leileilol wrote on 2022-07-07, 22:02:It wasn't "retro" when I started. 😜
This... I found my old ZX Spectrum which I got from my dad 40 years ago on my dad's attic. This made me start collecting and restoring/fixing retro hardware. I now have a small collection of hardware I couldn't afford back in the day. Not only x86-compatible hardware but also 8-/16-/32-bit hardware like Commodore/Atari/Amiga...
appiah4 wrote on 2022-07-08, 07:03:I had an Amiga 500 I had kept around since childhood. Around 2010 I got interested in getting it up and running, then started buying accelerators and expansions. For a long time my retro computing was an Amiga only affair.
Then around 2016 I started buying old mechanical keyboards. TWhen I had a few of those I decided to build a retro PC to use them with because I already had some hardware lying about like a Voodoo 2 12MB, a Matrox Mystique and some CPUs. I bought an AT case and a PCChips Socket 7 mainboard. Then I started building my first retro PC and eventually finished it.
While doing that I realized that in my country retro PC hardware were still selling for next to nothing, way below eBay prices, so I started hoarding up. Once I had a pile of hardware I started building more PCs. In the meantime I picked up modest repair skills. Eventually I set for myself the goal of putting aside a working computer for every 3-year period between 1984-2000. This goal is now accomplished and I plan to use these computers to play games on when I retire. The rest is history.
Nice! I had a look through your pictures.
Jumped from 8/16-bit home computers (Atari, Amiga) to retro PCs in 2012. Although I built one P-III with Voodoo3 especially for Need For Speed series 1 to Porsche Unleashed around 2007. It's still in my stash and not being used for at least 10 years now 🙁
Requests here!
Well, the first computer I got in the first half of the 90 was already old and second hand (a cheap 80386SX config) considering there were already 80486 and the early Pentium configs available on the market for impossible prices.. so I could say I always used old computers since the beginning.. 😀
But seriously I'd say that I stopped my hw upgrading after the early Athlon 64 when I spent a lot for a middle end config but the beginning of those heavy and not well programmed video games ran already badly in that config too and make me wondering which was the point anymore. Beside few titles I've never been a serious videogamer that play and finish them all anyway so upgrading began expensive and pointless. So I went for an old notebook/netbook/cheap PC path only for home/office usage and in the free time I install and test old configs with the components I got depending on the period.
And I think I'll continue to use old configs only cause in the last decade things feels even worse than the past, both hw and sw feels like oriented to be services and not having a specific main reason to exist like a closed box product with a specific target. Everything feels oriented to anything but the reason should be expected to do. So a calculator like app would have all sort of features and eventually also being a calculator which is the opposite of the low level coding logics of the old sw once computers were slow and sw were optimized and having only what was needed by that specific software with the minimun possible requirements.
RandomStranger wrote on 2022-07-08, 06:38:The my first daily drivers were already scraping the border between hopelessly obsolete and retro when I got them. As a village in a post-communist country there wasn't really a culture (or money) to support IT as a hobby. Everyone around me had PCs from 286 up to 486 well after PIII was already on the market. Those with a non-MMX Pentium could call themselves lucky. My PC was a 386 that came free from a recycling center. Parent's logic around the time was that those old rigs are "good enough for kids to play".
I'm from a "rich" country and my dad got a 386DX in 1989, so basically a high end machine at the time, though with EGA graphics ^^ ... but we used a 386DX40 up until 1996 so for a long time back then and when other people were long on 486 or upgrading to pentiums, hence why I'm so fond of the 386, EGA and PC speaker (didn't even have a sound card until '95/96) because it formed my entire childhood relationship with computers.
I never actually had a 486 back then cause we upgraded directly to a pentium at the end of 1996, so it's somewhat of a curious thing to me.
around the 2000s I was still selling my old hardware to finance upgrades (unfortunately) but I had already started getting some even older things instead... unfortunately mid-2000 my parents threw away most of my hardware collection 🙁 and I was busy with uni and work for the next years so the hobby kind of took a backseat.
only in the last years I really got back into it and started collecting again to add to the few bits I still had left, it's very unfortunate cause I basically completely missed that early to mid 2000s to 2010s period where you could get stuff for basically free 😒 hence why most of my collection is assembled from "scrap"
but yeah, I never really "started" I was always fond of old hardware, there's just been an up and down and periods in my life where I was busy doing other things.
Plasma wrote on 2022-07-07, 22:14:leileilol wrote on 2022-07-07, 22:02:It wasn't "retro" when I started. 😜
Yep I think this is the case for most of us. Computers were simpler and life was simpler. It's not a time machine but it's close.
Earlier today, I was thinking about the idea that computers used to be simpler, and I'm not sure if that's entirely true.
I used to say this and think this, but now I'm not so sure. Life was simpler, yes. Software was simpler. But setting up a new computer or making a hardware change, I don't think so.
Today I can buy a new motherboard with integrated video, sound, NIC, USB, throw a CPU and memory in it, put it in a case, attach a HD and power supply, install Windows 10 from USB and everything will probably work. Heck, some motherboards already have a soldered on CPU.
But back in the Pentium and older days (roughly), you needed a card for video, sound, network if required, possibly I/O if not on the motherboard. Then I/O and IRQs had to be assigned and conflicts resolved. Possibly hours of config.sys and autoexec.bat optimization. And there was simply no way around it, unless you got lucky. I remember spending days trying to get an ISA RAM card to appear as usable memory.
I like doing that stuff, but there were certainly more complex aspects to it!
eesz34 wrote on 2022-07-09, 21:44:Earlier today, I was thinking about the idea that computers used to be simpler, and I'm not sure if that's entirely true. […]
Plasma wrote on 2022-07-07, 22:14:leileilol wrote on 2022-07-07, 22:02:It wasn't "retro" when I started. 😜
Yep I think this is the case for most of us. Computers were simpler and life was simpler. It's not a time machine but it's close.
Earlier today, I was thinking about the idea that computers used to be simpler, and I'm not sure if that's entirely true.
I used to say this and think this, but now I'm not so sure. Life was simpler, yes. Software was simpler. But setting up a new computer or making a hardware change, I don't think so.
Today I can buy a new motherboard with integrated video, sound, NIC, USB, throw a CPU and memory in it, put it in a case, attach a HD and power supply, install Windows 10 from USB and everything will probably work. Heck, some motherboards already have a soldered on CPU.
But back in the Pentium and older days (roughly), you needed a card for video, sound, network if required, possibly I/O if not on the motherboard. Then I/O and IRQs had to be assigned and conflicts resolved. Possibly hours of config.sys and autoexec.bat optimization. And there was simply no way around it, unless you got lucky. I remember spending days trying to get an ISA RAM card to appear as usable memory.
I like doing that stuff, but there were certainly more complex aspects to it!
Computers were a lot simpler back then, but today's computers, while more complex, are easier to operate due to more user friendly GUIs and a greater degree of automation/auto-configuration/self-healing (software level) that is now mostly mature and "just works" for most people.
eesz34 wrote on 2022-07-07, 21:43:What was the point/event that made you decide to intentionally obtain and run old hardware?
...
Never got rid of stuff, just revisited older stuff, usually after over-hyped new stuff. Just various stuff merging into more stuff.
