retard wrote:
There's no reason why they would break. Few months ago I was
reconfiguring an old server at work which still used two 16-bit 10
megabit ISA network cards. I fetched a kernel upgrade (2.6.27.something).
It's a modern kernel which is still maintained and had up-to-date drivers
for the 20 year old device! Those devices have no moving parts and are
stored inside EMP & UPS protected strong server cases. How the heck could
they break?
Same thing, can't imagine how a video card could break. The old ones
didn't even have massive cooling solutions, the chips didn't even need a
heatsink. The only problem is driver support, but on Linux it mainly gets
better over the years.
I paid my way through college hand-making electronics boards for professors and
engineers.
All semiconductors have a lifetime that is measured by the area under the curve
of their temperature over time. The doping in the semiconductor gradually
diffuses through the semiconductor, the rate of diffusion increases as the
temperature rises. Once the differently doped parts "collide" the semiconductor
fails.
