People still run Commodore 64s. There are demo scenes, old hardware enthusiasts that squeeze crazy performance out of old hardware, even a guy who use a Raspberry Pi to emulate an NES cartridge and get his unmodified NES to play SNES games:
Old hardware can often be repaired. If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years, he or she wouldn't shell out the $$ on it, but today people buy $400~$800 cellphones that turn into garbage.
Unsurprisingly, there's even a few hacks out there for upgrading old C64s with newer/better components, too, if you want to get another couple decades out of it. There's even new manufacture C64-compatible enthusiast boards being produced [1], although I believe you may have to supply your own SID chip. The latter doesn't count much for this topic, but it illustrates there's some interest. Further, the parts that are likely to break over time are fairly trivial for someone with soldering skills to replace. I know of at least a couple people who preemptively replaced capacitors on old C64s they bought and refurbished.
> If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years, he or she wouldn't shell out the $$ on it, but today people buy $400~$800 cellphones that turn into garbage.
I wouldn't put money on that. A C64's starting price was $600 in 1982 dollars. For $154 in 1982, quite a few people might have been willing.
When was the last time a Commodore 64 received a vendor-issued software upgrade? Because that's what we're talking about. Not how long will the hardware last, but how long will the manufacturer release software updates.
"If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years..."
That was pretty much expected. Hardware upgrades were just as fast and furious as they are now, if not moreso. Backwards compatibility with years-old systems at the consumer level was a byproduct, not a plan.
