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The Impractical but Indisputable Rise of Retrocomputing (nytimes.com) 137

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
For all the personal technology introduced and popularized in 2020 -- upscale fitness bikes, at-home Covid tests, game consoles new and old -- the personal computer lands on the list with a bit of a thud. PCs lack the novelty of other gadgets, but they're practical, essential even, in a year when work, school and social life have come to rely heavily upon them. From a report: While modern, ever more efficient computers are selling better than they have in years, vintage computers -- impractical old devices in need of repairs and out-of-production parts -- are also in demand on sites like eBay. Collectors also flock to message boards, subreddits and Discord servers to buy, sell and trade parts. People are buying these PCs not necessarily for daily use, but for the satisfaction they get from rebuilding them. It's a trend one might chalk up to quarantine boredom, though it's been gaining traction for years.

Retrocomputing, the hobby is called, is hardly just a way to pass the time. Instead, as enthusiasts see it, it's a means of communing with the past. "You get into this mind-set of what it must've been like to be somebody in the late '70s, having spent thousands of dollars on this thing that barely does anything more than a calculator," said Clint Basinger, 34, who runs the YouTube channel Lazy Game Reviews. (The devices do allow retrocomputers to make art and music using software unavailable on new computers and to play 8-bit games, but not much else beyond that.) "It's like a time machine to me," Mr. Basinger added. Before the pandemic, there were several vintage computing conventions located around the United States, to which collectors brought their computers to show off. Attendees bought and traded hardware at these events, as well as meet the friends they've made online.
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The Impractical but Indisputable Rise of Retrocomputing

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  • The 8 Bit Guy (Score:5, Informative)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @04:29PM (#60934870) Homepage Journal

    He's the only one you need watch.

    Full Disclosure: He's my brother. :-)

    • Does that mean Dimebag Darrel was your cousin? To be honest, I'm more impressed with the 8-Bit guy relation, though.

    • Ben Eater or GTFO. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @04:56PM (#60935024)

      Complete discrete CPU from scratch. On breadboards.
      Teaches you how to build it, design your own instruction set, program it, and even comes with a VGA video card.
      Easy enough so your teenage kid can do it.

      Yeah. You need to watch it, now..., I know. :)
      https://m.youtube.com/playlist... [youtube.com]
      Video card: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

      • Seconded. Ben's videos are great. If you like this sort of thing you might also like the course "From NAND to Tetris". I took it on, IIRC, Coursera and it was fantastic.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        Ugh, breadboard. Can I get that in wirewrap please?

      • I met a guy who designed his own homebrew 16-bit CPU [homebrewcpu.com] from 7400-series ICs and he was able to give us a little presentation of it. I think it's a good exercise even if not of direct practical application.

        For most people I would recommend the nand2tetris course. You can go through it for free at your own pace and tools and things are prepared for you. Once you get to the end, you could make a physical system or stop at having it working in a simulator.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Or how about building your own 6502 computer using modern parts on a breadboard? I think that was pretty good on its own.

        You can even add a VGA output set of breadboards as well.

        Breadboard processors are fine, but breadboard computers are more interesting.

        Of course, the problem is it's making all the stuff I got rid of years ago mighty expensive. Not fun having to buy a C64 for hundreds of dollars these days. I think the only sadness is having gotten rid of a Pentium PC 15 years ago or so.

        • Or how about building your own 6502 computer using modern parts on a breadboard? I think that was pretty good on its own.

          You can even add a VGA output set of breadboards as well.

          Breadboard processors are fine, but breadboard computers are more interesting.

          Of course, the problem is it's making all the stuff I got rid of years ago mighty expensive. Not fun having to buy a C64 for hundreds of dollars these days. I think the only sadness is having gotten rid of a Pentium PC 15 years ago or so.

          Yep, Ben does that one too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

          I have been building an 8-bit breadboard computer based on Ben's design and it really has made me understand what actually happens in a computer at an electrical level. Sure, I already knew about busses and I/O ports and memory maps but actually seeing how low-level logic gates are applied to the actual signal lines to produce the desired output or activate the correct chip when a certain address range is accessed is simply fascinating to me. So

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          I still have one with an original DVD drive and DVD decoder card (an update to the system), a 80486 running windows 98, still works fine. The monitor a 17 inch viewsonic vga cost a fortune compared to today as did the computer itself. Labtec speakers one of the first models. I had forgotten how old is was, until reminded, time flies, exists as a decoration on it's mobile stand in the dining room. Many fond memories of computing from back then, real increases in power and capability, from green screen on, ki

      • A funny thing I've noticed is that most of the popular retrocomputing youtubers are American, but their main love is computers that were far more popular in Europe than in the US. In the US, consoles dominated.

        I suppose the language barrier matters (and that UK on its own isn't big enough to make up for it). I've found one guy extensively documenting his commodore 64 restorations in a heavy Northern Norwegian accent.

    • Sorry but I think LGR is much better for this

      • LGR is good for video games and for oddware and thrifting, but I don't know anybody else other than 8-bit guy who has released five new games for old hardware from fresh coding.

        • They don't make so many videos, but Pond Software ltd have released lots of neat little games for retrocomputers.

    • I have a tendency to agree, even though he fails to include my favorite platform very often, the TI/99-4A

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Nice. Were you in any of his videos? I don't remember seeing his brother.

  • Does anyone have a link that bypasses the paywall?

    LK

  • for the ZX Spectrum up on her YouTube Channel. By the actual Oliver Twins (with help of some brilliant coders) no less. It's pretty amazing. And the Atari 800 port of Space Harrier and the Amstrad CPC port of Pinball Dreams are amazing. Especially that port of Pinball Dreams, that looks like it belongs on an Amiga. It's nuts. I always wondered what it'd be like if Demo scene programmers made games. :)

    • I always wondered what it'd be like if Demo scene programmers made games. :)

      As I remember some people from Fairlight started Digital Illusions.

      • I've heard that too. A lot of game devs get their start in the Demo scene, but it doesn't seem like the code tricks they pick up show up 1 to 1 :). What's cool is seeing that deep knowledge of the architecture from years of programming plus the Internet in general showing up in games. Like how Kim Justice mentions that modern ZX spectrum games actual use the color clash to their advantage.

        In the old days you might see one or 2 of those techniques but now you've got games that are just filled with them.

      • Not Fairlight, but The Silents. There are many other game companies that grew out of the demoscene, but only DICE and Funcom really grew big.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I recommend The Castles of Dr. Creep [wikipedia.org]. Worth every cent of the $1.99 on Steam [steampowered.com].

    • Keep an eye on the Mega65 [mega65.org]. A re-implementation of the C65 prototype that was never released. An FPGA core, HDMI output, and the capacity to mount disk images from an SD card. With their dev kits shipping now, it looks like they'll be ready for a production run soon(-ish).

      • An FPGA core, HDMI output, and the capacity to mount disk images from an SD card.

        In that same category: MiSTer [github.com] emulates/replicates(*) a lot of computers and consoles from the late '50s (PDP-1) to the '90s (i486, Playstation). There are interfaces for all kind of classic peripheral devices (screens, controllers...).

        (*) For some cores the FPGA contains functional equivalents to the original chips, thus emulation. In other cases, e.g. NeoGeo, they have looked with an electron microscope at the original chips and replicated them.

  • This is what happens when you get old. You want to relive your 20s/30s.

    I guess us millennials will start using myspace again or something.

    • Re:Boomers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:00PM (#60935060) Journal

      Maybe, but what some of these retro guys are pulling off on hardware, some of it bordering on 40 years old, is pretty darned impressive. Considering the limitations of systems like the C64, both in horsepower and RAM, this is more than reliving the past. These guys are making these systems do things that I frankly wouldn't have even dreamed of being possible in the early and mid 80s. A lot of it has to do with applying modern coding techniques to older hardware, so it's more than just simply running old software.

      • bare metal (Score:5, Funny)

        by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:16PM (#60935138) Homepage Journal
        back in the days when you had a chance of understanding everything that was going on in your machine.
        It wasn't fifteen layers of libraries and services in a Babel-esque ziggurat.
        take THAT, spell Czech!

      • Re:Boomers (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @06:38PM (#60935462)

        A lot of it has to do with applying modern coding techniques to older hardware

        You mean like using 400MB of memory (the combined capacity of over 6000 C64s) to display this simple text page that I'm editing now?

        • It's almost like people won't take your site seriously unless it needs a fibre connection!

        • Indirectly yes, since most aren't masochistic enough to do the actual coding on the retrocomputers. VSCode, a cross-compiler and an emulator neatly integrated is a dev environment poor floppy-swapping developers in the 80s could only dream of.

    • We was born in the 60s and 70s thank you. Don't chuck us in with our parents. We might be old but we're certainly not, urgh, Boomers.
    • it can be hard to do something cool in hardware on a modern architecture because they're ludicrously complex. Programming on an old 8 or 16 bit lets you do stuff in hardware w/o years and years of schooling.

    • 20s and 30s I was already coding in Visual Basic 3 on Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, ME and 2000.

      I want to relive my TEEN YEARS on hardware that had the operating system in ROM.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Just Imagine (Score:4, Funny)

    by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @04:38PM (#60934926)

    impractical old devices in need of repairs and out-of-production parts

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.

  • Jeez, I have been doing this for decades (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @04:41PM (#60934938)
    And now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. The only good thing is a lot of equipment being brought out of the closet and put on the market.

    • It always fascinated me that you could get the 1541 to run so much faster just by changing the firmware. Why didn't commodore have that firmware from the beginning?

      Also, it was really cool that you could write assembly code for the 1541.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        I don't remember why, but I believe it was described in this book [amazon.com]. I thought it was pretty good when I read it after it was first published.

    • Is there anything post-80s that has gained in value? I remember selling my Dreamcast a few years ago for the same price I bought it in 1999, but gaming is a special market. (Although I suspect gaming is part of this too.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Interesting article and comments talking about newer retro here, http://www.os2museum.com/wp/it... [os2museum.com]

      • People pay crazy amounts of money for some of the original Voodoo cards. Not sure if it's more than what they cost new, but certainly more than I would think they'd be worth, especially given early 2000's Radeon/GeForce hardware is essentially worthless yet would probably work just as well as the Voodoo cards.

        Some of the classic 16-bit era console games sell for good money, probably around what they cost new.

        Working 486/Pentium computers that are in decent condition can fetch a fair amount of money, especi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The difference now compared to decades ago is that these machines need a lot more complex maintenance to keep them going, and parts are sometimes scarce.

      A very common example is machines from the late 80s and early 90s with batteries that leak. Many PCs from the 8086 to the 386 era suffer from that, as well as the usual bad capacitors. This often means board level repairs where the battery acid has destroyed traces. It's become worth doing because you can't easily get replacements anymore.

      There are also adv

  • This article came up in a rather long thread in the mailing list for the local Amiga User Group (quaint... or is that retro?)

    It was kicked off by a posting of the usual ridiculously high prices for common 'retro' items on EBay and a few people brought up that it is often fueled by collectors who just want to put the item on their shelf. This article was shared as a case in point.

    The general outcome was that people will pay what they want. FOr a number of case this will be a collector so they can put it on a

    • There was a neat episode about the retro community sending an old rebranded Apple 2+ around, with each recipient making some modification or repair. That does remind me of the spirit of the computer communities back in the 1980s, where we'd all get together, show off our hardware and what we were doing with it, whether it was lighting up Christmas trees or coaxing a few more khz out of 6510 or someone who had come with a cool bank switching RAM expansion. Back then, the impetus was there for the dedicated u

  • They were not "The Good Old Days" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:12PM (#60935128) Homepage

    I lived through the era of the late '70s/early '80s hardware and, looking back, I don't think of them with any kind of particular fondness.

    I'm proud that I figured out how to do 16 bit indexed addressing on the 6502 using self-modifying code (5 instructions!), I knew how to take advantage of segmentation on the 8086 to make more efficient code (hint structures on 16 byte address boundaries) and I did design my own expanded memory card for PCs but all these are examples of what you had to do to come up with a more functional platform for applications. This is not something that anybody has to worry about now with a 32/64bit processor with a flat memory model (I always hated coding for the '286 extended memory operations).

    Along with this, if I were to compare the cabinetry to that of an antique radio (many of which were truly beautiful and are really worth maintaining and featuring in a home), I don't see a lot of reasons to keep old hardware around. I built a Z-80 driven CP/M system which was built into a short beige painted metal rack which did not catch the eye, but did attract an inordinate amount of dust. The plastic cabinet of an Apple ][, Commodore 64, Atari 400/800 or TI-900 was considered ugly even then.

    I can understand that there are apps and games that people have a particular fondness for, but I bet they run a lot faster and better on a modern system with a processor emulator. The various systems I had in late '70s and '80s (even early to mid '90s) are not something I look back upon and wish I had kept them around and kept using them.

    • Re:They were not "The Good Old Days" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:32PM (#60935206) Homepage Journal

      There was a certain appeal to being part of a small group that actually understood these things, though. Now pretty much everyone grasps the necessity of being able to interact with unthinking, unfeeling machinery. If anything, the pendulum has gone too far in that direction. Geek chic has been mainstreamed, so people who want to stand out as something other than just another guy with a phone need signaling systems. The retro stuff just happens to be it, and while I agree the value of "authentic hardware" is vastly overrated (just use a fucking FPGA instead of unobtainium, there are like three people who will care if you don't), that is dependent on the existence of really good emulation. That desire for ideal emulation is driven by many of the same people as the retro machines, so it's not like you have to choose.

      I happen to agree that it wasn't that great to work with hardware of the era. I was there for some of it. But it was approachable, and I don't think preserving that aspect is a bad thing.

      • Not sure true geekiness is really that mainstream. Most of the people who proclaim themselves geeks because they own the latest iPhone or OLED TV - they're just rich!
      • I agree. There are good reasons to fiddle with older hardware, but there are times to relent. I think we made a lot of ugly beige boxes in the 1980's but some where worth keeping, even still. The main items I get excited about when they are "updated" are drives (thank the gods for the SCSI2SD) and CPUs (go Vampire Amiga 68080! FPGA!).

    • I have similar memories of late 80s/early 90s hardware.

      Though I've found the experience of messing with them in a low-stakes environment to be a lot more enjoyable. If I broke the one computer I had access to in 1991, oh boy was I going to be in trouble. If I break that same computer in 2021, oh well. It's not the computer I do my work on and it'll be an interesting project to fix it one of these weekends.

      It's also interesting because there are a lot of tools and technology available today for cheap that wo

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Megane ( 129182 )

        Back in the day, the people who had enough money to do things "right" would often have a PDP-11 or a VAX or some kind of minicomputer to run the assembler. The poor hobbyist would use development tools that squeezed into 48K of RAM on a computer with the same type of CPU.

        The era of the IBM PC with hard drives and lots of RAM changed that, but by that time few people cared to program the old stuff anymore unless they were doing embedded stuff. Now your daily-driver laptop is vastly overpowered for the same

    • The older TI-99s were a work of brushed aluminum art. And that expansion box was built to military specifications, it was built out of steel. Downright bulletproof.

      I just haven't figured out a place to put it yet- and I've yet to get the Nano TIPI, a Raspberry Pi that fits in a speech synthesizer case and interfaces to the side port to add memory, hard drive images, and ethernet/WIFI to a TI.

    • No shit, when you had that epiphany moment figuring out 286 extensions you're like, AHA!, oh fuck, that's a kludge.

      When I see some of the retrocomputing posts about getting a particular piece of hardware "working" it practically triggers PTSD-like anxiety. Back then there were days trying to make crap work that really never worked properly even when it was NEW. And now they're gazing it at as if it was some sort of divine set of chicken bones, ready to shed some great truth about the computing past. No,

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe you were a little unlucky but for many those kinds of limitations are what make the systems fun to develop for.

      Back in the day I wrote Amiga software. On the Amiga it's all about memory bandwidth. You need to balance all the different demands on it, from video generation to blitter operations to the CPU needing access for every instruction due to lack of cache. The challenge is in finding ways to manage it and finding tricks to exceed what the hardware was designed for.

      The C64 is similarly very challe

      • NTSC and PAL video timing were used on both the Amiga and the C64 for raster effects. The Amiga had hardware features (ex... Agnus / Copper) for moving rasters. Personally, I think the C64 is quite simple to code on and that is part of it's appeal to some. However, as a platform for ASM programming it pales in comparison to either the 68k (Amiga/Atari/Mac) or the VAX because of the rather extreme limits to the 6510 ISA and the clear advantages CISC gives to the on-the-metal coder.

  • I wonder how many people are using them for their near total immunity to viruses. Modern viruses probably can't even fit in their memory, let alone run. Looking for javascript exploits? Ha ha, my Commodore has no javascript!!

    And older viruses, if they are still found, might bery well be entirely patched.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      There are viruses on the C64, real computer viruses that infect executables.
      We don't see these much anymore. Modern computers have access control and crypto signatures so it is not as easy to infect files and expect the virus to spread. Malware usually take the form of trojans and worms running in a separate process.
      These oldschool computers don't have vulnerabilities because they don't even have any security in the first place. They are safe just because they are not connected to the internet, they can run

  • You said get a hobby... (Score:3)

    by thermowax ( 179226 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:35PM (#60935224)

    Seriously, why is this exceptional? It's no different from restoring old cars... the stink of the vinyl, the smell of exhaust from a low efficiency carbureted engine, etc. are just as valid as the feel of an Apple ][ keyboard, chutter of a 8" floppy, etc. It's nostalgia. It's when your machine came with a full schematic because good luck finding someone to fix it when it broke.

    Personally, a few minutes with an emulator is enough to remind me what a pain in the ass it was to get anything done on the old platforms... so I'll shut it off and build, I don't know, a wearable location monitor for my dog for $30 worth of parts bin.

    But yeah, anyone who didn't live through that stuff is just a poseur.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I tried working with a 68040 Next with a Dimension board, arguably the first modern computer. I bought it because it was my "dream machine" in high school. I recently sold it and used the proceeds for the down payment on an Aston Martin. The computer was more or less impractical to use today. The Aston isn't.

  • ... for an HP 9100B

  • Antique cars, airplanes, musical instruments, toys, etc are a common subject for collectors and hobbyists. Not surprising computers would join that now that there are some that are old enough to be interesting, without being impractically expensive. Getting an old IBM 370 running would take a lot of resources, but anyone who wanted could run an old IBM PC from 40 years ago

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vinn01 ( 178295 )

      I know someone who installed an IBM 370 in their basement years ago. Raised floor and all. It was not a small project. They had to get three phase power installed by the electric company. That was only possible because he was lucky enough to be close to a small machine shop that already had three phase power.

  • Or play with a steam engine! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe2020 ( 6760092 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @06:48PM (#60935502)

    Impractical is a mild way of putting it. The far better trend these days are SBCs - single board computers and anything smaller. Please don't learn about outdated computing. Instead, learn about a new generation of small computers that are only waiting to be explored and that are invading every aspect of life.

    To think people in the 70s or 80s had a uniquely different mindset from people of today is the single biggest mistake one can make. There was nothing special about it. People were being curious and eager to learn something new while also being mindful of what is a good skill to learn for the future. Wanting to learn is good, but because one can learn only so much should one also stay mindful about what to learn.

    Frankly, getting into retro computers now is as silly as getting into steam engines was in the 80s. I then did have a steam engine back then - a gift by a grand uncle. One could hook a tiny saw to the steam engine, which allowed one to saw through a small piece of Styrofoam (because it couldn't saw through anything harder) and an electric generator to power a tiny light bulb. It was interesting for two days, or about as long as the lighter fluid lasted ...

    The best one could do with a C64 back in its days, besides playing games, was to install a parallel cable to get more speed out of the disk drive, hook a printer to it to do some paper work, or to etch your own PCB and to solder an A/D converter onto it to create audio samples of a few seconds. All of which I did. But almost nothing that I've learned back then about computers is of any use today, so much of it has changed and advanced.

    The SBCs on the other hand are much more powerful, need less than 10W, are smaller than a pack of cigarettes and much cheaper than a C64 or a 1541 was in the 80s. Their value is amazing. With SBCs can one replace about anything directly in software - from u-boot, to the kernel, to the desktop environment - almost everything is open source and you'll find a huge community for support. Most SBCs run 1080p60Hz, connect to the world with Ethernet, Bluetooth and WiFi, allow one to play music, videos and games, and can emulate a C64. The amount of applications one can build with SBCs is mind boggling. And there are so many different types on the market that it's impossible to pick a single best one.

    I got me a small one, an Allwinner H2+ with 512MB, where the idea was to keep it as cheap and as simple as possible, but I'm still exploring its limits. It runs a continuous 30-day video capture with an HDR CCTV camera (it's sensitive enough to see in the dark) and has capture countless of cats much to my amusement, it plays videos, acts as a WiFi hotspot for my robot vacuum and mobile phone, includes a firewall and a traffic limiter, DHCP, DNS and time server. Next I'll probably add environmental sensors to it and monitor the air in my house.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The biggest difference back then was that one person could completely understand the entire computer, and even build one themselves from scratch. For example the TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32 were very slightly modified versions of the reference designs for their CPUs, not dissimilar from what many hobbyists had built on perfboard.

      Modern SBCs are much more closed. A BGA package IC with everything integrated, some binary blob drivers and app notes that say "you must do this" but don't explain why, beca

      • I found this to be one of the weaknesses in people - the need to understand everything. Don't get me wrong, I went through the same phase, but it leads to a behaviour where people find themselves unhappy and it turns into OCD for them. The same could be seen with cars and when people could no longer comprehend a car's engine in its entirety.

        Fact is rather that even then one couldn't understand it all nor will we ever understand everything today. We only thought we did, because we knew little in the first pl

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I agree with you, I had to work to overcome the OCD of not fully understanding everything and accounting for every last byte.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Please don't learn about outdated computing. Instead, learn about a new generation of small computers that are only waiting to be explored and that are invading every aspect of life.

      Personally I would never tell someone that. Knowledge and learning is good, and is never obsolete. You would seriously tell someone to not learn something simply because you personally feel it is of no value to you? Why not let people who enjoy this enjoy it?

      As for usefulness, we still use Von Neumann architecture and will for

      • Personally I would never tell someone that. Knowledge and learning is good, and is never obsolete. ...

        I do it, because some people need to hear it, some are glad to hear it and some will regret having made the wrong decision later in life and because nobody ever told them.

        Learning is joy and being mindful about it isn't wrong at all. It is the wise thing to do. Those who do get ahead in life. Best example is Elon Musk. And knowledge can well be obsolete. Just take all the misinformation floating on the Internet for example. There is far more to learn in the world than a single person can understand, and one

  • Nothing better to teach you about computers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @06:57PM (#60935532)

    Than building a 286 or 386, you had to set jumpers for I\O addressing and memory none of this PNP "easiness" (nobody even knows that term anymore). You had to know a lot just to get your computer running

    • It wasn't all that hard, you just do what the manual tells you. And honestly those where easy compared to the 486's that needed jumpers for different clock dividers and voltages.

      Assembling a Raspberry Pi from a bunch of parts you buy from different vendors, then installing some Linux distro on it, adding a HAT, and hooking it up to Python, NodeJS, or Lua. That's probably easier than building a PC in the late 1980's to late 1990's, but I think the RPi is probably more fulfilling to most people, scratches a s

      • "It wasn't all that hard, you just do what the manual tells you." - Ah yes, but today you need to find the manual as well as the drivers, which can be a real goose-chase given the many scam driver and manual sites pock-marked throughout the Internet today. Man, I miss TUCOWS.

    • Actually, if you really want to retrocompute, then build an 8088 from scratch with wirewrapping. That teaches alot about how memory, I/O, addressing works because you physically make the connections and have plenty of time to think about what your doing because wirewrapping 30 connections takes about 3 hours, and you'll have about 200-300 connections to make.

  • Maybe it's getting more press, but retrocomputing has been big for years. I've been involved in the hobby for 25+ years, back then you could get just about any retrocomputer cheap because no one put any value on them (almost got an Apple Lisa for $150 around 2001 for example), but for the last 10 or so years prices for retro hardware have been steadily increasing. The oldest stuff (switch based stuff like Altair and Sol, PDPs, Xerox systems, etc.) are getting almost unaffordable as supplies dry up while s

  • Yep, That's Me (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @01:18AM (#60936554)
    I build and sell about 2 to 3 retro-computers on eBay per month, generally from 8088 to Pentium 233 MMX systems. I love building them from parts scavenged wherever I can find them and then souping them up with Sound Blasters, Max RAM, XTIDE controllers, and CF cards for hard drives. Typically I include a CF card with DOS/WFW3.11 (8088-386), another card with Win95OSR2 (486-P233), and a third with Win98SE (486-P233). All drivers and updates pre-configured and ready to go. As a bonus I make a fair profit on each system as well. As a downside re-capping motherboards and rebuilding Dallas RTCs is a pain in the ASCII.
  • If anybody wants firmware / PCB design for a modern-day bubble memory controller, hit me up. Because lockdown.
    Yes, there's morning music.
  • Reproduction hardware is really starting to take off with reproduction sound blaster and gravis ultrasound cards. There is even a Russian guy who's making voodoo graphics cards with hdmi video out! FPGA emulation is also becoming a thing with Amiga boards leading the charge and new entrants like the MiSTer able to emulate a 486 sx cpu (no fpu) and a soundblaster16. I really want to see an fpga based laptop able to run as a 486/sb16 and dos 6.22 or a p2/sb16/voodoo2 sli with win98. Throw a game port and Hami
  • The retrocomputing scene has been going great guns for many, many years.

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