You can give them to me! 🤣

Seriously though, I don't know much about using dialup these days (been 16 years since I used it) but older systems are great for running old software the way it was meant to be run. Specifically, games. That's basically why this section of this forum exists. 😀

The most popular things:

• Games (DOS games and especially early Win95/98/XP games that are problematic to run any other way)

• Connecting to BBSes (via telnet over Ethernet or via some kind of terminal program and a serial solution)

• Retroprogramming - writing old games and software. This is mainly what I do with my vintage computers (though I generally do the actual development on modern hardware in DOSBox).

• General tinkering - swapping out new hardware, installing new software, overclocking, etc.

I haven't tried dialing into anything because I don't have a modem in any of my retro PCs (or a land line), but there must be something out there to connect to.

Learning about the hardware and a bit of assembly and C are the things I find the most interesting. You can use these old machines to educate yourself with style so to speak.

Playing games per se gets boring fast.

Damaniel wrote:

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Show full quote

• Retroprogramming - writing old games and software.
  This is mainly what I do with my vintage computers (though I generally do the actual development on modern hardware in DOSBox).

.

Cool, I have similar interests. I love to try out schematics and try to build circuits I dreamed of in my childhood.
Examples:
- Controlling some blinken lights on parallel port and writing some code in QuickBASIC for that
- Building some interfaces for weather FAX reception on shortwave
- Experimenting with the game port (can be used as a digitizer)
- Use older microcontrollers (BASIC stamps)
- Build DIY interfaces for old PIC/AVR controllers (software on DOS)
- Learn programming the AdLib
- Use my PC/XT clone as an IC/transistor database
- Build CGA to SCART adapters
- Etc, etc.

😀

Edit: Here's a pic of the vintage IC/transistor database program that I use.

I feel like the OP should have a crack at answering this one for himself.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Now what can I do with them ?

Bolt trucks to those bad boys and take them off some sweet jumps.

I just have mine to have them, I mean I don't need a pretty 2.8, athlon XP 2800, athlon 64 3400, opteron 180 🤣

Specs of machines you have?

I have Intel 486's, pentium , P3's and AMD k6-2's
And I have Mac Performa 575, Apple TV, Color Classic , G3's and G4's.

All working perfectly with modems and ethernet and web browsers. They can surf the internet but limited on websites.

I asked this question fairly soon after I got into the hobby. I was told "We store them!". 'What the hell', I thought, 'there's no point in that! Why do the hobby at all!?'

A year later I have a cupboard full of old computers stored. huh.

I got rid of my computer collection years ago only to find myself with even more computer today. So I just store them so I would buy anymore.
As long as I have them around to play with I won't be tempted to purchase more.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

A year later I have a cupboard full of old computers stored. huh.

Haha, I do the same. It's not complete useless, though. Keep in mind that we're no business people.

We love our stuff and take good care of it. This comes in handy if developers of emulators need our help, for example.
Our hobby makes us to preservers of the past, preservers of the beginning of the computer age and digital society.
In 60 or 90 years, we or our successors will be the last to have the knowledge to repair or operate these machines.
And the original hardware of course. Museums and universities, maybe too. But they are a minority and throw their
stuff out of their collections sometimes.

This reminds me of an article on the news: Amiga freaks saved digital paintings of a popular artist who drew them in the 80s.
The paintings were drawn on an A1000 with an early painting program and stored on 3.5" floppies in Amiga format.
A normal computer user of today would not have been able to read them, maybe trying to put them in an USB floppy
drive on Windows 10 or Linux and getting to the false conclusion that these disks were damaged.

I mostly store them and try to get things well organised. And I fail.

Games are the main thing. If not for playing then to compare how different sound cards sound OPL vs clones, Different Midi, Midi vs AWE, GUS
or how glide compares to D3D (or one of the even less popular formats like S3D or EMBM, etc)

Get network games running just because you can, or something like running doom in 3 screen mode.
Vanilla / Dos Doom in 3 screen mode. I finally did it!

try out different OS's on specific hardware/The challenge of finding the correct drivers. eg all 3 of your systems should be able to play a game in dos.
(I still want to build a Netware server and a Os2 system)

But mostly I'd say its to finally get that dream system we always wanted growing up

Damaniel wrote:

Retroprogramming - writing old games and software. This is mainly what I do with my vintage computers (though I generally do the actual development on modern hardware in DOSBox).

Retro hardware can be fun to program for but retro dev tools are painful.