Hmm... I'd guess it's different for everyone. I consider vintage really old stuff - 70s and early 80s. I don't even consider vintage an Atari 800XL that I begun with in 1986. This is all retro for me from 1985 to around 1995. Yes, I think vintage isn't the same as retro.

For PC hardware I consider modern when you stopped messing around with jumpers. But I still like everything 😉

I have not thought about word vintage, but generally when I think about retro hardware, I think about hardware that can run software/games fully with sound and everything that a modern system can't run like that without emulation.

Heh, Apple regards everything >4yrs old as "vintage" IIRC 😵

P4 CPUs and beyond are modern for me. Then there are tiers of vintage; the P1-P3 period is where I am most interested in PC hardware, but I realize they are a more retro than vintage. True vintage is 486 and earlier for me.

About 20-25 years is when stuff becomes "vintage" in general, maybe less if it was something tied to a very brief period. Windows 95 Pentiums are at that border right now.

2K, XP and even Vista systems are retro machines by now, but still a long way from vintage. Old, classic, what have you. I think "modern" starts loosely at Core 2 + Windows 7.

Yeah, some people here have different definitions for "vintage" and "retro". Whatever you call it, my break point is around 2003. Basically, if it's 32-bit, single core, and consumer grade, chances are I consider it retro.

SSE2 or even AMD64/EM64T

appiah4 wrote:

P4 CPUs and beyond are modern for me. Then there are tiers of vintage; the P1-P3 period is where I am most interested in PC hardware, but I realize they are a more retro than vintage. True vintage is 486 and earlier for me.

Yeah I'd agree with all your steps. You could still use a P4 as a daily PC and work quite well with it so that's modern to me!

For me.... Retro is WinXP and newer. Vintage is anything older than XP (2000, 98). Here I am talking about 2001 being the border. Or more fluidly, stuff that were used for gaming in the years 2001/02.

psychz wrote:

Heh, Apple regards everything >4yrs old as "vintage" IIRC 😵

As I recall it. They are not talking vintage. Apple is using the term "obsolete" and not "vintage".

Obsolete is when it no longer can run the newest new software. Then comes retro, and finally vintage.

Apple-1 machines are vintage. 5 year old macbooks are not.

brostenen wrote:

For me.... Retro is WinXP and newer. Vintage is anything older than XP (2000, 98).

This could be quite tricky, if you realized, that you can run Windows 98 even on CPU's like C2D/C2Q 🤣 But I get your point, even tho I consider vintage way older stuff then 98 era.

brostenen wrote:

Apple-1 machines are vintage. 5 year old macbooks are not.

I know (and agree), but...

Apple is using the term "obsolete" and not "vintage".

nope, they aren't! so... enjoy your vintage late 2011 MacBook 🤣 😠
Guess they're playing with words to get away with limited/no support for older machines. In their wording, the Apple-1 is obsolete instead of vintage (does this even make sense?)

I don't try to distinguish between vintage and retro. It is very simple: I love everything from the era of 286's to P55C's. Pentium II/III and above don't do it for me. There's nothing nostalgical involved. And I often ask myself why people bother to even build such PIII or P4 systems and call them retro? They almost have the same hardware functionalities and capabilities than what our current entry-level systems for office computing provide. What's the point in it?

A good retro system has to struggle with limitations and compromises. A perfectly running and maxed-out PIII/P4 system that runs all games up to the year of 2007 is just... not really interesting.

blurks wrote:

I don't try to distinguish between vintage and retro. It is very simple: I love everything from the era of 286's to P55C's. Pentium II/III and above don't do it for me. There's nothing nostalgical involved. And I often ask myself why people bother to even build such PIII or P4 systems and call them retro? They almost have the same hardware functionalities and capabilities than what our current entry-level systems for office computing provide. What's the point in it?

A good retro system has to struggle with limitations and compromises. A perfectly running and maxed-out PIII/P4 system that runs all games up to the year of 2007 is just... not really interesting.

You were probably nota gamer in the 96-2000 3D revolution 😎

after pentium3 is modern and i dont like it.

Well i am a DOS fanatic, so for me, it is "Vintage" then comes modernish DOS era 486 to Pentium(3), and then unusable PCI/AGP only stuff, Pentium3 to Pentium4, and then usable stuff for modern uses Core2Duo and to infinity.

appiah4 wrote:

You were probably nota gamer in the 96-2000 3D revolution 😎

I was but I grew up with old 386 and 486 machines in the early 90's. Later in that decade my systems bacame more powerful and I enjoyed a lot of late 90's games like Half-Life, Unreal, Diablo II and the likes but I would never really build a PII/PIII/P4 system as there is no emotional attachment to them (from my side) and they feel like they are basically the same stuff we have nowadays just a few megahertz slower...
Pre-Pentium systems had their own interesting busses (EISA, MCA, VLB) different approaches on memory management and their software was (generally) closer to the hardware.

Man I sound like an old fart talking about WWII... 😁

In my mind, but this will differ from person to person, these categories exist. I realize they are a bit weird! And while thinking about it and writing it down, I'm doubting it haha. I might want to break up 1 in two bits, but I don't know where. And this only considers IBM compatible stuff and Microsoft OSes. I put lines between what I consider retro and modern. I don't use the word vintage, ' ' 'vintage' is more looks than functionality for me.

1. XT/8088/286/386/486 (ISA)
2. 486 (VLB/PCI + ISA )(this is kindof a transition from 1 to 3 for me)
3. Pentium/K5/6x86 (Socket 5/7; PCI)
4. Pentium 2&3/K6-2&3/K7 (PCI+AGP)
5. Pentium 4/K8 (AGP)
----------------------------------
6. Pentium 4 (no AGP)
7. More than one core per CPU

With software:
1. DOS + Windows 1/2/3
2. Windows 9x & Windows 2000
----------------------------------
3. Windows XP/Vista
4. Windows 7 and beyond

Other considerations for me:
- VGA and pre-VGA
- USB (which is basically PCI and Windows 95 OSR2)
- CD-ROM
- 32bit / 64bit (CPU+OS)
- IDE
- etc

Moogle! wrote:

This is, as always a moving goalposts sort of question, but what do you consider the break between vintage and modern hardware?

Personally - the PII era (1997+) is the break point between vintage and modern systems. A PII system has all of the modern system characteristics: ATX standard, DIMM memory, dedicated video bus, USB, integrated sound and so on. You could still install and use Win7 on PII system, while on S5/7 and older systems with SIMM memory, that's basically impossible. True retro stuff (personally) is before PCI era (1993).

Also P4's with DDR memory support are definitely still modern... Snap out of it people.