I don't agree with the author here. The ARM replacing the chips is not bad, just the nature of what technical possibilities we have now. And having some funky chips in an old design does not help with repairing it.

I think OP has some sort of nostalgia that is not always well placed for old electronics.

OP here, I didn't phrase that right. It was meant along the lines of "Look at all these mechanical linkages, its all replaced by relay logic now-a-days". Indeed, a SoC + PMIC and a few stray bypass caps will replace the whole motherboard - that's a great thing.

It's sort of like appreciating old timers for doing what they had to do with the tools they had at the time - how NES game developers had 40KB of space to fit their game in which lead to some incredible resourceful hacks [1]. Obviously, today's game engines are "better" in every metric possible if by "better" we measure those metrics as higher/faster/easier == better. There is also a fascinating reason why a game engine like Pico8 [2] exists when we have almost unlimited compute/storage resources and if everything was "better" in the modern age :)

OP does have nostalgia, otherwise why would he purchase old useless gadgets? ;)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21213840 [2] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

I can happily say your right but also just a little wrong in the best possible way. These guys https://www.numworks.com are building a “modern” graphing calculator, using an ARM Cortex-M chip and ABS plastic... but it’s an open hardware and software design that is documented and tinkering friendly.

I haven’t needed to buy one yet since the second hand CFX-9850GB PLUS i own is still working well enough for me, having picked it up out of nostalgia for having used that model through high school and university, but if that ever breaks I’ll buy one, I may even buy it before hand just to support their excellent work and commitment to open hardware.