A quick google suggested that '96 era flash chips had a write-count expectancy of ~100,000. So if you were flashing your kernel/updating boot animations 3 times a day, it should still last about 90 years, and I imagine that (as great as it is) the empeg may just be obsolete by then.

Of course, I didn't bother to check the actual flash chip used in the empeg, so this figure may be wrong. I'll leave that as an exercise for somebody else