My reason, well I started in the 8-bit era so I remember some of these systems when they first came into being. I remember the days of my childhood typing in magazine listings, getting frustrated learning to code the first time. Slowly the traditional (for lack of a better term) skills of command lines, manually entering listings and basically getting your hands dirty trying to wrestle a pile of mismatched parts into a working system are fading away. Replaced by clicking on pretty pictures and all in one boxes that are all but impossible to repair in some cases. Someone has to keep the old skills alive, might as well be us.

Absolutely, those skills are put to use daily for me. I keep a cable factory running. Some machine plc terminals use anything from dos to os/2 to even nt4.

Funny that, we make your fibre / ethernet on retro hardware.

And why not? It could be done by an Apple Watch if someone wanted to port the code. But if a problem can be solved in 33MHz, there's nothing wrong with a 386 CPU.

I agree - still does the job well.

I got an old compaq laptop running NT. its not online in any shape or form but has both Office 97 and Lotus smart suite. I use it to track my finaces.
Does the job well.

a small black and white printer would do well for it but chances of one of those still having ink for it these days are slim.

biohazardx9 wrote on 2020-01-29, 12:48:

I say this because, at the moment I find modern day computing jus boring. […]
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I say this because, at the moment I find modern day computing jus boring.

Having to do the manual setup to get a system how you want it to me is part of the fun.

Seeing a mish mash of boards slotted in to create a system is far better than the bland shades of black on everything we see in a modern system. Heck my gpu is purple...

Like manually typing the commands in to start your game is fun.

Today though I find out weather I am going blind. Should be fun.

We all love the retro. What's your reasons?

Sorry for not posting much. Having a reaction to metformin (diabetic pills) making me well... Empty the contents of my stomach..

Computers (PC, Commodore64 and Amiga) are fun to play with for me, because I grew up on those systems.
That is the reason why it is retro for me. And because of that, I do not like the way Windows10 looks and how I operate it.
Also the reason why I am using Linux on my main computer. It is just more fun.

I don't find modern computing boring as such, but modern software is getting more and more annoying by the hour, so having the computer just do what you tell it to is so refreshing ^^

I think it's indicative of a push back against the state we are in. Telemetry, data tracking, drm, all the things that spoil the modern computing experience.

Definitely agree about telemetry and drm.
Yes operating systems of old are more direct and yes you can do what you want on it.

I'm just not that interested in new hardware, OS's, Games, etc.
If I'm in the mood to play a game it's usually an old favourite from my teens. Not saying new games are better or worse It's just what I'm in the mood for.
And they run trouble free on older hardware.
Plus messing around with hardware is fun, older hardware is cheaper and involves more messing around

texterted wrote on 2020-01-30, 21:06:

I think it's indicative of a push back against the state we are in. Telemetry, data tracking, drm, all the things that spoil the modern computing experience.

Totally. As imi said, it's refreshing to have software that just works when you install it -- no activation, no expiration, no signing up for a cloud account...

I find it interesting that many of the successful innovations in computing history that got us where we are today, were brought forward as open standards. The companies behind them are sometimes martyrs, that gave up their claim to royalties and control, and were then undercut and flooded out of the market. But had it not been open, it would've been merely a footnote that never gained any real traction anyway. So it almost seems as though there's no winning, but to look at it another way, nothing really to lose either.

pretty much, if there is anything that is hurting innovation it is late-stage capitalism and everyone trying to outcompete others, even though most people will try to argue the exact opposite.
just imagine what we could achieve if we weren't under constant pressure like that, if instead of just innovating how to extract the most value out of "consumers" you'd be driven to provide the most value to humanity, together...

...sorry I was drifting off a bit there x3