I inherited a library's source code via an escrow process back in the 90s when the vendor went out of business. It was written in C and came with no documentation. It took a while to get the thing to build and understand where all the pieces were, but it wasn't too bad after that initial ramp up. I ended up maintaining that code for many years, doing everything from porting from x.25 to tcp/ip to making changes to the application layer protocol to keep up with industry changes.
My favorite memory was a comment I found buried in an exception handling section of code:
/* We would like to think that this would work well */
All in all, the escrow process was worth it for us as it was a critical piece of functionality that would have been difficult to replace otherwise.
I'm still using my i7 860 with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 that I built in 2010. I've replaced hard drives over the years. My current boot drive is a Samsung 860 SSD. Everything else is original including my 4GB DDR3 1600x RAM, 700W PSU,Gigabyte GA-P55A motherboard and Samsung 24" 1920x1200 monitor. I started with Windows 7 Pro, and upgraded to Windows 10. Obviously, the machine is not Windows 11 compatible.
I mainly use the machine for web browsing, light gaming, office software, and hobby programming. I used it as a media server with TV capture cards (cards are still in it) for years until I recently bought a Synology NAS that now hosts my Plex server. The machine has been running 24/7 outside of power outages and occasional periods no one was at home.
It's started having problems with Windows updates causing it to enter a BSOD boot loop. I've had to reinstall the OS a few times and disable automatic updates. I figure my hardware combination is the culprit.
I keep starting the process to replace it with modern hardware but never follow through. I don't know why it's taking me so long to replace it, since I'm not strapped for cash. I think it boils down to that I just don't "need" something better.