Here we are. In the 2020s. The decade in which people nolonger know their genders, were left can be right and up might be down, as well.
And yes, it's not wrong. If someone goes east just long enough, he/she/they'll end up in the west.
Likewise, black isn't the absence of colour, it's all colours united - just as beautiful as a rainbow. If we assume substrative color mixing.
So yeah. Everything is relative. An intel i7 or AMD Ryzen is retro? Sure. A PDP-8? So it is, as well. Let's put them in same category. It's fine. ❤️

Should we start splitting the sub topics into sub..sub topics?

No.

The exact demarcation of when something is 'retro' is already a very blurry line. But that's a line that also moves forward as time marches on. Even the things most here firmly feel is 'retro' we're once 'Brand spanking new hotness' earlier in their lives.

You may not feel it's retro but there's people in their mid 20's now who's idea of 'retro' is the computers they used when they were 12 years old. Which would legit be Sandy Bridge today.

The only 'hard wall' I see in 'Retro' is when we hit an era of software that only works through online check ins or phone homes, for which there are no servers, so that software is impossible to use today. But that doesn't even make that software 'not retro' just 'not accessible'.

^Sure. Everything is relative. And established conventions can be bent to the point at which reality falls apart.

For example, in physics, any object moves.
To make things stand still would require acceleration.
Likewise matter and energy can be substituted at wish.

Or batteries.. In school we've learnt there's physical electric flow and technical electric flow,
because people/electric pioneers back then got it wrong ways.
So things flow from minus to plus, as proved by electron tubes.
Or what we think negative ground might be positive, really. What do we know?
Old English cars used a positive chassis ground, didn't they?

So everything might be upside down, after all. We may realize if we just look close enough.
So anything is meaningless. And meaningful, simultaneously. Life equals death and vice versa.
And flower plants uses quantum physics.

On the other hand

I just don't want posts about Windows 95 with Pentium MMX chips to get drown out by "guys what is the best retro USB 3.1 PCI cards to buy so I can build a retro Windows 10 system"

also makes sense.

Because, it's really confusing and irritating at times.
As if steam engines, diesel engines and electric motors were in same category.
I mean, let's imagine this was a forum about trains..

Seeing a topic about a fragile 1860's electric tram from Berlin followed by topic of an EMD SD45 (a 3600 HP monstrosity) from the states is irritating.
Same goes for XT builds running ROM BASIC and some Windows 10 "retro" builds from 2015.

So we're in a situation in which there's more than just one truth. 🤷‍♂️

How does someone cope with such a situation? React or ignore?
I'm not sure, the philosophy says that indifference is the worst of all things.
So it's a good thing if people/users share their thoughts, at least.
It doesn't need to result in a change, whatsoever.

I mean, on the other hand what is "Marvin", exactly?
Is it a place to actively support people into old hardware or to keep them off of the more valuable forums?
A separate dump for 'hardware hoarders' so to say.
This may sound a bit provocative and it surely is. But so was DOSFreaks 'who's "we" ?', as well.
And both questions equally have some weight, maybe. They make sense and they're worth to think about, I believe.

I mean, the original idea of Vogons was not to be an old PC hardware forum*,
but a place to discuss how to get classic games to run on current hardware of the time.
-> Hardware which has become equally dated by now, by the way, making posts from the 2000s in non-Marvin forums a relic, as well.
(*Meaning that we users of Marvin can be kind of grateful that it exists, at all.
Marvin was rather an afterthought, a concession to users.
Not something that had been wanted originally.)

Which might be something to consider when sub sub forums are being wished for.
Introducing them to Marvin would also make other forum visitors asking for something similar to their favorite forums.
Which in turn would make managing Vogons
as a whole forum more complicated, maybe.
So how about figuring out a compromise ?

I have been thinking for a couple of years that "general old hardware" is a bit too general, and some days it's activity is high enough that checking up on a thread that was busy yesterday puts you 3 pages back. Therefore it feels to me that some way of divvying it up a bit would be helpful. When we have video and sound subs of Marvin, it seems a bit odd that it didn't also split to motherboards, CPUs, RAM, Storage and Networking.

I don't know if splitting it by time is terribly helpful, as for example, 486 machines span from '89 through to 97 as sold for consumer desktops and into the 2000s for industrial SBCs repurposed to retro. I guess we could argue all day about what various groups have in common, one might say XT to 386 is fine because they might share onboard DIP RAM and MFM/RLL HDDs, and 5.25 floppies, where another might say that with 32bit capability, SIMMs, cache and IDE 386es have more in common with 486es. Thus it seems there are rather few natural dividing lines when the various techs flow and intermingle from platform to platform and thus experience in one applies to another. One dude with a Pentium MMX system might want to know about 72pin EDO RAM while another needs SDRAM info.

However smart we are with this Captain EdgeCase will always have a problem with it and we waste a lot of time that could otherwise be spent on retro enjoyment on "religious wars." ... but on the other hand... general hardware still seems like a monster that needs taming.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-07-02, 03:37:

but on the other hand... general hardware still seems like a monster that needs taming.

Part of the issue is that restriction of topics isn't really enforced. It's common to see video card and sound card related posts in General Hardware and they don't get moved to the appropriate sub-forums.

I don't see just adding a bunch of new sub-forums as being a whole solution. Moderation and moving of topics needs to be part of it.

No reason to split anything.

There will be some more modern topics nestled in with the older but that's only natural. In time Windows XP related topics will become as common as DOS/9x ones but that doesn't mean that those will disappear.

I doubt Windows Vista/7 (and newer) will ever be a "retro OS" in the same way as Windows XP (and older), at least not as long as Windows 6++++++++++++++ is still current. Or actually if Intel gets rid of x86-32 then the 32bit editions might become interesting in time.

No, not needed.