DonCorson
[AHCI]
3358
It is worse than you think...
Even if a steel part for an old watch is no longer available, a watch restorer could make one.
With the advances of semiconductor technology the production lines for
the old parts are torn up and thrown away. Even if you had the
design information of those old ICs there are no production lines
available to make them any more. Of course it is theoretically
possible to make them again, but the investment needed is many, many,
many orders of magnitude more than you need to make a steel or brass
part.
Electronics is throw away technology, even at the low temperatures of
watch ICs the doping will wander with time. At some point one of
the transistors will stop working and.. there you have it.
In 100 years our mechanical watches will all be still working or at
least servicable. Maybe you will replace the springs with newer
steel, but they will work. The quartz watches all be comfortably
filling a
waste heap somewhere.
Don
Concerns about mechanical driven capacitor watches. Seiko, Citizen, Ventura.
Bernard, for a quartz watch to last 10-20 years...
Seiko parts availability: 10 years
