How do you like the Woodstock calculators?

[Kostas Kritsilas]

(12-30-2021 02:34 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  I too have concluded that age is key ingredient in this infamous Woodstock susceptibility, but what is affected, and how, is unclear to me. AFAIK (and I don't know much at all about this) chips don't age in the sense that they are more prone to fail as they get older, right? If someone can explain this, I'd love to learn more about it.

Bob:

Chips can certainly "age". While this is not specific to the ACT, there have been documented cases of chips failing over time due to defects in the way the base silicon was "doped", corrosion of the leads, plastics (used for the cases) deteriorating, and a number of other things. Just check, for example, the audio chips on the Commodore C64 (approximately same age as the Classics and Woodstocks). A significant percentage of them have gone "bad", and this includes units that were never even soldered onto boards. There are many cases of chips going bad on all sorts of electronics that were put away for many years that were functional when put aside. A lot of this is not a wear out mechanism, but more related to the way the parts were manufactured and possibly the chemistry involved. This extends to not only complex ICs, but to basic "glue logic" 74XXYY parts.