I first built my PC in '92. Back then it was a fire-breathing 25 mhz 386 with a whopping 2 meg of RAM and a giant 130 meg hard drive. Over time, I’ve periodically replaced parts to keep up with progress. Today, the only original parts remaining are the 3.5" drive and it’s cable. Every other part has been replaced at some point; the monitor, keyboard, case, mouse, everything. I even kept the 5.25" floppy drive installed until it died a just a couple of months ago.
My question is, is this still the same computer? On one hand, the vast majority has been replaced. But on the other hand, there was never a single moment where I threw out everything and started over. Not one individual upgrade where you would stop and say that now it’s a whole new computer. What constitutes the computer, anyway? Is it the hardware? Software? Some combination of the two? Or is it some intangible “spirit”, if you will, that is greater than the sum of it’s parts?
Wow. That’s deep, and yet, mundane and pointless. If there was ever a point where you replaced the harddrive and had all of your former memory cleared, then I might say it was a new computer then, but I don’t know. Hasn’t this question been asked for millions of years (about people, not computers) without a satisfactory answer?
The “computer” is the processor. Everything else is a peripheral. Everything else. So, each time you upgraded the processor, you got a new computer.
Now, for a personal perspective, you never changed “your computer”. At each stage of the saga, you could always point to a particular thing and say “That’s my computer.” But this is only because we are sloppy with our language.
I just replaced a 1.1Ghz processor with a 1.8Ghz processor on a machine. It isn’t a new machine, trust me.
At some point you had to replace the processor and MB. That’s my demarcation.
BTW, it’s the same “PC upgrade creep” with me: Only I started much further back with a 10Mhz XT clone. I still have the original MSDOS 3.3 files on the current HD.
Jet Jaguar, good question. And yes, it is quite philosophical (and it’s NOT pointless!). In fact, philosophers have already worked on the question and have come up with a very good answer. I present to you:
On my eighteenth birthday, my grandpa gave me his favorite wood-chopping ax as a gift. It had been his grandaddy’s ax, he said, and it was just as good as the day his granddaddy had bought it at the general store. It had lasted something like a century and a half, faithfully chopping the family firewood every fall, keeping the family warm in the winter. Damn near a hundred and fifty years old, and in all that time, my grandpa and his grandpa together only replaced the handle six times and the blade twice.
If you replace the motherboard with a different kind of motherboard (different chips on it, different slots on it, etc), it’s a new computer.
Replacing the hard drive with a new one and starting off your software from scratch = it’s a new computer.
Replacing the motherboard with an identical one 'cuz the first one burned out or your sister bent the pins on it or something = still the same computer.
Upgrading the CPU chip = still the same computer.
Replacing the hard drive with a bigger newer faster one, but moving all your old files and operating system(s) and so forth from the old one = still the same computer.
More RAM, installing new software in addition to old, upgrading the OS, = still the same computer.
New mouse, keyboard, monitor, new PCI cards, new removable-media drives = still the same computer.
New case, same innnards = still the same computer.
My WallStreet PowerBook was purchased in early 1999. In '01, the hinges on the lid / screen were rapidly wearing out, so I bought a dead one on eBay. Swapped the hard drive, the RAM, the processor daughtercard, and moved the modem (the dead one didn’t have a modem for some reason). It’s the same computer despite being in a new “case” (the laptop body) and having a “new” motherboard (identical to the one in the old case).
Anything other than just trivial connections to its beginings would be good enough for me to say that it’s still the same computer.
After all, our cells dies and are replaced entirely and we look nothing like we did when we were born but we would like to believe we are the same person we were then.
The truth is probably that we (and the computers) are both.
My thought would be yes. There’s not a cell anywhere in your body that was there when you were born (assuming you’re not a 6 year old prodigy) and you’re the same person, so the same would seem to be true of the inanimate.
yes i think that your computer is now a different computer,
if you performed the same operation on a human, taking him apart piece by piece and replacing each part individually eventually you would have a different person.
personally i think that what would make an old computer into a new computer is the same idea that i have about what would make an “old” person into a new person… that would be the old computer becomes the newcomputer when both the way it thinks and the way it interacts with other computers both have changed entirely then the computer is a new computer but since it happened in stages ill explain my idea with a little chart. And i understand that this idea is an over personification of a machine, but bear with me.
The first letter is the way it thinks(processor,memory,hdd) the second, the way it acts.
AB–>CD . this is when you buy a new computer with totally different hard ware.
AB–>AC–>DC–>DE
this scenario represents the upgrading process, notice computer DC is new compared to AB, but not to AC a former version of itself
AB–>AC–>AD–>ED
the only new computer here relative to AB is ED.
hmm… well i maybe just clouded my point more…i shouldnt post late at night.
I think replacing the CPU is like giving a person a new brain with the old memories implanted into it. This is very philosophical. I suppose having a different system of getting to your memories would make you act on those memories in a different way. Are you a new person?
If you replace the hard drive normally, its only like upgrading a person’s ability to store memories, but you’ve left the same memories, access to them, and ability to process them. This is still the same computer, but there’s a slight difference.
Replacing peripherals is just like getting new clothes, cars and houses. Maybe your friends think you have changed, but you’re still the same person.
Replacing a motherboard is nebulous. Your brain and your memories are interacting differently and even your brain is operating slightly differently. This, I would say, is a new computer.
If it’s the same CPU but you wipe your hard drive, remove the OS, all its software, and install a new one, is it really the same computer?
What do we call the “computer”? Do you mean your tower, monitor, mouse, and keyboard? In that case, replacing the mouse ball would mean you have a different computer.
Consumer-wise, when people get a new computer, sometimes all that is implied is getting a new tower, but is it fair to call the floppy drive part of the “computer” and not the keyboard just because it’s IN the tower.
I think some people are taking too much of a “non-philosophical” look at this-- with the “the processor is the computer,” or “the motherboard is the computer,” etc. Well, yeah, they’re right, on one level (though I’ve always thought of a computer being a collection of all the peripherals, and the cpu… not just one part of the collection).
IMHO, if you replace the processor, or some PCI (or ISA, in the OPs case heh) cards, the change can be (kinda) analogous to how a person changes through the years. A person may look, or act (or both) completely different on two separate occasions, but that doesn’t mean they were someone else for a few moments, or anything like that.
Yeah, IIRC you have a set number of brain cells when you’re born, and that’s what you go off of until your final day. I think this is why stem-cell research (among other reasons) was such a big deal-- it’s a way of “creating new” brain cells.
Buckminster Fuller liked to propose the following analogy (I’m paraphrasing from memory, so faults are likely mine, not Fuller’s):
Take a length of twine. Splice that to a length of hemp rope. Splice that to a length of yarn. Now tie a slipknot in the twine.
Where did the knot come from? It is order imposed from outside, in the form of twine.
Now slip the knot along from the twine to the rope. Same knot, but now it is made of something different. Slip it further along, now it’s made of yarn. Slip it along again until it ‘comes off’ the end of our string. Where did it go? What was it? It was only a system of order superimposed onto raw materials.
Fuller used this analogy to imagine what human beings were. Since one’s cells were always dying and being replaced, he estimated that the raw stuff of which we are made actually completely changed over every six months or so.
So stuff that six months ago was part of atmosphere and plants and animals and earth has come together to comprise one’s current organism, and six months from now all that you are currently comprised of will have gone on to comprise other objects or beings. We are the slipknots tied in matter.
Similarly, your computer, as organized–I mean to say assembled–by you, retains its identity though its components variously change. Not until you get a whole new computer is it . . . er . . . a whole new computer.
I think we should all read Ray Bradbury’s Bicentennial Man and then meditate on that for a while… and then watch the Robin William’s film and ask ourselves… Is it still the same story?
I’d say the dividing line is a new case. Mainly because any time I’ve bought a new case, it also means I’m getting a better mobo, CPU, and power supply (at the very least) to go into the new case. Once the new computer is up and functioning, I’ll cannibalize the old computer for RAM, HDDs, etc.
I suppose someone might replace ONLY the case and keep all the same internals… but… why?
Okay, so no one thinks my first post was the definitive answer. Time for Plan B.
A different floppy+cable does not make a new computer.
Let’s assume that Jet Jaguar has kept all parts from the original onward. (I actually have done this with my old XT.)
Rebuild a previous incarnation of the computer from the old parts and add in a floppy drive+cable.
Jet Jaguar now has two computers. Clearly they are not the same computer. Also, the newest version cannot have higher precedence over the older version in terms of being labelled “the same computer” as the original.
Ergo.
The current version is not the same computer as the original.
BTW: Analogies to people, axes, etc. are not suitable. This is a computer. It has discrete parts, some far more important than others. (And cases are way down the list, IMHO.) Due to the way computer tech has happened, there had to be at least one point where both the MB and CPU were changed at the same time. That’s the best possible dividing line that I can think of.
