My grandfather's axe paradox...

[The Yosemite Bear]

ok what is the most you have contnouslly upgraded a system until there are no original parts?

yes I did it with an Original Tandy TRS 80, that I managed to upgrade into a 286 by the time I was done with it.

[LadyTevar]

......... A Trash-80 that could run 286? Wow.

My mom's ACER is still running, without anything added. Hell, it doesn't even have Windows.

[Alyeska]

Built my own PC in summer of 2001. I did enough of an upgrade in 2003 to consider it a new computer. I used the original case, the NIC card, the floppy drive, DVD, and CDR/RW. Since then I've replaced the case. Next upgrade is going to be even more thurough leaving me with only the case and HDs.

I tend to do bulk upgrades rather then periodic upgrades. So my system suddenly changes massively and is definately a new computer when I'm finished. I usualy have enough parts I can cobble together a second working machine if I wanted too.

[Uraniun235]

I upgraded an NEC PentiumII-350 into my current computer (Athlon64).

The last original part left from the old NEC was the 56k Winmodem, but after we got DSL at my house a few months ago(and I took home an external 56k from work), I took out the internal modem.

I still have the modem, the original 2x DVD-ROM drive, and the original floppy drive in storage.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My second computer of my very own consisted of the following:

A PC-AT clone case with power supply. The AT (it could well have been an XT-clone motherboard) was pulled out to make room for an 80486 server motherboard with sixteen SIMM slots, and eight EISA slots. I stuck in an 80486DX-33 into it, some peripheral cards scavenged from other 286 and 386 machine, an old VGA (eventually upgraded to a Trident SVGA) card, a CD-ROM, and 5.25" full-height workhorse of Seagate SCSI server drive that had ~600 MB capacity and had suffered some calamity in the past that caused it to have a number of bad sectors. The drive worked fantastically in spite of this, and I eventually had a 24x CD-ROM drive in the computer (in spite of some folks who maintained that a 24x was ludicrously excessive in speed for a 486.)

The most sophisticated game I ran on that thing was Wing Commander IV.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Isn't this more of a computer analogue of the Ship of Theseus, AKA Theseus' Paradox?

[Alyeska]

When does it cease to be the original.

In my book if someone does periodic replacements and keeps the item closely resembling the original specifications, it is still the original item. However, if someone does a massive replacement of the majority of the item all at once, its not the same thing because it wasn't a slow process where things remained similar year after year.

When you get down to computers, its a little different. Replacement often includes replacement with significantly different components.

Though I think a named object is an important distinction. A named object will always be itself even when updated and replaced part by part.

[Pu-239]

Replaced the hard drive in my current computer (castoff from my cousin) - (12GB to 40 GB) after it died, and added an ATA controller since the motherboard didn't support 30+GB HDDs, then CDROM drives (which were soo old- 6x), swapped the modem for an external, added a NIC, added 256MB of RAM, added a SCSI card and Plextor SCSI CD burner then replaced the motherboard and CPU (Redfox/Intel Chipset, PII-450), w/ another motherboard and CPU(Abit/Via Chipset, PIII-550)- note that all replacements were of broken parts or due to newer parts people have cast off. Don't remember when I swapped the PSU when that blew up. Computer takes forever to boot up since the SCSI and ATA cards have to boot.


Basically the only things left from the original is the case, graphics card (which is ancient- TNT2), sound card (SBLive), and the original 256MB of RAM.

I'll get the Mobo/RAM/CPU/GPU upgrade when AMD comes out w/ the Socket M2 processors w/ Pacifica (I really want the virtualization features- dual booting takes forever)

[Exonerate]

I got this current computer in 1999... And since then I've replaced the CPU and mobo twice, video card twice, RAM 3 times, monitor twice, and CD-ROM drive once. I think the only parts that have been here all along are the HD, keyboard, speakers, and printer.

[LordChaos]

ummm.. does this count?

The floppy drive in my current system is the floppy that came in my 486 Acer back in, oh, I belive it was 95, and is the only part of that machine still in existance. (haven't upgraded it cause there realy aint a floppy upgrade...)

[FSTargetDrone]

I have a 10 year old Compaq 978CDTV that originally shipped with a 75MHz Pentium, 8 MB of RAM, Windows 3.1 on a 640 MB (more or less) hard drive and a whopping 1 meg of video ram. It had a TV tuner card and a cable TV input on the back, so you could attach the thing to your cable service and watch TV while playing Solitaire. It actually let me play Duke Nukem 3D and Tie Fighter pretty well. It also came with a free upgrade coupon to Windows 95. It was the first computer I ever regularly used.

Well, it still works. Some years ago I upgraded the processor to a 233 MHz "Turbo" something-or-other, 64MB RAM, another hard drive (under 10 GB) and a Diamond Stealth II 220S with 4 megs vidRAM. The keyobard it came with has been my favorite keyboard ever. Simple, clean design with no crap shortcut keys, needless curvatures or whatnot. I've used that keyboard with every new machine I've gotten over the years.

[Lord Pounder]

I still have some of the original IDE cables and floppy drive from my 1st PC, a Pentium 133 that i bought in 1997, if that counts.

[Crazy_Vasey]

ok what is the most you have contnouslly upgraded a system until there are no original parts?

yes I did it with an Original Tandy TRS 80, that I managed to upgrade into a 286 by the time I was done with it.

The only bit left of my original PC by the time I gave it to my brother was the floppy disc drive and some of the internal cables.

[Dakarne]

Maybe a screw in the left side panel?

I think that would about cover what's left of my original PC in my current one...

[Shadowhawk]

I got my own computer in 1998. It has been through two major upgrade cycles. P2 226 -> 1GHz Athlon -> Athlon64 3200+. Each cycle brought a new case, so maybe they don't count as upgrades.

All that remains of my original computer is the Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard I got with it.