looking at some LX parts, and wondering what age they will be.
Things like M580 HT2 crankset,etc.

No idea but my rear mech’s not died out yet and it’s LX!

LX is not dead it’s been replaced by SLX for MTBs and given a sideways shove into the touring groupsets
Shimano website is down now but have a look later

I think it happened at the end of 2008??

thanks, I meant dead in the MTB world.
I thought it was 08 / 09 or somewhere around there.

Pretty sure I got my Merlin in summer 2008 with full LX setup. Week after it was ordered SLX finally came out (I had been waiting for it and told it would be another month or so) and it was an option for an extra £30 🙁

But then a month later it all went t*ts up and Shimano hiked up their prices and I think LX got changed over to a touring group then and made a bit more curvy and rubbish looking.

tbh LX stuff is very good and very under-rated, mine is still very smooth and looks like the day it was made as the silver finish is much better at hiding marks than black finishes. Quite annoying really as I want a reason to replace it with SLX or XT but there is just no reason!

The rear derailleurs are basically XT from the year before, as are the brake levers and possibly the calipers as they use the same pads as my 775 XTs on the other bike but are just a lot chunkier calipers as they are 2 piece.

Cranks are fine, don’t seem to suffer from shoe rub as much as others and good stiffness to weight. Only improvement you can make is update the rings to SLX ones when they wear out as they are a bit nicer but you have to do some fettling with a file and the original BB is not quite as good as an SLX/XT one but has never let me down so far.