Some members even consider early Core CPUs/systems to be retro, so most of your kit would qualify. I think of anything up to the last Core2 generation to be retro. The Skylake is the only system you mention that I wouldn't think of as retro (my main, and newest, PC is Skylake)

And to think in my mind anything b4 2k0 is retro , and anything pre '79 is vintage , and anything 50's is prehistoric.... however to a 15 year old even my ¬new 2010 MacBook Pro's are old stuff/tech 😁

Hold on to those MFM drives , people are throwing them away , will be a fortune soon.

Maybe you had the wrong vista version , I have a beta vista that runs better on core duo cpu than win7 so I used that vista on the laptop and upgraded to latest servicepack , disabled the frustrating smart from the failing hdd.

Yeh when does obsolete become retro. S604 is a good example, I was shocked to see how cheap it is compared to S478 or LGA771.

Plenty of people are building retro S478 builds and in 2023 I'll agree S478, AGP, Win98 and maybe just maybe XP is retro now.
LGA771 is also obsolete with basically anything based on that platform also been retired good few years ago, yet I can't think of S604 as anything other then obsolete, maybe because even the consumer grade stuff that came after it was just so much better performance wise? (That said I still have a few S604 servers lying around performing "retro server roles")

One of the main things I like about here vs other computer forums is you don't get the default "just upgrade" response to a question. It's such a lazy response and doesn't answer the question (unless the question is should I upgrade)

Welcome to the forums! I felt the same way when I found this place several years ago.

Also, for what it's worth, Aztech sound cards are often better than Sound Blasters in some ways, so don't actually throw them out please. 😁

Generally my experience of these type of hobbyist forums and equivalent facebook groups are pretty great. Bunch of people, even if relatively small in the grand internet scheme of things, who are interested in one very specific area of what ever tend to behave generally well: there is a common understanding of the subject, which means that although opinions may differ on one specific issue (for example best ISA soundcard), discussion doesn’t evolve to an argument, because people understand the variances and thus the subjectivity of the issue. Also, with old stuff fanboys tend to be quite rare. And finally, because forum is focused on one tight subject, other kind of bullshit such as politics is pretty much non-existent, even on the sub-forums which are for non-subject matter discussion.

And like chinny22 said, in places like this, people tend to really focus on problem solving. Not to go to the easiest route and even recognise that sometimes less is more.

Welcome!

I remember just lurking and reading for about six months before I started posting. It's remarkable how much knowledge on a wide variety of retro topics can be found here. And yeah, this forum does remind me of the good old days as well. 😀

Also, be sure to check Vogons Wiki and Vogons Drivers as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-22, 18:29:

I remember just lurking and reading for about six months before I started posting. It's remarkable how much knowledge on a wide variety of retro topics can be found here. And yeah, this forum does remind me of the good old days as well. 😀

I lurked for a long time too, i think many do - there are probably plenty of soon-to-be members out there. It is definitely the best vintage/retro computer forum around

debs3759 wrote on 2023-03-22, 09:01:

Some members even consider early Core CPUs/systems to be retro, so most of your kit would qualify. I think of anything up to the last Core2 generation to be retro. The Skylake is the only system you mention that I wouldn't think of as retro (my main, and newest, PC is Skylake)

Core2 CPUs are the best CPUs to have for Windows XP if you ask me. They're really solid hardware and while XP doesn't support dual cores, it's easy enough to just turn off a core.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-23, 10:40:

Core2 CPUs are the best CPUs to have for Windows XP if you ask me. They're really solid hardware and while XP doesn't support dual cores, it's easy enough to just turn off a core.

The Home version of Windows XP only supported one physical processor, while the Professional version supported two. That said, as of Service Pack 2, either version could use multi-core CPUs, since that's a completely different thing. So there's no need to turn off anything.

Whether a game would actually benefit from additional cores is another matter of course, and depends on how it was coded. But even in the worst case scenario, Windows could use the extra cores for background tasks and services, thereby freeing up CPU power for the actual game.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-23, 11:22:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-23, 10:40:

Core2 CPUs are the best CPUs to have for Windows XP if you ask me. They're really solid hardware and while XP doesn't support dual cores, it's easy enough to just turn off a core.

The Home version of Windows XP only supported one physical processor, while the Professional version supported two. That said, as of Service Pack 2, either of those could use multi-core CPUs, since that's a completely different thing. So there's no need to turn off anything.

Whether a game would actually benefit from additional cores is another matter of course, and depends on how it was coded. But even in the worst case scenario, Windows could use the extra cores for background tasks and services, thereby freeing up CPU power for the actual game.

Oh hell no, no Windows Xp games would benefit from a second core - it took years for the first games to arrive to support more than one core. The benefit isn't with the second core, it's with how fast and how reliable (not to mention CHEAP) these CPUs are. For a retro system they're a good choice as long as you know that some games refuse to start unless you disable the second core (which takes a few clicks).

Thank you for the replies and the welcomes.

Ozzuneoj - Don't worry, I just removed it; it is now back in a parts box. I will not actually throw it away. Maybe use it some day or give it to someone who will. I found the sound output to be much noisier than the 1703-A DAC on the sb16. I also appreciate the TDA1517 the sb16 has on board which can drive speakers directly.

I think the sentiment about the market determining what is retro makes sense. If it is nearly free, it is just an old slow thing. If it becomes so scarce that it actually becomes expensive again, retroness might explain the phenomenon. Thing is, this is more of an overseas concept for me, nobody around here will pay good money for obsolete hardware as far as I can tell. Just this weekend I needed some more space in aforementioned Mendocino, so I dug out a 7.5G Maxtor jobbie that still seems functional and put it in there. For curiosity I looked it up online and similar ones are for sale for stupid money on the internet, out there in the developed world. Probably retro enough.

chinny22 - I am also starting to develop an itch for s478 again. I actually have my own s478 system which I used between 2001 and 2006 as my main desktop, still sitting on the shelf in the garage. It performed server roles up to about 2009-ish but has been sitting since then. It is quite an interesting pc; it has a GA-8ITXR board with 256MB RDRAM-800 and a 1.7 Willamette SL5UG. It once functioned as a bridge/router with all six of its pci slots plugged with NICs and its onboard lan in use too - 7 interfaces 😀 It has onboard Intel IDE as well as a PDC20265 with an additional two IDE interfaces capable of fake raid. Back in the day I equipped it with two ST340016A's in raid0 and enjoyed the 76MB/sec it gave, when single 5400rpm drives were the norm doing 20-30MB/s.

st31276a wrote on 2023-03-22, 08:08:

Until I found this forum, I did not realize "retro" computing was a thing;

Yes, I think there are roughly three aspects to it:
1) Preservation of old software, by archiving it, and using emulation to run it
2) Development of new software targeting old machines
3) Development of new hardware targeting old machine

So we preserve the knowledge of these old machines and old software, and make it more convenient to keep using them, by being able to combine old hardware with modern things such as network support, SD/CF cards instead of harddisks, and whatnot.
This may also include patching old software to solve bugs or make them compatible with new devices.

Scali wrote on 2023-04-17, 09:08:

Yes, I think there are roughly three aspects to it: 1) Preservation of old software, by archiving it, and using emulation to run […]
Show full quote

st31276a wrote on 2023-03-22, 08:08:

Until I found this forum, I did not realize "retro" computing was a thing;

Yes, I think there are roughly three aspects to it:
1) Preservation of old software, by archiving it, and using emulation to run it
2) Development of new software targeting old machines
3) Development of new hardware targeting old machine

So we preserve the knowledge of these old machines and old software, and make it more convenient to keep using them, by being able to combine old hardware with modern things such as network support, SD/CF cards instead of harddisks, and whatnot.
This may also include patching old software to solve bugs or make them compatible with new devices.

a good way of summarising it

i wonder where a new piece of hardware becomes unnecessary though, as example the 'pistorm' for amiga. it's a raspberry pi that can be added to an amiga to improve performance, but why not just emulate the amiga on the pi.

#1 is to me the most important. as much as i like the idea of writing things to make old hardware useful again, or extending it with new hardware, i accept that the 'installed base' of old hardware as far as older 16 and 32 bit PCs are concerned is now pretty small compared both to newer PCs and to it's own former size, and shrinking continuously. there will be reasons to do it of course

Welcome!

debs3759 wrote on 2023-03-22, 09:01:

Some members even consider early Core CPUs/systems to be retro, so most of your kit would qualify.

I'm one of those members. The first C2Ds released in 2006, that's 17 years. 3-4 years from now there will be a generation of legal adults who haven't been alive when the latest C2Q CPU released. I think that qualifies them to be retro.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-17, 10:25:

i wonder where a new piece of hardware becomes unnecessary though, as example the 'pistorm' for amiga. it's a raspberry pi that can be added to an amiga to improve performance, but why not just emulate the amiga on the pi.

Well, one problem with software emulation is that it always has an extra frame of latency. The entire video circuit is emulated into a framebuffer, and once the frame has completed drawing, it is displayed on the host machine.
So given a PAL/50 Hz Amiga, that means you always have 20 ms more delay per frame than you'd have on a real machine (not including additional delay because of modern digital flatscreens and such).

The ideal emulator would emulate the video signal 'on the fly', but that would require extremely accurate timing, which you probably cannot do in software.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-04-17, 10:40:

I'm one of those members. The first C2Ds released in 2006, that's 17 years. 3-4 years from now there will be a generation of legal adults who haven't been alive when the latest C2Q CPU released. I think that qualifies them to be retro.

Yea, funny how that works... I bought a Core2 Duo E6600 at around introduction time.
The machine is still running, and I have Windows 11 on it, Visual Studio 2022 and other modern software.
These machines don't seem to age very quickly.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-04-17, 10:40:

Welcome!

debs3759 wrote on 2023-03-22, 09:01:

Some members even consider early Core CPUs/systems to be retro, so most of your kit would qualify.

I'm one of those members. The first C2Ds released in 2006, that's 17 years. 3-4 years from now there will be a generation of legal adults who haven't been alive when the latest C2Q CPU released. I think that qualifies them to be retro.

When I talk about Core CPUs, I mean the generation after Core2. Some class sockets 1156 and 1366 as retro. I'm on the fence with that. Core2 is definitely retro to me 😀

debs3759 wrote on 2023-04-17, 11:54:

When I talk about Core CPUs, I mean the generation after Core2. Some class sockets 1156 and 1366 as retro. I'm on the fence with that. Core2 is definitely retro to me 😀

I found the whole naming scheme after the original Pentium to be confusing.
In the early days, every CPU got its unique identifier: 8086, 80186, 80286, 80386 and 80486.
So, when Intel found they couldn't trademark a number, they moved to names: Pentium (which is pseudo-Greek/Latin for 'fifth', so it's a reference to what would have been the 586).
But then what would have been the 686 became the "Pentium Pro", and then Pentium II, III and IV.
So you now had 3 completely distinct microarchitectures under the same 'Pentium' banner: the original '586', the Pentium Pro/'686', and Pentium 4 aka Netburst.
And then Pentium II and III were Pentium Pro-derivatives with extra instructionset extensions.

It didn't get better with Core... Initially it was an evolution of the "Pentium M", which in itself was a Pentium III-derivative (which was a Pentium Pro derivative), as Pentium 4 didn't work very well in mobile devices (although they did try with the Pentium 4M).
It started as the internal name for the microarchitecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Cor ... hitecture)
But then it also became the product name.
Then they introduced the Core2... okay, technically still an evolution of the Core-architecture... and then Core iX... So now you had products named after a microarchitecture that they weren't based on.
And to make matters even worse, Intel then started recycling the "Pentium" and "Celeron" names for low-budget versions of the microarchitectures used for Core.