[colug-432] What causes electronics to expire?

[Chris Embree]

We've only been reverse-engineering this Alien technology since the 1950's.
 We probably only know 10% of what we need to make it really work correctly.

Doesn't everyone know this?


On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 12:55 PM, Steve Roggenkamp <roggenkamps at acm.org>wrote:

> Probably several things.  Warning:  speculation follows.
>
> 1. Differential heating could cause cracks to form in the traces.
> 2. Atoms migrating out of place in semiconductors.
> On Dec 13, 2012 12:32 PM, "Joshua Kramer" <joskra42.list at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So as it turns out, the external enclosure in which I had my 500GB drive,
>> is flaky.
>>
>> I put the new 1TB drive in this enclosure to use as a backup drive.  I
>> put the old 500GB drive (that was giving me "can't read sector" I/O errors)
>> on a small SATA-USB adapter I had.  When I started copying from the old to
>> the new, the new 1TB drive was giving all kinds of I/O errors.
>>
>> I hung the 500GB drive off of an internal SATA interface of my PC, and I
>> connected the 1TB drive to the SATA-USB adapter.  Now, I am copying things
>> over with no I/O errors.
>>
>> What's interesting is, for the past 18 months or so I've kept this
>> enclosure in a cool, dark closet... and I've only moved it once every 1-2
>> weeks to do backups.  And I only plug it into a UPS-protected outlet.
>>
>> So I wonder what, barring an external physical event, causes a transistor
>> or two to work one day, and then the next, say, "you know what?  I've had
>> enough on/off cycles in my lifetime, I quit!"
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -JK
>>
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