips that might have consumed 20-30 watts or more. Perhaps better even than a modern efficient cpu running a bloated OS and virtualization stack.

There's a story linked from HN about a Torah music software company that went through this life cycle.

Seven...hundred?

you missed the key words "something like"

I'm late to the game, but reading through the comments I'm surprised nobody mentioned the companies that harvest metals from old computer equipment and industrial machines.

There is one just outside of Toronto (in Burlington) that takes in large lots of old computers, electronics, wiring, etc. for that purpose alone. Cases get flattened and recycled as scrap metal.

When you pass the place on the Go train, you can see mountains of variously processed metals, and what looks like probably crushed/ground up plastics. I imagine they keep the rendered gold elsewhere, though.

Semi-related, I know of several people in the mechanical keyboard community who are constantly hunting for keyboards from the 70s, 80s, 90s. In some cases the switches alone can be worth $10-20+ each to dedicated collectors, not to mention Cherry keycaps that are compatible with modern mechanical keyboard builds.

I am also curious on if there are any relics of computing history just sitting there in landfill. Ultimately as a society I do think moving towards devices that can almost entirely be recycled is the only responsible way forwards.

>mechanical keyboard community who are constantly hunting for keyboards from the 70s, 80s, 90s

Wish they wouldn't. The keyboards are part of a set, including the computer itself, and many of those computers require those keyboards.

I wince every time some funko popper discards a perfectly good machine but keeps the keyboard.

I absolutely agree. In my eyes, any true enthusiast should respect preserving the computer as much as the associated keyboard.

I've not personally witnessed a keyboard hobbyist throw away a matching computer but keep the keyboard, but I do believe it probably happens in some circles.

I think people either

1. Know the keyboard they want, and want to restore it to have in a collection 2. Know which keyboard model numbers have specific parts/switches to harvest 3. Want the computer, and fixing the keyboard is a part of a much bigger project / a means to an end

Generally with harvesting, people usually replace the parts they've taken out with compatible parts, to make the original still usable with compatible computers. People only ever really harvest if they know there's a huge supply out there in the wild.

Why do you care what other people are enthusiastic about?

Like old computers are "interesting junk", if preservationists want them preserved the thing to do is buy them and preserve them.

> Why do you care what other people are enthusiastic about?

I care because I'm enthusiastic about old computers. I care because some of these systems have historic and cultural value. I care because I care.

And when people separate these systems and render large swathes of them inoperable so that they can put some "rare keyboards" on their shelf, it hurts the ability of other people to experience these historically significant and interesting systems.

And no, I'm not referring to standard x86 machines :)

Sorry, my phrasing was bad. I don't care what other's are enthusiastic about. You're right, old keyboards/computers are literally just junk that was once useful technology. It's up to every person to decide how exciting that is/isn't, and if they find one aspect interesting but not the other, that's fine.

When I said "should be", what I really meant was that in my experience people aren't just buying sets of keyboards/computers and immediately chucking out the computer as the OP suggested when they said "I wince every time some funko popper discards a perfectly good machine but keeps the keyboard.". As in, this has not been my experience at all.

> I absolutely agree. In my eyes, any true enthusiast should respect preserving the computer as much as the associated keyboard.

Not saying it's ideal, but that's capitalism. If something is more valuable as parts than a whole, it'll be stripped down for parts.

On this point, being stripped down for parts, being lovingly cleaned/restored by an enthusiast and then used/appreciated is probably a better fate for the keyboard than forever living in landfill or in a box in someones attic.

You say this as you capitalistically eat the fruit of a plant or the muscle of a cow.

It's not capitalism, it's Gaia making the best of a situation, extracting value from trash. It is ideal, because no one wants to the computer.

As someone on both sides of those hobbies, I keep hoping that is slowly being nibbled down.

10 years ago, if you wanted interesting keycaps, you had to scrap a vintage board. Now, how many truckloads do you want unloaded at your doorstep, new and cheap?

There's a bit of a meme factor with some of the vintage switches, unfortunately...

> funko popper

First time but hopefully not the last time I heard this.

My thoughts bounce around on retro computing. It's fun, but there's so much more you can do with an RPI, and so much more support.

The times I try to play with emulators and the like are short, and the interest fades pretty quickly.

Ultimately I feel like a apple II type setup on an RPI <at boot up> would scratch a lot of itches.

Yes - I know that there are plenty of libraries or just do it in the browser stuff. But there's just a brutal reduction in barriers in a switch on to basic system that would let much more people through the door.

The point is not really to just run the old software, which as you say is much easier in an emulator.

There's an element of 'antique' in the allure; A genuine Queen Anne-era writing desk has something that an MDF reproduction doesn't, almost a physical connection to the past.

I have an Amiga 1000 and I got a bit tear-eyed when I saw one in Stranger Things season 4! I had a hard-drive on it, an old RLL-encoded with ST506 interface (predates ATA?), and it booted up fine just last month even though the drive is from like 1988. I have much more recent PC disks that won't boot up anymore.

Having said that, even though all of my asm/bare-metal skills come from hacking the A1000 in asm for several years and I should have warm fuzzy feelings about it, it's a dreary experience starting it now and trying to do anything really.. It's fun for like 10 minutes. Even starting it in an emulator is an annoying experience. The UI on modern computers might look superficially the same as these old Amigas, Ataris and Macs, but a boatload of small details have been hammered out and super-optimized since then for usability..

Back on topic, I think a lot of the computers are still in the attics of middle-aged people. Or older.

I remember the sad time my old high school started to retire all the BBC Micros, Acorn 30*’s and all the Amstrad PCWs. They all just got thrown into a huge industrial skip and carted off to be crushed into our local landfill. When I think of all those lovely Acorn computers just being destroyed. We did of course salvage quite a few systems three of which I still have and fire up every now and then. This was in the early 1990s nothing got recycled.

Many of the personal home computers are in storage areas. The owners hoping that at some point they will find a use for them since they are still in great shape. Of course we know they have no use but it's hard to get rid of them.

I can’t speak for others, but some of mine are in my mini Mac museum

Apple ][c

PowerBook Duo 210

Original Barbie’s Toilet Seat iBook

G4 Cube

Original iPod

Original iPhone

All the towers had to go :(

There’s a Rework commercial running now [1] that shows a person with a wall of computers as decor and I kind of love it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNWnz2rpUf4

I also own all of these except for the ][c — The Cube has held up remarkably well and I'm still using it on a daily basis. The Clamshell however used some really cheap plastics since it basically started to fall apart just by sitting on the shelf.

> Original Barbie’s Toilet Seat iBook

Wut.

I had never heard this term before either, but knew immediately which model was being referenced.

There's a decent amount circling around amongst private collectors. The good ones go for a pretty penny too!

I run a used retro games business, and will regularly sell stuff like a C64, Amiga, IBM Clone or SpectraVision to one particular group on Facebook for $200+ in as-is/untested condition. The rare stuff goes for even more. I recently got $300 for an old Atari ST floppy drive.

The guys that buy them will often do things like de-yellow the plastic and change all the caps, and there are even new upgrades being made for many of the old PCs today (HDMI mods being a big one).

In terms of where they come from, I know that some of them make their way back from overseas e-waste (there's one guy in India in particular I'm thinking of that does junked Game Boys and vintage toys too), and there are plenty just sitting in sheds covered in dust.

BTW for about archeology, this remembers me ancient writings on birch bark.

They was not time-prone, so mostly just disappear. And now people ask, are you sure, existed such civilization?

How it is possible, we know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism but no journals, no blogs of ancient people, who done such smart things?

Some of them are collecting dust in attics and garages; I know my parents still have a Pentium 166 from 1997.

I've (slowly) learned that the attic or basement ewaste just sits there for years and eventually has to be gotten rid of anyway at some point. Even if someone would get some genuine pleasure out of it in some manner, connecting with that person is probably way more trouble than most people are going to go to.

Anyone interested in this must watch the two LGR videos on a huge warehouse called "computer reset" that has been clearing out. Here's the first: https://youtu.be/rvM82T3C2Ik

Many are sitting in my house rn.

Apple buried ~2,700 unsold Lisa computers in a Logan, Utah landfill in 1989.

I have an SWTP 6800 computer from around 1978, with keyboard, monitor, mag tape drive. Condition TBD. I could sell it at a reasonable price to a collector.

They've all gone to Silicon Heaven. :)

I have an Apple II+ and an Amiga 500 sitting in my parent's basement storage.

They used to get shipped to China as e-Waste but probably in a landfill somewhere.

In China anything of this ilk is stripped for metal. The cases would have been the first thing to go. Perhaps the boards would have been melted for copper, but now perhaps this is less profitable and/or more difficult to achieve with increasing environmental enforcement operations in developed coastal provinces.

The Basel Action Network has some videos documenting this practice [0]. Now there is an import ban on e waste and plastic in China and indeed increased enforcement. This of course does not make the problem disappear.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L00YUD9d5ug

One or two are sitting on my shelves.

They're in my basement ;]

Are you my mom?

they're all busy mining retrocoins in some farm in Kazakhstan

Welcome to the CRC-enforced blockchain!