I draw the line at around '00 for anything relating to vintage computing. Everything since is just a rehash of the same 64 bit/2-4-8 core processors and not that interesting. Mainly because integrated sound, net, USB etc. that makes tinkering a boring concept.

retro does not have a specific year attached to it for me, the way computers worked in 2006 is pretty much the same as today, so there is nothing fundamentally different about them apart from being slower.
but once you go to the early 2000s and before, computers were a lot more "diverse" so to say, different architectures, more choice, sound cards etc. that's what feels "retro" to me.

it's kinda like old cars... while classic cars today will always be classic cars, a generic car from today probably never will.

It it so subjective. 8bit computer to 286/386 are stone age. 486-P3 is retro. P4/Athlon XP/64 is obsolete. And Core2 is still usable, so not really retro. But it is only my subjective opinion.

but yes, a 69 Mustang or even a E38 7. series BMW will always be retro, IF it is in good condition. But I will never think that todays cars any of them have any retro value in the future. Maybe hipster retro. And yes I use hipster as a derogatory word.

But it is so subjective.... I really do not understand people who shell out 100 or 1000 for a Intel 4004. There is even not any personal nostalgia, only the name and history. 😁

Retro is when you show your old toys to your kids

Core 2 duo is not retro for me. I use it for retro gaming a lot but it's just too good and easy to use to be retro!

The ps360 are also not retro - the games are very online, dlc filled, update requiring, live service bloated consoles from about 2010 onwaeds. The PS2 and Dreamcast can be 100% used offline standalone with game disks.

(I know you can play 360 games offline and in fact do a 'clean reinstall' create an account and get playing Disk based games entirely offline, but being online is part of the experience so much more than the previous gen)

basically when your pc no longer plays latest games it is retro

robertmo wrote on 2021-01-29, 11:59:

basically when your pc no longer plays latest games it is retro

by that logic a PC from last year would be retro

tbh the way we use the term "retro" is against it's definition anyways, retro is usually used to describe something that tries and imitates an old style, not the actual old thing ^^

i.e. a retro-game would be a modern game that imitates pixel-graphics for example.

if you checked game Pył all PCs would be retro for you 😀

I detest the word "retro". They are OLD!.

A bit like me really 😉

Vintage?

I think it's prices. Thing get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper as they become obsolete. Then at some point get more expensive as they become "vintage". I'm not sure if Athlon 64/Pentium 4 systems are "vintage" yet in that regard. Just built one, and it was way cheaper than the SS7 system I built. In fact Pentium 4's are practically being given away if you don't mind buying old Dell office systems.

Going off prices though, the Geforce 6800 GT I got was "vintage". The Geforce 2 MX 400 in the SS7 system was just junk. Most SS7 motherboards are vintage. The processors you plop into them? In most cases junk. Most RAM seems to be priced like it's junk.

Still, none of this is so "vintage" that it's costing more than it did when it was new. So I guess it's got that going for it.

On PC's........

I don't personally consider the Core 2 Duo "vintage" yet because I still use two for "daily drivers" and they work just fine for that. TBH, there's a much bigger differnce in computing between 1981 and 1995, than 1995 to present. A Core 2 Duo with an SSD and a lot of RAM can run Windows 10 surprisingly comfortably for most basic day-to-day tasks. About the same as a 486 in 1998 running Windows 98......probably quite a bit better actually.

I see 1995 as really the start of "modern computing". So most stuff passed that point has little to no personal interest to me - that's when it becomes boring....here's my reasoning below...

- Intel created the 586, then marketed it as the Pentium - which to me marks Intel turning from a "Scientific Manufacturer" to a "Consumer Brand"
- Windows 95 hit the scene and Windows 10 uses much the same interface as 95 did, even if it's based off of NT Technology, which NT 3.51 also came out in 95
- The internet became mainstream at that point - there's nothing more vintage yet modern than a Pentium based PC running Windows 95 on the internet..which is STILL doable today (though not reccommended by most)
- ATX and mATX turned up around that time, which is still a PC form factor standard today
- Plug and Play was created and perfected during this time

So you basically have a i586 based machine running Windows, surfing the web, talking to people through social media, viewing online videos (we had it before Youtube, it was called Flash, or RealPlayer). To me, everything 486 and older is special because everything changed so drastically from the Pentium and before. Plus since most everything was DOS based, it is a lot harder to emulate or provide a compatibility layer for on modern operating systems. I can totally get The SIms 1, Diablo, Quake, Robot Arena 2, GTA 2-present, and whatnot running on a modern PC no problem. But when it comes to DOS or WIndows 16-bit it's choosing between expense but less fiddly, or free and more fiddly, or GOG, which I feel is the middle-ground.

CONSOLES

To me, consoles really don't become "vintage" to anyone other than the group that grew up with them. I was watching a video with Pat the NES Punk a few days ago discussing how the Gamecube is the #1 most populare retro-console right now. Which to me is laughable because the Gamecube is totally irrelevant to me. I just remember it as a toy-like cube that I saw a few times around the Nintendo Offices when I worked there, and started seeing in thrift shops by 2010 - I think I maybe played Super Monkey Ball once on it and loved it, but otherwise, I tended to prefer the old Nintendo Kiosk. Heck, I have 2 Wii and all I really use it as is a small emulation station of sorts most of the time - only playing actual Wii titles occasionally.

One thing discussed in his video was how the Atari 2600 seems to be slowly being forgotten - and that's where I STARTED with consoles. My first console was a 2600 in 1989, I started collecting for it in 1995, my first Yahoo search on the internet ever was for Atari 2600 in 1995. To me it's fun, it's nostalgic, but I grew up with it, and I can totally see how people younger than me would take one look at that thing and think "you call this fun? The Graphics look like they are made out of one color of lego! The controls are either so broken I'm surprised the AVGN has not popped up yet to fling poop and fire everywhere or so sensitive I feel like I'm doing brain surgery with a butter knife! You mean you HAVE to get up and WALK to the console to select a "game variation" and then hit "Reset" to play that variation?.....god, this thing is like banging two stones together and calling it music! One button? Up to jump? What moron designed this controller and control scheme? And who wants to use a phallic looking controller!?!? Am I playing some primitive form of Arkanoid or trying to open a can of pickles?". I'm just old enough to be on the cusp of when the concept of controlling images on your TV was a big deal, but just young enough to understand just how primitive all that early stuff is.

But I take one look at the PS3 and all I think is "way past my time". I mean, I get it, it was fun for you, but you grew up with it. I take one look at the PS/3 and think "oh man, another glorified proprietary computer with some exclusive content....one more HDMI headache, one more convoluted scheme of control I'd have to learn that I don't have time for, one more thing to soft-mod and drive the Wife nuts with a day of "in a minute, in a minute, in a minute.....g'dammit is this thing ever going to finish....in a minute, in a minute.....". I don't even know a single game on it.....oh look, Dragon Quest.....but I prefer my Dragon Quest from a top down perspective in 2D like the days of just "Enix" and "Chunsoft" when grinding could be a hypnotic pasttime. When the PS3 was new, I was still sitting in my studio Apartment in Everett playing Atari 2600 games, DOS games, NES games, and playing in Rock Bands every weekend between I.T. projects at work. "retro" for 2006 for me would be me doing what I Do every weekend anyway. The last time I got into a new game was Five Nights at Freddy's - because I did not need to dedicate hours to learn it - just like my Atari games.

IN GENERAL

Everything has it's day in the sun being under a "Retro" or "Vintage" banner, but after awhile the core audience "thins the herd a bit". Some consoles and PCs will always be in vogue - the Commodore 64, the NES, the IBM PC, XT, and AT.....because they had some kind of massive impact on the market or became a cultural phenomenon that means more than just the company and the products it put out. The "peak" is when everyone in your age group hits their mid-20's to their early 40's - and then it goes downhill from there, where all the "also rans" and "obscure" stuff starts to slide down the other side of the mountain. I can't say on a personal level for sure but I can see how a Core 2 or a PS3 would be "Retro". I don't consider my "Wii" retro - but it does creep me out to think that it was indeed 15 years ago I was working in Dealer Returns at Nintendo of America in Redmond running diagnostics on them when they were new......and remembering when I was buying all that NES stuff when the NES was a 15 year old platform for pennies on the dollar.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-01-29, 15:53:

Vintage?

Well used 😀

XP was the last retro era.

I would say pre-ATX has become vintage - it's really a 30 year thing.

If I'm not mistaken, "retro" means something along the lines of "imitation". I.e. something that was popular in the past made a comeback. I guess fashion is the most obvious example. So, retro doesn't mean "old", it means it's new but mimicking something from the past.

This would mean that in computing, these recently released Nintendo and PlayStation minis are retro. A genuine 386 from 1990 is vintage.

So, I guess the majority of people on this board are into "vintage computing" not "retro computing".

Technicalities I guess...

kolderman wrote on 2021-01-29, 19:12:

XP was the last retro era.

I would say pre-ATX has become vintage - it's really a 30 year thing.

No it isn't. Just got a couple of NEC/Packard Bell P4 3.xMhzs systems and they run the current 32-bit Mint Linux Debian Edition no sweat at all.

pan069 wrote on 2021-01-29, 20:37:

If I'm not mistaken, "retro" means something along the lines of "imitation". I.e. something that was popular in the past made a comeback. I guess fashion is the most obvious example. So, retro doesn't mean "old", it means it's new but mimicking something from the past.

The example I learned in the 90s was that the Dodge Viper was retro (from Latin 'backwards') because its styling evoked the Shelby Cobra of the 1960s. That same Viper is now, 30 years later, vintage. If someone designed a new car today inspired by the Viper then it too would be retro. I think the muddled terminology comes from 'retro gaming': gaming in an old fashioned way - if done by emulation then it seems fine to talk about it being 'retro', but if done with original hardware then you're dealing with 'vintage'.

creepingnet wrote on 2021-01-29, 18:55:

I don't personally consider the Core 2 Duo "vintage" yet because I still use two for "daily drivers" and they work just fine for that. TBH, there's a much bigger differnce in computing between 1981 and 1995, than 1995 to present.

If we try to apply a definitive NOW-15 cutoff point for old and new then it quickly becomes absurd if we go back to 1995 and declare a 14 year old IBM 5150 to be not-old. Much like human life is experienced, you'd need a logarithmic scale to create a rule for determining the boundary of novelty that applies across the four decades of the IBM PC.

Shooting from the hip, though... 64-bit CPUs, SATA, PCI Express. They're clustered together from 2002-2005, so we could say the epoch of the modern era was about 15 years ago.

I use it for retro gaming a lot but it's just too good and easy to use to be retro!

Just as any PII/PIII rigs, so no reason not to consider Core 2 retro already.

ITT : Lots of retro gate keeping.