A decent mobo might last 40 years.
A problem with later ones is that to read "foreign" floppy formats you need a real floppy port which can be wired to 8", 5.25", 3.5" or 3" drives. Apple II drives and some others won't work, but every CP/M, MPM. ISIS, DOS format should.
Also some interfaces are only on PCI slots, not PCIe, or else horrendously expensive PCIe cards, and cheap or you already have them on PCI, such as: SCSI, GPIB, DVB-S2 card, older 5V and later 3.3V PCMCIA (very many PCMCIA card functions never made it to Express Card or USB). A USB interface for joystick, serial or parallel might not work properly compared to PCI, which seem compatible with older ISA.
I did regretfully send a lot of working XT, AT and 486 mobos, some CRTS, PSUs and old Pentiums (II, III, 4), inc one with EISA slots and a Pentium Pro to recycling. Ran out of space.
Oldest working laptops are 2000 and 2002. Lots of newer laptops and netbooks from family unrepairable and gone to recycling.
A current 64 bit Linux is better on old mobo that has a floppy port to read strange floppies than any Windows since XP. Even XP was difficult. Real DOS 6.22 with NICE22 and a CP/M emulator was easier.
Last edited by Quoth; 10-30-2022 at 07:04 PM.
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