I agree with you. I have problems sometimes too trying to discern between PC and Marvin.

Half-Saint wrote:

I've been lurking on the forums for a long time before registering and I even now have problems deciding which sub-forum the topic should go in. To me 'PC' and 'Marvin' look essentially one and the same. Naming subforums after Hitchhiker stuff also doesn't help anything. You have to read the description itself to know what the subforum is all about...

Marvin is about discussion of actual classic hardware. PC is about emulating these hardwares on new systems, like for example, FM emulation, S3 Wrappers and so on. (I made a comment about this confusion long back, and it's buried among some very old posts)

Malik wrote:

Half-Saint wrote:

I've been lurking on the forums for a long time before registering and I even now have problems deciding which sub-forum the topic should go in. To me 'PC' and 'Marvin' look essentially one and the same. Naming subforums after Hitchhiker stuff also doesn't help anything. You have to read the description itself to know what the subforum is all about...

Marvin is about discussion of actual classic hardware. PC is about emulating these hardwares on new systems, like for example, FM emulation, S3 Wrappers and so on. (I made a comment about this confusion long back, and it's buried among some very old posts)

This is the way that I had always assumed. In fact, there have been a lot of posts in the PC forum that belong in the Marvin forum. Also, remember that Marvin was added later by Snover added after the old hardware posts started to be made in the PC forum. I took this to mean that is what he had intended, too.

I was lurking then and yes, the collectors were drowning out the generic "PC emulation" threads so they got their own forum, Marvin. Hardware-oriented collector threads should be going in Marvin IMHO and mods are welcome to move them there IMHO. 😀

Yes, Marvin was added for that reason.
The forums might have confusing names, but that is why they have descriptions 😀
The VOGONS forum is hitchhiker themed and thus the names never be a perfect match with the content.

collector wrote:

This is the way that I had always assumed. In fact, there have been a lot of posts in the PC forum that belong in the Marvin forum. Also, remember that Marvin was added later by Snover added after the old hardware posts started to be made in the PC forum. I took this to mean that is what he had intended, too.

People still post lots of stuff in the PC forum which actually belong in Marvin yet moderators don't move anything, adding to the confusion.

I've just gotten used to PC, System Specs and Marvin all being a bit similar. But I will start moving threads now that it's been brought up.

I see the PC forum up there as non-DOSBox emulation of complete computer systems (i.e. MESS, Adplug).

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• Eddie, the Shipboard Computer - PC: Emulation of old PCs, PC hardware, or PC peripherals.
• Eddie, the Shipboard Computer - Macintosh: Emulation of old Macintoshes, Mac hardware, or Mac peripherals.
• Heart of Gold - Marvin: Discussion about old PC hardware and Retro PCs
• Heart of Gold - System Specs: Feel that you haven't shown off the l33tness of your system enough in your profile? Post your full system specs here to be oogled at!

So, yeah. Still clearly documented. Don't understand what isn't understood about this. (also, that should probably be 'ogled' but I haven't the heart to suggest fixing it now... 😉 )

Perhaps this would make more sense to the non-English-speakers and, or, pedantic:

• Eddie, the Shipboard Computer - PC: Emulation of old PCs, emulation of old PC hardware, or emulation of old PC peripherals.
• Eddie, the Shipboard Computer - Macintosh: Emulation of old Macintoshes, emulation of Mac hardware, or emulation of Mac peripherals.

Maybe that's not what we intended though. It was so long ago now! But, yeah, "Eddie, the Shipboard Computer" was intended for emulation-talk AFAIK.

Keep in mind, and I don't think I'm being revisionist here:

- Marvin is an afterthought, we didn't attract hardware collectors until years down the road from Day One. I do love that it happened though.

- The "PC" subforum also (basically) pre-dates DOSBox and its forums here. (Clarification: DOSBox 0.1 was released January 31st, 2002 and used only Sourceforge forums initially, VOGONS started June 29th, 2002 or thereabouts, DOSBox later moved their forums here sometime in late 2002.) Therefore there never was intended to be tons of DOSBox discussion there in the "PC" subforum, with the idea being that the PC subforum would instead be used for all/any PC emulation/virtualization (and peripheral emulation/virtualization) discussion, as a solution to act as a repository of information/discussion on how to get old software running by using emulation/virtualization. (and indeed, originally this wouldn't have concerned virtualization either originally, as it really wasn't an option when the forums started.) Anyhow, VMWare, Virtual PC, MESS, Bochs, PCem, PCEmu, dosemu, etc. could all be discussed here and then some. DOSBox can, but minimally, since they have their own hosted subforum. Yes I realize that my wrapper discussion is currently happening in "PC" but it's the closest match for what I intended for that discussion topic, because...

- For that matter: DOS/Windows subforums in "The Guide" were, in my mind at least, originally intended for NON-EMULATION solutions to getting old DOS/Windows games working in newer Windows operating systems. (Excluding tack-on things like VDMSound). This would be more like Application Compatibility Toolkit fixes, switching from 64-bit to 32-bit to enabling 16-bit, NTVDM hacking, registry editing, unofficial patches, using a wrapper, etc. Wizardry. But, with each topic intended to be about a game(s), sometimes coming up more than once as needed, and not more general "let's talk about Glide wrapper" or "Windows 2000 Compatibility List" discussions. And the end result might be an official, crowdsourced howto on getting a specific game working in, say, Windows XP, which could then be moved to "Deep Thought" - a rather stillborn idea if ever there was one *sigh* I do understand that times change though - we're dealing with human discussion here, which is organic. And the only way to get 16-bit software working in predominantly 64-bit OS's, without dual- or triple-booting, is by using emulation/virtualization, so the scope has changed some, perhaps...

- Finally, apologies if you're not keen on the whole HG2G theming but the four of us who basically started this place (Snover, DosFreak, Nicht Sehr Gut, myself) were all drawing a blank when it came to naming things originally. We had all abandoned the Bravenet VDMSound forum and said "hey, we keep talking non-VDMSound things there about how to get old games working on new OS's, let's start a forum, something vladr might even be okay with using than Bravenet" and Snover said he could do the job. He set up "OGONS - Old Games On New Systems" as a subdomain on his server. I suggested: "Hey, that sounds like Vogons, the anal-retentive and nasty bad guys from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series, which I've read a bazillion times" and so we quickly thought up something for the 'V', Snover began theming it in a HG2G style (the admins/mods all originally had default profile pics of illustrated Vogons if anyone remembers that) and the rest was history. Soon enough you guys all trickled in. 😀 And let's face it, it does give this place an even nerdier flair than it ordinarily would. It stands out, in a way, so you'll remember it. 🤣

I personally loooooove the Hitch-hikers naming. Gives the forum some personality.

EVERY forum has "General chat" "Troubleshooting" etc... boring names.

One more note on the purpose of the emulation forums. I have a very clear memory of Snover chewing someone out for posting a question about his old Mac in the Mac emulation forum. I had always considered him as having the final say.

Hmm.

I just reported a thread in System Specs that I thought should maybe be in Consoles.... but it's about real consoles, not emulation.

Now that I think about it though, System Specs has the best matching description for the thread, which is "showing off" the consoles.

Maybe rename System Specs to "The Showroom" or something.

Well the reason I started this thread is because even after a month of active membership I still find myself reading the descriptions of the sub-forums just to make sure I'm posting in the right one 😀

Oh and I love Hitchhikers Guide 😉

Actually the descriptions are clear as to what each subject/sub-forum refers to. The main page gives a complete glance of what the contents of this forum are. It's just that some do not read the descriptions before posting. The naming convention of this forum is unique.
Stiletto laid out the brief history of this site nicely above.

EDIT : Oh, and about consoles (hardware), we don't have a dedicated section for that in this forum. We only have the section for the emulation of these consoles. And the System Specs section is for "showcasing" computers (and it's understood to be mainly PCs generally - and more specifically the retro super heroes) and not consoles.

EDIT2 : And of course, I was critical of the non-functioning "Arcade" section which is empty and locked.

No matter how thorough you describe the forums, people will always post wrong. For example all thos dosbox questions that end up all over the place but NOT in the obvious dosbox forums 😉

the arcade forum should go

I don't see how Marvin is a confusing name for the vintage hardware forum. Marvin waited 576,000,003,579 years waiting for the others to catch up with him in time, so he qualifies as vintage hardware.

Malik wrote:

EDIT : Oh, and about consoles (hardware), we don't have a dedicated section for that in this forum. We only have the section for the emulation of these consoles. And the System Specs section is for "showcasing" computers (and it's understood to be mainly PCs generally - and more specifically the retro super heroes) and not consoles.

Actually, it just says "systems".

I get what you're saying and I somewhat agree, but heck, for a newcomer you could see the ambiguity.