PC's have always been the same to me. Seems ascribing a soul to older PC hardware is just another way to phrase you're nostalgic.

ZellSF wrote on 2022-07-15, 07:48:

PC's have always been the same to me. Seems ascribing a soul to older PC hardware is just another way to phrase you're nostalgic.

Well, call it what you want, but when you start talking to your PC that refuses to work properly isn't it a proof that it got a soul? Of course those are not so pleasant words, but still ...

This reminds me of when I put a fake moustache on my workstation at the office...

Anybody remember that ad campaign which had "The soul of the new machines" as a tagline/slogan?

Retroactively ominous ?

I find that when one of my PC's develop a "soul" it can usually be exorcised with a recap =)

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2022-07-15, 15:42:

I find that when one of my PC's develop a "soul" it can usually be exorcised with a recap =)

In that case, I'll recommend a session with Dr. SBaitso, his daughter Eliza or his wife LoveDOS! 😂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIBTp7P-hS0

Edit: Just make sure Parry isn't with them. 😉

songo wrote on 2022-07-10, 18:10:

Back in the day, in 90's, Amiga 'elitists' considered IBM compatibiles inferior machines that lacked soul. Here, in Poland, they even called PC 'clones' and their users 'clonards'.

I didn't understand such concepts but it changed once I felt myself similar thing at some point. For me, it's started with Windows XP era. No DOS and its legacy, computers became ubiquitous, graphics whore arm race took ridiculous shape, RTS genre died, FPS was infected with WWII Call of Duty crap, fighting games and other arcade genres migrated fully to consoles... Magical machines became sad, gray boxes for casuals and vicious MMO addicts. It's comparable to what modern Android gaming is now and I hate it as well.

Guys, what's borderline for you? Or maybe you are still excited with new computers and the charm is still here?

@songo, that's funny. Since I always considered Amigas and Ataris as toy computers. The PC and compatibles were for serious work. But then again, I was not a PC gamer. I gamed in an arcade and used PC's at work. (And I was wrong, of course. I didn't understand much about non-PC computers back then).

Now, as a hobbiest, if you mean by "soul" the magic and mystery of these wonderful machines then I would say the soul never left. I continue as fascinated today by computers as I was when I first saw the Commodore PET in Jr. High School around 1979. Now we have different types of computers like tablets and smartphones. And now I get to play with old computers from the 70's, 80's and 90's all the way through to today.

It's all pretty facinating stuff. And it can be fun defeating a UEFI security scheme to install Linux or modify a Chrombook to run Linux and then emulate a DOS PC or an Amiga or an Atari.

It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

But I do think you were trying to share that the PC Gaming Scene and the challenge of tweaking the software to behave with your hardware is not the same as it once was. It does seem to be more "generic" and less customizable, by design. I get how that is not as much fun as it used to be. Thankfully we still have a lot of old equipment and old software around in the community.

Seaken64

IMHO, if a modern machine can boot Linux baremetal and both USB (class compliant) and accelerated video work (at the very least), it has enough soul.

darry wrote on 2022-07-16, 06:33:

IMHO, if a modern machine can boot Linux baremetal and both USB (class compliant) and accelerated video work (at the very least), it has enough soul.

Linux and USB? That doesn't compute. Linux nerds "good" hardware. SCSI CD-ROM drives, ISA VGAs, RS232 mice.. 😁

Seriously, though. Back in the day (90s), Linux and USB weren't friends.
People were joking that Hardware from the dumpster/junk yard was most compatible with Linux.
And fo be fair, there was some truth within.

Back then, there was a stignma/stereotype that Linux is regularly used by antisocial nerds who work with obsolete hardware from the road side in their cellars.

It's a far cry from our modern Linuy days, were Linux supports cutting-edge hardware the first (among the OSes). 🙂

Linux was the first ever OS on a fresh installation to pick up all the hardware on a 486DX2/66 system I owned back in the late '90s.

So it is obvious folks experience differs in that regard.

Maybe not any one thing.
Perhaps it started with windows XP and that product activation crap. I now have a copy I never activated and was saving for a better machine and now cannot use it at all.
Couple that with video games that cannot be run without some online account. The last game I played was unreal 2.
Along the same line we now have subscription-based crap like office 365. Trying to get it where you have to pay a monthly fee to use your computer.
Forget it.

ncmark wrote on 2022-07-16, 22:56:

windows XP and that product activation crap. I now have a copy I never activated and was saving for a better machine and now cannot use it at all.....
Forget it.

Is this the case? Phone activation worked for me as late as Dec 2019. Write down that code!

You can still activate XP here:
https://microsoft.gointeract.io/interact/inde … 24&token=pMU2Ok

PC is still the same, it has a lot of room for hardware and software choice, not just a fixed proprietary thing really like an Amiga was, it's still shining because of it,
I do feel like it got less exciting by the end of the 2000s or early 2010s due to diminishing returns for new things being pretty apparent and so the perceived evolution being a lot slower, but still, I think the new stuff is exciting; graphics cards pricing on the last few years aside...

You can say everything from not having to assign IRQs to UEFI to Windows activation has made PC lose it's essence. I think it's a matter of preference. I'm a progressive person so all my machines have just as much "soul" to me as another. Modern machines having less of that is a rather technophobic point of view in my opinion.

Ouch. 😞 So those of us (me! Hello! Yes! I'm here! 🙂👋) seeing in modern PC development the 1984 novel becoming true are essentially backward-looking or mentally stuck somehow..
And I thought believing in the bright future of Star Trek was one sign of being progressive. But maybe not, since I'm a fan of OldTrek ™. 🤔

yup, that's the usual attack from people in the industry towards people with legitimate concerns and criticism, "you just don't like new things!", "you just don't like innovation!"
oh boy but are they wrong, we just don't like innovations that take away freedoms we have enjoyed with technology for years and years and making things harder for us, locking us into ever smaller ecosystems, it has nothing to do with "hating" technology, but all to do with corporate control over it and what they try to make out of it.
imagine the things we could have if not everything was driven by maximizing profit and minimizing user control.

Yes, looks like we have lots and lots of apologists for walled gardens and corporate control, even on this venerated forum, which is purportedly and probably for an older contingent of 'retro' users. In other words, if the "corporate control" explaining away is this bad here, image how totally horrible it must be elsewhere. It's destroying personal freedoms right and left, but most people don't care; they'd rather have things dumbed down, convenient, and bloated. Their time and sense of entitlement is just too valuable; they don't want to learn, but want to be led. That just doesn't get through my jaded head, after 50 years of following technology, acquiring it, and having it all come to *this* state we're now in. What a damn letdown.

You guys are a hoot. If you don't like the progress, then why use modern internet and not just dialup? Why use a modern PC at all?

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-07-17, 12:15:

You guys are a hoot. If you don't like the progress, then why use modern internet and not just dialup? Why use a modern PC at all?

Which person here said they don't like "progress?" You are hallucinating.