Are computers getting too complicated?

tech explorer

tech explorer

New Member
Computers get faster. More and more transistors are getting packed into chips. More and more features are built into computers.

I've been thinking in terms of computer performance. Do they break down more easily? Are they harder to fix? More difficult to maintain? Or is this concern over nothing?

I figure the ones who are in the repair business can best answer these important questions. Really haven't seen any discussion in this area so I apologize if I'm duplicating.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
The chips themselves are much more complicated but the vast majority of computer repair is either faulty hardware that gets replaced or software issues. I don't see why they'd be any harder to fix and computers seem just as reliable now as they ever have been. Granted I'm fairly "young" compared to a lot of users here so I don't know much about computersand how they behaved before the earlyish 2000's. Maintaining is probably easier than before as better software is available for free that is more effective. (CCleaner and MalwareBytes come to mind).
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
My answer to this question is no. I've found that newer parts are certainly more durable, what with better protection against ESD on motherboards now and stuff like that.
 
Dynamite PC

Dynamite PC

New Member
No, being in the repair business for more than 13 years has proved that more people are becoming more PC literate, which is what my website hopes to improve. If you think about it, today is run by more computers than yesterday. Manufacturers are going to try and make it easier for consumers to be able to troubleshoot issues on their own so that said consumers will bring their business to that manufacturer rather than the next. In my opinion, computers and computer technology today, is much easier to understand
 
Machin3

Machin3

New Member
WRXGuy1 said:
No, people are just getting dumber.
Click to expand...

This. They made windows 8 and the windows phone with all the windows on the main screen saying its supposed to "simplify technology" How does it simplify technology if I have to flip through a hundred boxes to find what im looking for?

If anything, computers are getting simpler because people are too lazy to do anything anyways so they say, "Hey Ill buy an $800 computer that will open everything with one click and its all going to be right there in front of my face because that's easy."
 
Aastii

Aastii

VIP Member
Whilst the components are getting more complex, that is to a component manufacturer, not to a consumer or pc repair business. To everyman, components still fit industry standards in shape and form factor, so an entire component is no more difficult to replace now than it was 10 years ago.

The limits to which one can change an individual component on the PCB also remain unchanged, you previously could not change say an individual transistor, even with an 8080 they were far too small, but you can change a larger component, such as capacitors, it is just soldered on.

Then there is software. Whilst that too has become substantially larger and more complicated, it is far more stable than it was 20 years ago.

It is arguably the same difficulty, if not easier, now compared to 20 years ago
 
mtb211

mtb211

Active Member
Machin3 said:
This. They made windows 8 and the windows phone with all the windows on the main screen saying its supposed to "simplify technology" How does it simplify technology if I have to flip through a hundred boxes to find what im looking for?

."
Click to expand...

haha I agree, and thank you for the laugh
 
strollin

strollin

Well-Known Member
While the hardware may be getting more complicated due to component density and packing more features into a smaller space, many of the tasks required to install components have been greatly simplified.

As an example, here's what I had to do to install my first hard drive (Seagate ST-225, 20M) in an IBM PC/XT in 1984:

Needed correct controller card as support for the drive was built-in to the controller. The machine's simple BIOS had zero support for hard drives. The controller could only be used with hard drives that it knew about, consequently, drives often were sold/shipped with compatible controller.

There were 2 ribbon cables that needed to be attached as well as a power cable. If you reversed either of the cables while plugging them in at best the drive wouldn't work until reversed but could also blow something in the drive or controller.

Once the drive was physically installed, it had to be "low level formatted". This required invoking a format routine in the controller's BIOS by using a program that came with DOS called debug. You would boot DOS froma floppy drive then run debug and enter a cryptic command such as: "g=c800:5". This was basically an address in the controller's BIOS that debug would jump to and start executing instructions. You needed to know how many heads and cylinders the drive had plus some other info that was less critical such as what cylinder write-precompensation started. On a label on top of the drive was a list of which sectors had been determined to be bad by the mfr, you could enter that list to tell the drive not to try and use those sectors. The low level format took a long time (even for a 20M drive) because the the drive was also verified during that time.

Once the drive was low level formatted, it then needed to be partitioned which required you to boot DOS from a floppy and use the FDISK utility to partition the drive.

After the drive was partitioned, you could then boot from a floppy and format the drive. If you wanted to make the drive bootable you entered "format C: /S" which copied the system files to the drive after format and then you could remove the floppy from the floppy drive and reboot.

If you had done everything correctly the machine would now boot to a DOS prompt such as: "C:\". Congratulations, your drive was now installed. Unfortunately, virtually no software that had been written as of now knew anything about hard drives so you were pretty much on your own as far as installing and getting software to run that essentially always looked for the A: drive to read/write.
 
G

gigabiteme

New Member
computers seem to be way simpler,i'm 58 and never had any experience with computers
and i've built 5 now since last june-not boasting- it's mostly from shared knowledge from forums like this and reading that got me interested-and rude salespeople at comp.stores
put me off of buying one premade off the shelf
 
Last edited:
Twiki

Twiki

Active Member
strollin said:
While the hardware may be getting more complicated due to component density and packing more features into a smaller space, many of the tasks required to install components have been greatly simplified.

As an example, here's what I had to do to install my first hard drive (Seagate ST-225, 20M) in an IBM PC/XT in 1984:

Needed correct controller card as support for the drive was built-in to the controller. The machine's simple BIOS had zero support for hard drives. The controller could only be used with hard drives that it knew about, consequently, drives often were sold/shipped with compatible controller.

There were 2 ribbon cables that needed to be attached as well as a power cable. If you reversed either of the cables while plugging them in at best the drive wouldn't work until reversed but could also blow something in the drive or controller.

Once the drive was physically installed, it had to be "low level formatted". This required invoking a format routine in the controller's BIOS by using a program that came with DOS called debug. You would boot DOS froma floppy drive then run debug and enter a cryptic command such as: "g=c800:5". This was basically an address in the controller's BIOS that debug would jump to and start executing instructions. You needed to know how many heads and cylinders the drive had plus some other info that was less critical such as what cylinder write-precompensation started. On a label on top of the drive was a list of which sectors had been determined to be bad by the mfr, you could enter that list to tell the drive not to try and use those sectors. The low level format took a long time (even for a 20M drive) because the the drive was also verified during that time.

Once the drive was low level formatted, it then needed to be partitioned which required you to boot DOS from a floppy and use the FDISK utility to partition the drive.

After the drive was partitioned, you could then boot from a floppy and format the drive. If you wanted to make the drive bootable you entered "format C: /S" which copied the system files to the drive after format and then you could remove the floppy from the floppy drive and reboot.

If you had done everything correctly the machine would now boot to a DOS prompt such as: "C:\". Congratulations, your drive was now installed. Unfortunately, virtually no software that had been written as of now knew anything about hard drives so you were pretty much on your own as far as installing and getting software to run that essentially always looked for the A: drive to read/write.
Click to expand...

LOL, don't I know it. After that I use a program called SpinRite to see if I can improve the interleave on the drive so it'll read/write data as fast as it can.
 
FuryRosewood

FuryRosewood

Active Member
Basically what he is saying alot of the tasks we take for granted now, were very very difficult to do back in the day, including installing ram and addon cards.
 
K

kbit

New Member
Do they break more easily? Yes , how else will will manufacturers make money? Easier to fix? Of course , how else will they make money? Harder to maintain? No , dirt , dust and overheating still are the main culprits in computer breakdowns and the manufacturers want a product to slightly outlast the warranty. Over all ,computers are better and easier than ever to repair and maintain , just don't expect them to last longer.
 
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