I stomp on the bug a lot. damn thing

I'm starting to think that my nostalgia bug might be a symptom of some horrible deep-seated dissatisfaction and depression issues.

I for one cannot tell you how many hours I have burned up reading about older OSes.... browsing Ebay for older hardware.... reading the redhill hardware guide

I will say maybe the most "fun" computer I built was an old pentium 233 running DOS and Win 3.1

I had put DOS and 3,1 to bed a LONG time ago but still had the files on a CD-ROM

Yes it comes and goes in waves 😀

I will say this much about Windows 3.1.... I think the code was a lot more efficient.... because it had to be,
In retrospect it is AMAZING how small 3.1 really was....
Consider that it could be installed from FLOPPIES
What have we really got today considering we are running on machines 100x as powerful

I give it just a lot of food, so it stays .

I don't know what biological function it serves, but I suspect it's human nature. I was surprised when it hit me a few years ago, circa age 35. Prior to that the past was the past and good riddance to it.

I've embraced it now after some initial "am I depressed"? I sit hunched over my 486 in my Reebok Pumps and take a break from modern life, which - as much as I love my tiny niche in the universe - can be overwhelming at times.

I think you have the ultimate nostalgia machine - that commodore 64!
I have looked at them on Ebay but so far have not been able to talk myself into it....

Yeah.... It comes and it goes. Tinkering is the medicine to keep it a bay.
Never really cured of the bug though.

I am frustrated by my unsightly piles of junk and my inability to get rid of them, much less spending time to enjoy them.

ncmark wrote:

Think back.... back in the day... Windows 3.1 was a really big deal. It was far more lean that current operating systems. The office versions were very mature and not that different than we have now.

It was also profoundly crashy, and if you remember it otherwise then I have to question how much you tried to use it. It is amazing how broken it was.

You could hand-code and upload HTML files that were only a few kilobytes.

There's nothing stopping you from doing that now either. Plus you don't have to wrestle with invisible tables to align things. Or imagemaps. Or frames.

A lot more computer stores sold computer parts. Hard drives and multimedia kits could be purchased in bookstores....

And the selection in said stores was limited and overpriced compared to what you could get in the computer store.

actually the above comment made me smile... even though that was probably not the intent

Jorpho wrote:

There's nothing stopping you from doing that now either. Plus you don't have to wrestle with invisible tables to align things. Or imagemaps. Or frames.

Funny thing is, all of these techniques are also more than ten years out of date, now. Not saying that CSS is the be-all-end-all, and don't get me started on the bloat that is Javascript frameworks 😵

Well I can tell tell you that it is NOT possible to hand-code files where I work. We switched to a CMS system.. I HATE it. You cannot download, upload, or otherwise manipulate HTML directly. I guess it's great for people who don't know how to code. Personally, I preferred dreamweaver.The whole thing is one big MESS!

I think I was born with the nostalgia bug. By the time I was 13/14 (2003) my Duron was running Windows 2000, but I managed to get it to dual boot Windows 98 in another HDD just to get my DOS/Win9x fix, then I found a patch to get DOS 7.11 to start 3.11 up, and I had fun with it (even though neiter my vídeo card nor sound card had drivers for it... I was still able to listen to audio CDs if I installed the generic SB drivers, though digital sound did not work correctly). During high school I was messing A LOT with virtual machines. Only god knows how long I spent programming in Delphi 4 (got that from a PC magazine - by that time Delphi 7 was already a thing, and I guess they managed to distribute an older version), but here is the catch: even though I had that installed in my main OS, I went through the trouble of installing it inside my NT 3.51 machine and used it there. I even got Calmira's (WIn 3.11 shell) source code and, based on a few parts of that, programmed my own 32-bit NT 3.51 shell. When I got my Pentium D at my dad's place I still kept the Pentium 3 around triple booting Windows XP, Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 98 (with 3.11 as a sidekick) until my dad decided to sell that PC (if only I had cash back then... I would've prevented that). God, it was so easy for me to have fun back then. I miss those days.

My nostalgia bug rarely ever goes away. Sometimes I am having too much fun with modern stuff to go retro, but as soon as that is finished I'm back to tinkering with old stuff.

ncmark wrote:

Well I can tell tell you that it is NOT possible to hand-code files where I work. We switched to a CMS system.. I HATE it. You cannot download, upload, or otherwise manipulate HTML directly. I guess it's great for people who don't know how to code. Personally, I preferred dreamweaver.The whole thing is one big MESS!

My most recent experience involved mashing around in Sharepoint. It was possible to dig deep and insert low-level crap; it just wasn't easy to do so.

alexanrs wrote:

Sometimes I am having too much fun with modern stuff to go retro, but as soon as that is finished I'm back to tinkering with old stuff.

Know the feeling man... 😁 Though my fastest machine is a laptop from 2010.
My old trusty Acer Extensa 5235, running Win7.

ncmark wrote:

We switched to a CMS system.. I HATE it.

CMS like wordpress-crap and stuff? If you want a good CMS, then you have to craft it you'r self.
Yeah, I know it more convenient just to grab something like Wordpress or anything else.

On the other hand. What's keeping you from re-using code snippet's instead of writing everything yet again?
If you have enough snippet's, a simple and basic Webpage with a simple backend are up and running in one week.
Written, debugged and tested. Wich is pretty neet. And yeah... Even got C# code behind and SQL integration.
When I started my education, someone I studied with, wrote a forum from scratch in 24 hours using ASP.NET 4.0.

Personally. I prefer using ASP.NET (Just a personal preferance), and not PHP or anything else.
I find that Java-Script, Jquery and Selected Css-3 elements is handy to use on the side.

Have you tried Wordpress lately? It's a beautiful thing if you want a website up fast and cheap, and that looks good and is well supported. The amount of quality plug-ins make most customisations a snap but you can still get down and dirty if you need to. What's not to like?

These days I'm mostly cured of this bug (alas 🙁 ), but whenever I walk into my attic and see all that stuff and look at it for a full 30 seconds or so in amazement...then I say out loud "This is soooo cool!! 😁 "
It's just that I'm so busy with doing other things and I've been doing this off and on for over 10 years now...it's already one of my longer surviving hobbies or interests.

I still enjoy reading about people who enjoy themselves with this stuff though 😀