IMHO computing is NOT as much fun as it used to be in the 80's and 90's. Back then, things were evolving rapidly and there was always something brand new that you could do with computers - first 2D imaging, then full-motion video, then 3D, then internet, etc. There was always something to look forward to, and there were great retail stores like Electronics Boutique, Babbages, and CompUSA that showcased all the latest tech goodies for sale. Anticipation and excitement lingered in the air. There were also lots of competing standards - PC, Mac, Amiga, etc., all vying for attention and market share. And different manufacturers had distinct characteristics. A Gateway 2000 system was qualitatively different from a Packard Bell or an IBM. Windows was worlds apart from Mac OS, OS/2, Linux, or BeOS.

Today, almost all of the specialty brick & mortar shops have shut down, and computing has been cheapened and commodified to the point where most new devices are just disposable, generic appliances (with the exception of some Apple products). Differentiation is nearly gone from the marketplace - most PC systems all look and work the same, most of them are hastily assembled by the lowest-cost Chinese manufacturers, and it's hard to imagine any of them being collectible in a decade or two.

The sense I get from surveying the PC landscape today is that we've reached a great plateau from which further ascent is hard to imagine. At this point, we've basically got Star Trek technology in our pockets. How do you improve on a portable full-color window into the entire world that fits in your hand? Neural implants? Augmented-reality eyeglasses? Until some new visionary comes along and redefines computing for the next decade, there's little to be excited about. I think the promise of the information revolution has largely been fulfilled, and the real excitement in the coming decades will be in the fields of biotech and alternative energies. Computing, as we knew it, is finished.

One thing I don't miss is the difficulty in finding information back in the old days. When I was a kid all I had was PC magazines and even when reading those you often got caught out with low quality hardware that caused issues. I fell bigtime for this soundcard from spea which had wavetable, was Adlib, SoundBlaster, General Midi and MT-32 compatible. At least according to the ad.

The Adlib part was "emulating FM with Geneneral MIDI instruments", the Roland MT-32 emulation would also only work with games that didn't change instruments. I sold it and lost money, and got a SB16 with Sound Canvas. Maybe things were better in the US, but in my home town there was little to be had. I had to get all the "good parts" from other cities.

Now there are less issues / compatibility problems and things are also affordable and you can invest more and not have to worry about having to buy a machine the next year. While the upgrade cycle in the 80s and 90s was an exciting time, it was also very expensive.

IMHO computing is NOT as much fun as it used to be in the 80's and 90's. Back then, things were evolving rapidly and there was always something brand new that you could do with computers - first 2D imaging, then full-motion video, then 3D, then internet, etc.

Perhaps, although if you care to think about it, technology in the 80s didn't really move _that_ fast. In 1989-90, loads of people were still using sub-10Mhz machines with no hard disk or monochrome graphics or text-only OSes exactly like 10 years earlier. There were chest-thumping 386 PCs in the late 80s and Mac IIs with 256-color graphics, but they were expensive and did not exist except for the professional market. The typical home computer in 1989 was a Commodore 64 or an Amiga or an 8086 PC with double density floppies. You look at software from 87-90 and how much of it even supported Mac IIs or 386 machines beyond some stuff like expensive graphics design programs.

The big thing that drove computer technology forward was the event of Windows 3.x. Since the new software was more demanding than anything before, manufacturers were in a race to produce faster machines with more than 1MB of memory. After the great technology leap of the 90s, things slowed quite a bit after 2000 when they began reaching the practical limits of many things.

and it's hard to imagine any of them being collectible in a decade or two

I don't think I could image a 2002 Ford Taurus ever being considered in the same league as a 59 Caddy either.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

One thing I don't miss is the difficulty in finding information back in the old days. When I was a kid all I had was PC magazines and even when reading those you often got caught out with low quality hardware that caused issues. I fell bigtime for this soundcard from spea which had wavetable, was Adlib, SoundBlaster, General Midi and MT-32 compatible. At least according to the ad.

Agreed. There were no internet and if you lived in a small country in a small place there were probably nobody to help you. Magazines were your best friend in finding out what was wrong and to get new tips and ideas for upgrades.

I remember the time before I got my first Voodoo 1 card. I had been reading magazines and they were all over it, praising it up. I just had their descriptions and small printed screenshots to see what the fuzz was about. No one in my neighborhood had a 3DFX card for me to see it in action, so I was a pioneer when I finally got it in the end of 1997. Shortly after the word of mouth starting spreading. My friends dads and older brothers along with other neighbors that were interested in computers were calling me to come over and have a look at it in action. Some actually thought it would be "real" 3D coming out of the monitor 🤣. Needless to say everyone's jaw dropped when I fired up Quake and Tomb Raider. Plenty of others soon got their Voodoo card in my vicinity.

This was how it worked, word of mouth and showing the hardware to others. It also happened with another guy who had a Roland (can't remember if it was a Sound Canvas model or the MT-32), and people came to his house to listen to the mind-blowing MIDI music.

Yea I often felt like a pioneer. The first time I head Adlib / Sound Blaster was after I worked 4 weeks in the school holidays and purchased myself a Sound Blaster. After that others bought one as well.

In Europe the computer magazines helped a lot. Especially later when they came with CDs and had demos, drivers and utilities. I remember telling my friends to only buy the Sound Blaster but many didn't listen and bought Escom or Vobis Sound Blaster clones and found that they wouldn't work with many games.

So I tried to listen to the PC magazines as much as I could and went with their recommendations like Tseng ET4000, Sound Blaster, Gravis Joysticks, Microsoft mouse...

Not sure why I bought this Spea Media V7 sound card because looking back it didn't make sense. I must have really fallen for the marketing / sales blurb...

Depending on what you purchased your PC gaming experience could be perfect to having problems without any end.

I was also a CD rom pioneer. Purchased the first CD rom available to the masses (the Mitsumi single speed CD-Rom with the ISA controller card) and there was another magazine which had the first ever CD attached to the cover.

It was FULL of demos, trackers songs, games, shareware, videos, 3D rendering and whatnot. 700MB of data, totally unheard of before and it took weeks to check it all out. I know some that purchased a CD-Rom just so they could access what's on that disc 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Depending on what you purchased your PC gaming experience could be perfect to having problems without any end.

This added to the magic of it for me; battling with config files, error prone floppy disks, and just plain guessing most of the time made actually getting a game to run a rewarding and educative experience. The problem solving skills I developed during those days have served me well over the years - not the waste of time it must have appeared to be!

And I was a CD-ROM pioneer too! Owning the first 4 spin in my neighborhood (a "quad speed" mitsumi) is the closest I'll come to be famous.

and old CD-ROM drive is nice too, it has 'Play' & 'Next/Prev' buttons,
in contrast most 'Modern' Optical drive only have 'Eject' button.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

The Adlib part was "emulating FM with Geneneral MIDI instruments", the Roland MT-32 emulation would also only work with games that didn't change instruments. I sold it and lost money, and got a SB16 with Sound Canvas. Maybe things were better in the US, but in my home town there was little to be had. I had to get all the "good parts" from other cities.

What? You sure you didn't confuse Adlib with Gravis Ultrasound, don't you?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

What? You sure you didn't confuse Adlib with Gravis Ultrasound, don't you?

Pretty sure. As the card not having an FM chip, or even a clone chip. Just like the AudioPCI, it emulated FM with General MIDI substitution which sounded awful...

Joey_sw wrote:

and old CD-ROM drive is nice too, it has 'Play' & 'Next/Prev' buttons,
in contrast most 'Modern' Optical drive only have 'Eject' button.

That's because you can choose "Play" in software to play your music/movies so having a play button on the drive itself is redundant.

badmofo wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Depending on what you purchased your PC gaming experience could be perfect to having problems without any end.

This added to the magic of it for me; battling with config files, error prone floppy disks, and just plain guessing most of the time made actually getting a game to run a rewarding and educative experience. The problem solving skills I developed during those days have served me well over the years - not the waste of time it must have appeared to be!

And I was a CD-ROM pioneer too! Owning the first 4 spin in my neighborhood (a "quad speed" mitsumi) is the closest I'll come to be famous.

Ever heard of a 3x CD-ROM? Nobody I knew did until I found one. It was cheaper than the 4x drives being sold at the time but still a lot faster than the cheap but slow 2x drives everyone else had. My brother gave it to one of his friends years ago along with a wide carriage Epson printer I had and I could have killed him.

sliderider wrote:

Joey_sw wrote:

and old CD-ROM drive is nice too, it has 'Play' & 'Next/Prev' buttons,
in contrast most 'Modern' Optical drive only have 'Eject' button.

That's because you can choose "Play" in software to play your music/movies so having a play button on the drive itself is redundant.

The thing is, you could use the buttons to start and control CD playback without having to launch any software at all. (I remember using that when I just moved into an apartment and hadn't bought a monitor yet.)

archsan wrote:

badmofo wrote:

Check this deal out from GOG:

http://www.gog.com/pick_5_pay_10

We're knee deep in quality DRM free indie games are available for a couple of bucks each, and they're all only a few mouse clicks away. From a gaming point of view, we've never had it so good! (IMO)

That current offer is also nice, ... problem is, there are way more than five good games there...

I'm mistaken there, I thought that was one-chance only, but turns out you can repeat the offer (so you can e.g. pick 10 and pay 20). If you haven't heard any of those titles, at least check out Machinarium, Unmechanical, Spacechem and Botanicula. These are the oddest/most interesting/exciting ones IMHO.

So what if computer hardware is getting boring lately ...

sliderider wrote:

Ever heard of a 3x CD-ROM

YEs!

Mitsumi had one. And I believe it was one of the first IDE drives...

But I went 1x > 2x Panasonic > 6x Teac. I loved the Teac. They had the fastest trays (open and close 😀

Jorpho wrote:

The thing is, you could use the buttons to start and control CD playback without having to launch any software at all. (I remember using that when I just moved into an apartment and hadn't bought a monitor yet.)

So true! And perfect for a getto CD player built. Just needed a power supply. I also remember how the old single speed Mitsumi was the fastest track changer ever. It just flew from track to track faster than any drive I had later.

Nope, definitely not. Can't wait to get my hands on the next nexus tablet then I'm off PC's. I don't game anymore and now have a retro PC. Gonna get myself a Thinkpad laptop and that's me done.