Will Our Old Videogame Consoles Die Soon?

RetroGaming with racketboy is a nifty site aimed at people addicted to classic gaming consoles. racketboy posted a thoughtful piece a couple of weeks ago wondering how long we could expect our old Atari 2600s and SEGA Saturns to last.

His thoughts? Cart-based classics will most likely outlive their CD/DVD-based cousins, if only because tdisc-based systems have complicated electro-optical mechanisms. He also reports that one of his online buddies is finding many dead Nintendo SNES systems, while the old SEGA Genesis consoles seems to be going on strong.

I suspect that old 8-bit consoles will be easiest to keep running. They used through-hole circuit boards that are a lot easier to repair than modern surface-mount devices, so replacing a dead chip or leaky capacitor isn't an impossibility. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences with old consoles. Which ones take a licking and keep on ticking? Which should be avoided?

Will Our Old Consoles Die Soon? (RetroGaming with racketboy)