VOGONS


First post, by jxalex

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I mean that do you do anything else than games? How are you trying to have more applications to run on the retro machines thus getting more use of them.

DOS 7.1 on the 486DX-4 100MHz:
TCP-IP stack - ftp, ssh, telnet, lynx
cd-burning cdripping and mkisofs tools
EPROM programmer, SRAM dump-reader, reverse engineering other hardware
Fasttracker 2.08 and 2.09, using it for arranging with hardware synths via midi port.
and several module players and demoscene musicdiscs
viewer player programs: mpxplay, qview, cubic player (thus missing the recording programs)

also the drive mapping is with the NFS to linux machine

the only things which scream for a more sophisticated www browsers are the pseudosocial networks which render the web-browsers useless which were perfect for a times back then.

Also perhaps it is my age --- 39
And some thoughts...
0. all the trouble with current systems is that it is after couple years obsolete and there will be a force for upgrade/abandon. But obsolete systems have benefit as they are constantly the same!
All becouse those are big corporations with many many programmers. They do it for the money, not becouse of passion. They do not use it. If they would rent the system, then it is not developed such buy-and-abandon way. They rather make the resistance for compatibility instead of encouraging it. It is ridiculous and very user violent.
Becouse just if YOU, as a person, make programs or hardware for YOURSELF, then you do make it in the thought that you use it so long as you can. Never in a thought that it should be "updated" after a year or abandoned and such, becouse it is waste of time and impractical. Right? But how much of the consumers ever ever think about it while just buying and throwing away, but never ever programming any line or soldering a wire?
Also the hardware of the modern current PCs are much more not so easily accessible for development as a private person with limited ressources even for the small project!
So, it is certainly beneficial to develop the things in focus for OLD systems, not for a contemporary ones.
Usually the "do-it-yourself" things on some countries (sweden) is rendered to be like a parody, very limited, expensive, impractical and mighty-one-forbid-that if it can be practical for you or you should get any money for it... 😁

In fact I had in the past dream that I just buy computer once in a lifetime, just like on those days it was the trendy thing to build yourself a homecomputer from discrete components and FDD disc controllers too! Of course it takes time, and the attitude is different then...

1. why to have on the messy webpages, while on the oldfashioned ftp should be more than enough? NO need to design and design again the same webpage while the contents is the same messy. Also the same websites just render their webpages much clumsier which require newer and newer browser.
2. also why people go to the fuckbooks and 1001 pseudosocial networks to write the same things which were done the same way on mail listings?
3. what for all such race for newer versions while it is clear that the main function does not change, but the compatibility is sacrificed instead? (well for example the skype worked on the win98se until 2013 after the M$ bought it. then it was screwed).

4. at the work on ancient times .... It can be compatible for old hardware, however I was resisted for this. mostly I heard -- the PHB says "no. do not compile this for to run on older systems".
5. despite the big corporations scream that this and that is obsolete, just after the time the software for DOS came too. Like CD writing for dos. Video players for dos. etc. So there is no problem. We all should ignore the corporations hype about being "newer".
There are still zillions of the programs which are the same but they are compiled with requirement for the latest M$ platform only, while there is no point for that. Also hey... how many years THEY can come to the market with the "new" version of the shitty text editor software? 25 years should be ridiculously long time while there is not so much point to open that m$ word to write down couple notes, as dos EDIT should be more than enough.

While in the university I was still keen on sticking on the old system (dos and win3x), while the win98se was out (the processors were 300Mhz), also the main question to me was "what games you have?", But, rather than just games, I used my computer for anything other usual tasks (under the dos and win3x) what the other people did the exactly the same way under win98se instead, except the some uncommon things, which required Sun Sparcstation anyway. 😉
Actually I managed to do that -- to keep running only using win3x and DOS on the 450MHz pentium -- until 2003 becouse there was always ONLY ONE PROGRAM in a time which screamed for a "newer" windows version or hardware or its drivers were requiring that, but in time I always happened to find a alternative program versions and hardware models which worked to my system for win3x, run on the dos. At the same time on the 486 there were some older stuff. The "upgrade" would meant the compatibility programs with other DOS programs, clumsier slower interface on whatever CPU it was. In fact the all the huge number windows versions from win95 and win98 has always been in my eyes very clumsy and they are still clumsy on the GHz cpu systems.
Also I could not run everything on the Pentium, becouse some programs complained about problems, thus the need for 2 machines -- 486 and Pentium III.

So far I have also kept the habit of keeping the same old computers such way, but also the new ones have been added, but in a fashion that the youngest one is 10 years old among the 9 PCs and have managed to get along with necessities and to avoid those forced upgrades.
For music making I still do use now the Pentium IV with win98se, and the last thing is on the Mandriva 2009 . however sometimes I kickstart that winxp machine too as a last resort. Its painfully uncomfortable system. But the last thing in the world we require is that something which is needed to do can be done ONLY through internet, which requires this latest browser, which requires this M$ thing, which requires even newest computer.
In a one way it is pretty relaxing -- I never have troublesome thoughts about being compatible or something is out of date or whatever.. becouse I prefer old hardware and programs already and avoid those new "trends" and "surveys" which try to establish and leech themself. 😁 😁

I do create blogs, but instead of putting up them in a fuckbook and other pseudosocial networks like the people do, I write to myself in a computer.
Also I do music, but with a hardware which I can touch, not just a one program in computer.
... and so on.

well it is not "trendy", but all those "trends" and "mainstream" are pressurized by corporations with huge $$$ and £££ and it is THEIR decision what is trendy and what is not, what is mainstream and what is obsolete. And if thats so then flush that!
It is better to do things of my own, not "trendy" things are these activities, but it is something what is ME MYSELF , personally LIKE it. It is MY decision, it makes me feel alright and I am lucky with this. It is freedom. Then THIS is all what counts. fuck that win10 and all newer versions!
However, we all here do the thing like that and not just me myself I suppose. Quite a long time by now You too. Right?

so go go go on retro computer fans! 😀
So, your manifestation about retro computers and how and what for you use them?

Current project: DOS ISA soundcard with 24bit/96Khz digital I/O, SB16 compatible switchable.
newly made SB-clone ...with 24bit and AES/EBU... join in development!

Reply 1 of 29, by amadeus777999

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I can certainly agree with some of your notions.
What are the specs of your 486 systems?

I like old hardware in conjunction with WatcomC and Wasm or Tasm. It's a nice, minimalistic learning environment.

Reply 2 of 29, by dionb

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This sounds quite a bit like "You young'uns get off mah lawn!!!" 😉

But being of similar age I can certainly sympathise if not agree with most of it. Apart from games (which I actually don't have enough time for usually) I hook up any device remotely capable to my home network (yeah, I'm an in-home networking engineer who gets the corner cases of the corner cases from our couple of thousand technicians, so this is secund nature for me). I also have this strict division between content and layout, which leads to me tending to do almost all my writing (work & private) in ASCII text, before formatting those documents I cannot avoid formatting. As such, I do my writing on whatever system is most convenient, be it a Core I7 or some old 486 or older. From that perspective I can really kick myself that I sold the NeXTStation I once had.

That said:
0) Programmed obsolescence has never been as absent as today. PC companies are going bankrupt from the simple fact that most people have zero need to upgrade. For office & web browsing use, a 10-year old PC (that has been fitted with SSD, that is one upgrade that really matters) with 4GB RAM is just as good as a new system bought today. If you'd tried that 25 years ago in 1993, you would have dropped from a 486DX2 that could run DOS and Win3.1 with multiple MB of RAM to the very first XT (or marginally compatibles) with 640kB max and only 1/16th of the performance.
Microsoft and Apple do their best from the software side, but if you don't want to upgrade, it's never been as easy not to as today.

Similarly, even though actually implementing applications via low-level programming directly on the hardware is basically impossible, there are robust high-level language, frameworks and libraries for pretty much every platform to produce functional applications for less effort than ever before, and without any doubt it's easier than ever before to write cross-platform code.
1) Fully agreed. A modern web page needs a dualcore CPU with at least 2GB (preferably more) of RAM just to display properly. Sometimes all that power is used for something half-sensible (Google Earth or Maps would hardly work in simple HTML), but usually it's just ads, ads, ads and frameworks for more data mining and ads. We've reached the point that ads on websites are the biggest single driver of hardware upgrades.
2) Meh. I have to keep track of a family spread out over half the globe and remember how that (didn't) work before social media. Mailing lists didn't cut it. That's not to endorse Facebook & co's business model or like their actual software, but the concept has merit.
3) This is mostly driven by users themselves. What they want is frequently utterly banal (we are not representative for say Skype's user base), but it's how apps compete. Also, don't underestimate the effect of obsolescence of underlying frameworks/libraries. The fact this happens just as much in the Linux world as in corporate MS & Apple & co means it's not just a capitalist conspiracy.
4) I'm on your side, but Linus (to mention but one influential person) is not. I was recently looking into why support for 80386 was dropped and more recently 686 and SSE2 are required for Linux and/or glibc. Bottom line is that development is pragmatic and if keeping backwards compatibility costs significant performance (as 386 support apparently seriously limited the performance of SMP code), it will be thrown under the train if 99.9% of users run newer hardware and want the performance, and the 0.01% will probably run old versions anyway.
5) Text editors are the extreme example of things that have not needed change for ages (although I was very happy when upgrading from notepad.exe to notepad++). But there's enough out there where it is sensible. You can dispute whether people really are better served with HD and 4k TVs than with SD, but fact is people have the stuff, and a low-bitrate VCD/MPEG1 looks really, really crap on HD let alone 4k screens. The newer codecs don't just do more of the same, they have a fundamentally different balance between compression and required processing power. It would have been perfectly possible in theory to write an HEVC codec back in 1990, but the computing power required would have been impractical if not impossible. Now the power is easily available, which allows much higher compression, which in turn makes it feasible to stream this stuff over normal (i.e. low bitrate rural German or US) internet connections.
Same thing with protocols like WiFi, MoCA and G.hn - all have recently moved from Reed-Solomon forward error correction to LDPC. LDPC is actually an older technique, described in the 1960s, but at the time computationally unfeasible. A couple of decades of Moore's Law later and we can do a 3-6dB jump closer to the Shannon limits by using this old curiosity combined with our new powerful hardware. 3dB is nothing to be sniffed at in networking, so I for one am glad we could do it.

Reply 3 of 29, by jxalex

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amadeus777999 wrote:

I can certainly agree with some of your notions.
What are the specs of your 486 systems?

depends on what I am running. the mobo is the same however I switch the video, network, scsi and soundcards depending on the need. So depending on the need.

486dx-4 100Mhz intel 16kB L1 cache CPU,
5.25" 1.2MB and 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy drives.
32MB RAM
The motherboard has IDE ports onboard

The 16bit universal IO cardwith Floppy, COM1, COM2, LPT ports.

Adaptec UltraSCSI 29160 card with 73GB HDD, SCSI CDwriter writer, SCSI-CF combination
IDE NEC ND3550 DVD-writer
realtek 8029, realtek 8139 and Intel 10/100 network cards.
SEMF 8x8 port 16bit I/O card (this is one my hilarious I/O card which I made 2016)
soundcards: ess1868, Gravis Ultrasound MAX and ACE and PnP, SoundBlaster AWE64,
video: CirrusLogic 5428, S3Trio 64, ATI Mach64VT
additional LPT port card.

In the ancient times that 486 motherboard was used mostly with 1.6GB, later with 1GB SCSI and then 9GB.. 18GB..36GB SCSI drive and CD-writer : Plextor Plexwriter 4220Ti writer , which I still have 2 of them, plus Yamaha newer model with 8..12 speed.

Another486 machine: compaq SX33 contura aero. with trendnet 10/100 PCMCIA network,
orinoco silver wifi card. THis I have also used as a music sequencer with MOTU Midi express XT MIDI unit . 😉

Current project: DOS ISA soundcard with 24bit/96Khz digital I/O, SB16 compatible switchable.
newly made SB-clone ...with 24bit and AES/EBU... join in development!

Reply 4 of 29, by Standard Def Steve

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Why yes! I use my Apple IIe to categorize my necktie collection. The wonders of modern technology, I tell you...

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 5 of 29, by jxalex

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Good that there are some of us... who still enjoy it. It happened to be a real long message this time, but please take time to read and in a slow pace . perhaps some tea/coffee recommended.

dionb wrote:

This sounds quite a bit like "You young'uns get off mah lawn!!!" 😉

fascinating, becouse thats what I have been even just 2 years after I started with computers and while I was still not even 20 year old. 😁 😁 Compared to my comrades in my age I was then 70 year old mentally if having such a tone "you youngsters get off and read the book"... perhaps.

When there was talk about CD-ROMs then the answer was from fellow "CD-ROMs are very good becouse they have many many games!" and there it ended, as public domain CD-ROMs were not so common on days then and it was still couple years before the people started to burn the CD-Rs of their own (and quite often with extra virusbonuspacks on it too OR with improper archiving skills -- they did not bothered to record another copy for a backup in cases the CD-R would be lost/broken/stolen/injured).
well, my most interesting game was the BASIC if not Turbo Pascal and 286/386 assembler.

(work & private) in ASCII text, before formatting those documents I cannot avoid formatting. As such, I do my writing on whatever system is most convenient, be it a Core I7 or some old 486 or older. From that perspective I can really kick myself that I sold the NeXTStation I once had.

of course. It also depends on the needs, however it does not make sense that the average people nowadays have no idea about the netiquette and is excessively top-posting and sending back the ENTIRE mail!!! 😖 Each time. They do not really understand that people read from top to botton and not vice versa. hmm...?!

RAM is just as good as a new system bought today. If you'd tried that 25 years ago in 1993, you would have dropped from a 486DX2 that could run DOS and Win3.1 with multiple MB of RAM to the very first XT (or marginally compatibles) with 640kB max and only 1/16th of the performance.

oh yes, the people watch me behind the 486 and ask "But does it run win10?", while I ask -- but does your machine has EPROM programmer and the software which I can tweak whenever I want for my next reverse engineering project? But mostly for the most common habit -- surfing in those pseudosocial networks, the people wont give a damn what kind of operating system or version it has or does not notice.
With those ancient dinosaur machines the good side was that you had to know atleast something about the computer, its file system, organization, formatting, and what is the difference between
kB, how big it is and what can be fitted in one MB or 1GB! Now it seems a lost knowledge almost.
Also ... I am young enough, but I remember the even older writing about what was that "neverending september". SO, on those days internet too was the area for the smart ones....
But now... just a couple months ago I could not explain to my mother what is the difference between the megapixels and megabytes... and still many people collide with me who have no idea how to organize the files in the computer. THey do not know how much is the 32GB memory stick and what can be fitted in it. Neither they can understand why one mail with 1 photo bounched as they cannot check if the whole mail size is less than 15MB !

So, it makes people dumb.

About upgrades now that M$ alike corporations use other trickery to create need for upgrading.
In the past there were the functionality, and also there was no real reason to abandon older platforms. All that very quick "buy-and-trash" attitude with companies began when the 32-bit systems got rolling after the win95, while there was no technical difficulty to provide the support for older win3.x version... (so I got for win3.x it when I demanded and pointed that TEAC supports win3.x too, so there was that cd writer program from plextor, but by default they supported from win95 only).
Now it is somewhat the policy or the corporations politics and scary tactics while there is no reason for it (so, remember the HP trickery when the all laserjet cartridges reported them being empty all at the same date?).

To me it was not only the thing about money, but I was dealing with the computers becouse of the computers itself, and each time all those changes tore apart something what I just was getting used into.

1) Fully agreed. A modern web page needs a dualcore CPU with at least 2GB (preferably more) of RAM just to display properly. Sometimes all that power is used for something half-sensible (Google Earth or Maps would hardly work in simple HTML), but usually it's just ads, ads, ads and frameworks for more data mining and ads. We've reached the point that ads on websites are the biggest single driver of hardware upgrades.

*So, thats why we need the modern computers with latest browsers with videocards and platforms -- so they could harrass us and exploit our machines for their cryptocurrency datamining?* 😉 😉 Well, I was not aware about that... oh, what a relief, really! Yippieee I did not miss anything then! 😁

It really seems like the music studios nowadays that makes me wonder -- all what for the 192kHz 24bit ADC and DAC modules are used is to make the brickwall limited "product" which is meant for sale through website streaming and radios with 15kHz bandwidth which is listened in 60% cases with earplugs and laptop internal speaker...

2) Meh. I have to keep track of a family spread out over half the globe and remember how that (didn't) work before social media. Mailing lists didn't cut it. That's not to endorse Facebook & co's business model or like their actual software, but the concept has merit.

There are quite many complaining that the fuckbook is NOT good for this -- to keep contact with loved ones and with family, becouse it blends all contacts together, and there is not so much choices if wanting to keep some information or contacts more private.
I went to this way that is more oldfashioned -- e-mails and... just visiting and taking time for this to shake hands.
Perhaps there are overmachinery going on? Still some areas are better manually, without computers.
JUst like the Pekka Himanen in his book wrote "Information age and the Hackers Ethic", about the need for timeout and no need to hook online everything. 😉 Recommended to read that prophetic book.

4) I'm on your side, but Linus (to mention but one influential person) is not. I was recently looking into why support for 80386 was dropped and more recently 686 and SSE2 are required for Linux and/or glibc. Bottom line is that development is pragmatic and if keeping backwards compatibility costs significant performance (as 386 support apparently seriously limited the performance of SMP code), it will be thrown under the train if 99.9% of users run newer hardware and want the performance, and the 0.01% will probably run old versions anyway.

well, I was talking just in this case about the most near versions -- Mandriva 2009 and Mandriva 2010. On earlier version the Bibble Labs rpms will install and on the 2010 it does not already. ALl becouse of one library which is not included and I am not professor enough for it, but it should be common sense to not have such obstacles.
The linux versions have their depencies already a very long way already and it seems that there are very few independent components

5) Text editors are the extreme example of things that have not needed change for ages (although I was very happy when upgrading from notepad.exe to notepad++).

...yes of course, AND, that notepad++ really is just an editor, yet it does not explain why it does not work for win98se and screams for newer version of the platform. Nuts.

MPEG1 looks really, really crap on HD let alone 4k screens. The newer codecs don't just do more of the same, they have a fundamentally different balance between compression and required processing power. It would have been perfectly possible in theory to write an HEVC codec back in 1990, but the computing power required would have been impractical if not impossible. Now the power is easily available, which allows much higher compression, which in turn makes it feasible to stream this stuff over normal (i.e. low bitrate rural German or US) internet connections.

Hilarious...
about the HD and 4K TV apparatus I think that the most interesting is to watch those at the BACK SIDE only. the connectors and the "This device complys with FCC 15 rules". But thats all. 😁

mainstream things well... if the same dumb shrek 1,2,3,30000 things are made over and over then is it really worth? 😉 It does not make any better whatever if the same thing was on the analog and now is in the 4K.

So far the only best thing what have been is the skype -- long distance calls through internet (and with video) with cheap enough for hours. However I guess that the point to point things are much more beneficial.

I am dreaming that perhaps people should have bigger bookshelf, and for books, than TV screen?

JUst another thought... I can label it 6.

*6. The times when it is not needed really. Or knowing time when to stop.*
The technics...do we also imagine what the flaws it makes to people as mostly it does them a bear-favor instead and the way how it is used is quite not ok?

yes indeed... still all those technical progresses for people who are not really needing them,
it DOES NOT HELP THEM to work better, BUT DEGRADES THEIR SKILLS EVERY TIME.
Just like that:
...when young people got the cars instead of bicycles, they become much fatter...
...after they got cellphones their ability degraded about time planning ("In 30 minutes? Dunno, call me later and we see").
...after instant messaging system they dropped ability to read longer than 1 line.
... with 2TB and bigger harddisks-- the skill to organize files... gone.

...the list can go on, just like we can end with the one most oldfashioned thing --- the abundance of the power -- just watching politicians, as the power corrupt people who have been slaves several generations.

okay, at first it seems very harsh towards to them, but it really is very difficult to relate or to talk about them as they cant read-write-think, have no patience, neither I cant trust as they keep their word becouse of chaotic mind as they do not organize their time and lose their files. Also as it is the habit to consume and nothing exists unless it is in the shop, they do not develop.
I do not know what this means - being bombed entire day with information, as I do not have these modern "touchpads" or mobile brick-phones with internet and to me the only conversation is direct conversation and not a one line messages in a phone .. or somewhere on the wall in public hanged message in a fuckbook-leecher-tooter-booter for everyone to read. Also I know only 2-3 dudes who can still read and write long messages and know the netiquette. The rest of them have a memory for the first or last line in the message only. It happens all the time when I have to relate with sales people and also the mail is longer than 3..4 lines!
So, what is going on?!

well, all has its place, however all should be accordingly to the intellectual level and some common people should educate themself first..(now that was harsh)... I remember in the past one punishment method that the people were put to work on the older slower machines. Nowadays perhaps it is enough that internet is more than 20 minutes away as to them the only computer useful is the computer with internet connection.
Still it does not concern you fellows, as you know which machines have the 16MB limit, what for the IRQ and COM stands for and for you the 4.77Mhz is the speedy processor too in certain systems.

Perhaps just someone other too in my rant recognizes these collisions with "some people" as I have, ...and so my message serves a purpose to those as "hey, you are not alone in this".

Current project: DOS ISA soundcard with 24bit/96Khz digital I/O, SB16 compatible switchable.
newly made SB-clone ...with 24bit and AES/EBU... join in development!

Reply 6 of 29, by amijim

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Hello there,i have tons of hardware since the era i was selling to friends and ofcourse my favorites have been the 2cpu.com motherboards.Untill last year i was just reserving them with no use untill i figured out to prepare them in towers and have installed the os i sed to use whennusing the machine in everyday use.Also i installed all games i could remember.Gog proved to be usefull for pennies since kopy katz and happy hippo are not around.And then i remembered beos.....and then qnx.Now i have better use of the tons of hardware i have.i am 36 by the way writting from Greece and computers have been my hobby since 5 years old when my older cousin got an amstrad cpc 464.army moves,green berret,arkanoid and mutant monty.I hardly remember the names of each girl i slept with therefore computers prove to be a strong bond and hobby in our generation.What are your thoughts?

Iwill ZmaxDP
Arima4way
Tyan s2885
Iwill MPX2
Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+
Compaq SP700
Compaq ml350

Reply 7 of 29, by Intel486dx33

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70's, 80's, and 90's music.

Check out this music player app on my IBM PS/1 it has a music player for the floppy drive.
Too Cool !..

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Reply 8 of 29, by Jo22

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jxalex wrote:
While in the university I was still keen on sticking on the old system (dos and win3x), while the win98se was out (the processor […]
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While in the university I was still keen on sticking on the old system (dos and win3x), while the win98se was out
(the processors were 300Mhz), also the main question to me was "what games you have?", But, rather than just games, I used my
computer for anything other usual tasks (under the dos and win3x) what the other people did the exactly the same way under
win98se instead, except the some uncommon things, which required Sun Sparcstation anyway. 😉

Now that's interesting, indeed. I was a faithful Win 3.1 user for a long time, too. My 286 was my main computer up to the millenium.
Later on, I "upgraded" to Windows 98SE, but kept Windows 3.1 in a separate directory (never, ever call that a "folder"!).
For a few years to come, I continued to program little programs in Visual Basic 1.0 on both OSes.

Other uses for the little Windows 3.1 installation were Windows games and other programs that used GDI extensively.
I also ran SkyMap on it, because it looked much friendlier than on Windows 98SE (you see I'm more of an emotional than a rational user).

Other uses were that MPEG digitizer card (WinTV, long ISA card), which didn*t work properly on Windows 98SE.
I used it often to connect our old monochrome TV camera to it (video modulator output only) or to
read news on Teletext service, which that card was able to decode.

It wasn't until Windows XP that I completely switched to VB6 (+NET), where I imported my older project files.
The reason was that Win16 sub system in Windows XP looked ugly and totally out of place. Like a relic.
Ironically, it was Windows Vista and Aero Glass which made these applications look and behave fine again.

jxalex wrote:

How old are You?

While my true age is a total mystery (*mew!*! people tend to think that I'm in my 20s. 😀

jxalex wrote:

so go go go on retro computer fans! 😀
So, your manifestation about retro computers and how and what for you use them?

Okay, okay, let me think, let me think. Hmm.. Well, also, -uhm- I confess.. I confess that I use it for.. -uhm-.. That..
Among other things, I also use my vintage/retro PCs for my electronics projects, music and sat tracking. 😊
That includes IC-DATABASE, Norton Commander for reading DOS text files (CP437),
Impluse Tracker, MOD4WIN, STS+, QB45, JV-FAX, TP, Mix C, and so on..

Intel486dx33 wrote:

70's, 80's, and 90's music.

Check out this music player app on my IBM PS/1 it has a music player for the floppy drive.
Too Cool !..

Cool! Just love these cassette deck optics from the 90s! 😀

Edit: Some typos fixed.

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"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 9 of 29, by jxalex

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Thank You, Jo22. Very good Article.

Jo22 wrote:

Later on, I "upgraded" to Windows 98SE, but kept Windows 3.1 in a separate directory
- - - - - -
( never, ever call that a "folder"! ).

Exactly!Becouse that word came with those big number M$ windows versions.
...but also...

Intel486dx33 wrote wrote:

Check out this music player app on my IBM PS/1 it has a music player for the floppy drive.

It is called a APPLICATION or in other word PROGRAM.

...people shall not say "app". Never, ever. That freakin§ word came just after those wannabe-smart-phones went into the masses for low lifeforms. 😉

Current project: DOS ISA soundcard with 24bit/96Khz digital I/O, SB16 compatible switchable.
newly made SB-clone ...with 24bit and AES/EBU... join in development!

Reply 10 of 29, by Damaniel

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My retro PCs don't actually have very many games on them (my Pentium III system has Diablo 2 and Darkstone installed, and my 486 has Ultima 7 on it). The bulk of the software I have installed are development tools (compilers, editors, etc.) since my main area of interest is retroprogramming more than retrogaming.

I still have plenty of modern computer hardware which I use for all my day-to-day stuff and I'm even guilty of occasionally using DOSBox for dev work (especially since I can use git on my modern PC and clone my repos directly to my DOSBox virtual hard drive), but applications, not games, are what drive my interest in retrocomputing.

As for age, I'm 39. My first PC compatible was a Pentium 133-based system, so my 486 is actually before my time (and my IBM 5150 is *way* before my time). I really wish I had kept my first couple PCs - I thought they were old garbage back then, but oh how wrong I was...

Reply 11 of 29, by torindkflt

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I really don't do much gaming on my retro/vintage computers, primarily because I was never much of a PC gamer to begin with. Prior to my current Minecraft addition, the number of PC games I've seriously played in my life can literally be counted on one hand...and that includes such thrilling titles as "Microsoft Encarta Mind Maze" and "Hover". 🤣 I primarily rebuilt and acquired old systems for nostalgia and (hopeful) collectibility purposes. I might eventually get into retro gaming, but for now that's not my collection's primary purpose.

By using a Windows XP system as a dialup-to-wifi bridge, I have taken my 486 rebuild on the internet. There are a select few websites that still work relatively fine on there, if I'm patient enough to wait for them to load at 14.4, that is.

Back in high school (1997-1998), I used an old Toshiba T3100 286 portable from 1986 to do actual school work. I recall using a free and rather limited CAD program to create molecular diagrams for one of my Chem classes, and also typing up documents for Lit & other courses using QBasic (yes, QBasic...I hadn't yet discovered the MS-DOS "Edit" command. 🤣). The school library had a pile of old computer hardware slated for disposal, among them a bunch of old dot-matrix printers. When needed, I'd just grab one of those long enough to print off my homework using that old Toshiba portable, then put it back in the pile. Worked quite well, actually.

Reply 12 of 29, by brostenen

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Get a haircut you young hippies..... 😁

Well. I use vintage computers and retro computers mostly for 15 minutes of gaming each time they get turned on.
I am actually not really a gamer as such. Shure it evokes memories from past and bygone (wasted? perhaps?) youth.
Mostly I just fiddle with putting different stuff together, and test it out with different software and benchmarking.

Other than games.... Well. On Dos it is the standard stuff like NC and Fast Tracker and wordprocessors.
On Win98 it is the Office pack. Actually. I always do a complete installation of what typically was on a PC back then.
That means stuff like CD cover creator programs, and other neat stuff. Then games.

Uhh... Regarding the word APP.... That is for smart devices. And when it all comes down to what it is, then app's
are basically nothing more than a program.

Anyway. I am 42. (43? Perhaps...) Well. I always forget my own age. Have to calculate first. 🤣
For the record. Then I touched a computer for the first time back in 1984/85'ish.
It was a C64 and boy did that change my life. Then I discovered stuff like mainframes at my moms work.
I saw my first PC in around 1986'ish and the first time I saw an Amiga was in late 1987 or early 1988.
It was an Amiga500, and I was totally blinded and taken by the physically design it self.
Now I actually remember, that I had a hard time comprehend that a computer could look so futuristic.
After some 45 to 50 minutes, I began to take notice on the software and the games them self.
How could anyone have that crazy idea, to put a disk drive on the side, and it did not have a flap. 😳 😳
That was to me instant love. The same when I saw VGA and heard Adlib for the first time.
Instant love when I saw VL-Bus for the first time, and instant love, when I saw Unix for the first time in 1995.
Instant love when I used that same Unix terminal system, to log in and send my first email using command line.

I never saw an Mac or Apple computer before 1992/93. It was the Macintosh LC-II or something.
I thought the design was cool. It was a great looking system. And the GUI interface design was beautifull.
And then, when I saw the speed of the machine, I thought that it was a big ugly pile of junk.
The look and feel of the entire machine was cool though. Features and speed sucked big time.

Last edited by brostenen on 2018-10-02, 22:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 13 of 29, by Baoran

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I don't do much in addition to gaming. At least I don't do any productivity related stuff. I do play some nostalgic music that I used to listen in early 90s with .mod and .s3m files. I just loved scream tracker back then. I also run software used for testing different hardware in dos.
I think that gaming is the most unique thing you can do with old hardware. If you want all the games to work how they used to, you pretty much need old hardware.

Reply 14 of 29, by Gered

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I do have a bunch of games installed on my retro computers, but I barely play them, heh. My real interest in retro computers is in re-immersing myself in era-appropriate development tools. For me this is mostly Watcom C / Tasm and more recently Turbo Pascal. As a kid I was self taught, starting with QBasic, moving eventually to QuickBASIC and mixing in assembly eventually for graphics stuff before finally moving to C/C++. Never used Turbo Pascal at all back then, but after playing with it quite a lot over the past few months, I really wish I had known about it as a kid!

Anyway, lots of fun to be had, even if I never finish any of my projects (at least that would make me consistent with my younger self, haha). For me it's definitely way more fun then playing retro games (which are still fun of course).

486DX2-66/16MB/S3 Trio32 VLB/SBPro2/GUS
P233 MMX/64MB/Voodoo2/Matrox/YMF719/GUS CD3
Duron 800/256MB/Savage4 Pro/SBLive (IN PROGRESS)
Toshiba 430CDT

Reply 15 of 29, by Damaniel

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Gered wrote:

I do have a bunch of games installed on my retro computers, but I barely play them, heh. My real interest in retro computers is in re-immersing myself in era-appropriate development tools. For me this is mostly Watcom C / Tasm and more recently Turbo Pascal. As a kid I was self taught, starting with QBasic, moving eventually to QuickBASIC and mixing in assembly eventually for graphics stuff before finally moving to C/C++. Never used Turbo Pascal at all back then, but after playing with it quite a lot over the past few months, I really wish I had known about it as a kid!

Anyway, lots of fun to be had, even if I never finish any of my projects (at least that would make me consistent with my younger self, haha). For me it's definitely way more fun then playing retro games (which are still fun of course).

I was vaguely aware of Turbo Pascal back in the day but never owned a copy (by the time I got a PC, DJGPP was available and I was more interested in C/C++ anyway). That being said, the bulk of the retroprogramming I've done over the past couple years has been using Turbo Pascal, and I think it's a wonderful language/implementation.

Reply 16 of 29, by tayyare

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First of all, my "modern PC" is not a really modern system, actually, it is even in the verge of being retro. A C2Q system that I put together in 2009, with a modified Xeon LGA775 CPU, recently upgraded GTX770 GPU, 8GB of RAM, of which only 4 is usable due to Windows 7 32bit. All six of the HDDs on it are mechanical and it still has a FDD. 🤣

That said, I still use my AutoCAD Lt. 2000 (never had any newer version) in my W98 rig, This version creates many diffierent issues even under XP.

My MS-DOS/Windows 3.11 rig has all the programs from my past (Word 2.0, Excel 3.0, many FORTRAN and BASIC compilers, CorelDRAW 4, Micrographics Designer 2, Quatro Pro DOS, Professional Write, very old versons of Matlab, Mathematica, MathCAD and some obscure engineering software) for the sake of nostalgia. Actually, It has only a single game on it: TIE Fighter CD.

In my XP rig, I am able to do almost everything that I can in my main rig. It serves more of a secondary/backup PC role than a gaming PC. I use it for daily things frequently when my main PC is down for an update or upgrade or whatever.

I'm 47 by the way 😊

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 17 of 29, by Gered

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Damaniel wrote:

I was vaguely aware of Turbo Pascal back in the day but never owned a copy (by the time I got a PC, DJGPP was available and I was more interested in C/C++ anyway). That being said, the bulk of the retroprogramming I've done over the past couple years has been using Turbo Pascal, and I think it's a wonderful language/implementation.

This year, at 34 years old, I'm learning Pascal for the first time through Turbo Pascal 7 and I'm having a blast. 😀 I love that it has the ease-of-use of QBasic, but also a more advanced type system, a bunch of advanced features (like pointers) from C/C++, allows you to sprinkle inline-assembly wherever you like, and offers a super quick edit/compile/run cycle. I do my retro-programming on a 486, and Watcom C (which I also use for some projects currently) now feels painful in comparison each time I have to wait for the compiler, heh.

486DX2-66/16MB/S3 Trio32 VLB/SBPro2/GUS
P233 MMX/64MB/Voodoo2/Matrox/YMF719/GUS CD3
Duron 800/256MB/Savage4 Pro/SBLive (IN PROGRESS)
Toshiba 430CDT

Reply 18 of 29, by bakemono

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I haven't been playing any games on DOS PCs because I don't have any gamepads that work in DOS. I only use them when I want to run some kind of experiment, like benchmarks or testing software/hardware.

When I was a kid in the '90s (I'm now 36) I played DOOM and Warcraft 2 a lot, and a few other things on PC. I never played games with hardware 3D because I didn't have anything like a Voodoo. I think the first game with hardware acceleration that I played was Warcraft 3 on a Matrox G250 in '02. That was my first AGP card.

My main PC runs win2k on a motherboard I got new in 2008. That's about as modern as I go, sometimes I use win7 if I have to. But I think we're in the dark ages of computing right now, everything is adware, spyware, a fad, or a money-making scheme. What the industry is selling is nothing like what I'd want to buy. Since I've lost all interest in whats new, my interest in old stuff has been somewhat revived.

I've always been interested in programming but never liked programming languages very much. So finally I made up my own language and wrote the compiler for it. I haven't released it yet due to its primitive state, and I already started another project (using my language) but I keep thinking about making ports to retro platforms.

Reply 19 of 29, by looking4awayout

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In my case, my retro PC is actually my main PC. It all started a year ago as a challenge to myself, out for fun. And then, after a series of upgrades, it turned out I find more enjoyable to use my Pentium 3 Tualatin with Windows XP Pro SP3 as my main PC, rather than my Asus i7-7500u laptop with Windows 10.

To be fair, my use is very simple, just web browsing (using Firefox 28b9), email checking with Sylpheed, some word processing (I use Office 97), watching Youtube (through VLC) and playing old games, and I must say the Tualatin performs all these tasks very well, and better than the Pentium 4 Northwood Asus Terminator 2 I used to have back in 2005/06 with twice the RAM and speed.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3