Sammy wrote:

But a Laptop has allready a Display, for a C64 you need a Monitor or a TV.
Thats around 7 Watts + 30 till 50 Watts.

You can also use a small, power-efficient LCD screen for a C64. Would still be less power than a modern laptop.

I will look 66 in 30 years. Also, I just realized I haven't been on vogons in forever. I missed this place.

Jo22 wrote:

Errius wrote:

AI will be the big issue of the future. You'll never be sure if you're interacting with people or machines online. beep beep.

You know when you're talking with a nice lady by the name of Eliza. 😉

Have you seen the movie Her? It's about a guy who falls in love with his OS.

Have you seen the anime I Dream of Mimi? It's only 3 episodes so it'd take around 1.5 hours to watch it (but it is extremely NSFW). It's clearly mid-90s and a nerd saves up to buy a computer. He goes to the store and they are out of PCs... but some dude in an alley tells him "Hey I got a computer for ya, just what you're looking for." He takes it, goes home, and opens it up. It's a girl in a box and she's a talking walking computer... but needs to refresh her memory daily by intercourse.

It's stupid cheesy but funny.

In 30 years I intend to see if Windows 98 can still browse the web with Firefox 2.0

candle_86 wrote:

In 30 years I intend to see if Windows 98 can still browse the web with Firefox 2.0

I think it might be done for by then, witch is why we need to make are own websites to support old browsers

I'm sure VOGONS will still work perfectly 😀

Edit: it would be nice to have a "modern", HTML5 compatible browser for obsolete operating systems, though.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I'm sure VOGONS will still work perfectly 😀

Edit: it would be nice to have a "modern", HTML5 compatible browser for obsolete operating systems, though.

Firefox is open source... Sort of.
But one could build a newer version of it for 9x and nt4 and 2k

As for were the retro PC comity will be in 30years? Well a lot can change in that time frame, but things will progress as they aways had. Less puerile be building sk370 and older systems, but rether the systems of today.
How many people do you see playing with hardware from the 70s today? Go back 20years and your see more of that.

Jade Falcon wrote:

How many people do you see playing with hardware from the 70s today? Go back 20years and your see more of that.

Hmm, true. And you see even less people playing with Babbage Difference Engines 🤣

But, on the other hand, I enjoy the 286-Pentium era most, even though I grew up with Pentium III and 4. I dislike Pentium 4 as it is associated with Windows XP, which imho was just a bit too much for the hardware at the time. 98 always seemed snappier. Vista was even worse. But when 7 came along the hardware had caught up. I can build Core 2 Duo machines running Windows 7 that are way snappier than XP on Pentium 4, and on par with 98 on a PIII. But now I'm way off topic... 😊

If I'm still alive in 30 years, I hope that somebody will have the compassion and mercy to end my suffering. There comes a point of diminishing returns.

SquallStrife wrote:

Wow, cynical much?

Yeah, I know. Even today, things were supposed to be different. It feels like things peaked with XP and we've been on a downhill slide ever since. "Brave New World" was supposed to be fiction; not an instruction manual. It saddens me to see so many people bind their own shackles so willingly.

This isn't what the internet was supposed to be about.

Aside from Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, I haven't been genuinely excited about a new title in a very very long time. Sadly, I don't have a modern PC that can run either of them. I'll probably hold off on upgrading until VR tech becomes more mainstream and cheaper. Perhaps that will be what breathes new life into my seriously declining interest in contemporary PCs.

The future has gotta get better, I hope.

(Get off my lawn...)

I believe retro-gaming will be alive in some form or another, most likely emulators. However, I agree with some people here that it may be more difficult to feel nostalgia or fondness for games of the last few generations as it was with the 80s-90s.

I think there is some damn good stuff today (for instance, I rate something like Dark Souls as high as my favorite games from previous generations) but it's mostly notable exceptions now, whereas in the past you had Nintendo, Sierra, Id or LucasArts putting out one timeless classic after another. Add to that the "instant gratification" and rapid pace at which things come and go today and it gets really difficult to have that sense of attachment.

It's interesting what you mention about coding, keenmaster486. Just the other day I realized that back when I started working as a software engineer, JavaScript was considered pretty much a joke next to stuff like C, while nowadays it basically is the defacto programming language of the Web. What is worrying is that I've heard many newcomers celebrate this because this way they "only need to learn one language" and show next to no interest in lower level stuff.

In 30 years the hardware will be out of reach for most and most will have to resort to some form of emulation which will in no doubt will be much better than it is now. Those who are smart are the ones collecting what they can even if the hardware is of mid range or low end by our current retro standards but it will pay off in the end. The nice and exotic stuff will be unobtainable at almost any price so enjoy it now and be like the old farts who back in their day had really nice cars. No doubt that some of us are playing with what amounts to the Duesenbergs of retro pc hardware but don't quite realize it yet.

Nah, my vision of the future is a bit brighter I think.. 😁
The Atari 2600, for example, was released in the mid-70's and still has a lot of fans.
Heck, even younger people care for it. Besides, there are a lot of clone systems out there.
I wouldn't be surprised if people in the future were even able to make them their own,
considering the advancements in production techniques (3D printers, for example).
Plus, a lot of "our" systems are so well documented that it is possible to re-create them with FPGA's
or to print their circuits on plastic. And if that's not enough, there are now several video games museums scattered
all around the world (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)..

SHARP Z80 CPU on glass
http://www.sharpmz.org/z80glass.htm

I think for most people the interest in old PC hardware will be derived from their interest in video games. There will continue to be a decent enough number of people who are interested in games from decades past. The most convenient way to play them will be with emulators, but some people will become interested in the hardware behind it all, and they'll start seeking out that hardware. People will place value on that equipment, so it will be preserved and traded and sold.
Many people play NES games on an emulator, but some of them soon decide they'd like to get a real NES and physical cartridges. The same will continue to be true with PC games, where some people want to recreate a physical setup as part of the experience.

Business computers from the 1970s and earlier weren't nearly as widely produced and as you move backward in time they become increasingly less practical to keep in your house, plus early computers were business tools and not things anybody ever wanted in their house to begin with.
AT/ATX consumer PC hardware is not that difficult to keep and preserve and use, and it was produced in large numbers. It will be around for a long time.

CRT monitors are something I'm more pessimistic about.

I wonder if any of my computers will be worth something in 30 years.. Better hang onto the old stuff just in case.

computergeek92 wrote:

I wonder if any of my computers will be worth something in 30 years.. Better hang onto the old stuff just in case.

Only if they were made or signed by a person named Steve. 😉

computergeek92 wrote:

I wonder if any of my computers will be worth something in 30 years.. Better hang onto the old stuff just in case.

It will all depend on the same factors that exist now for retro pc hardware except that it will become more valuable with age as less and less will exist by then. People will always like old things even if those things were around long before their time.