Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both said “The computer is a tool to bring people together to Help solve World Problems”.
I like to Live by Steve Jobs Philosophy and “Do your Best in Everything you do and Don’t Settle for anything less”
Don’t Settle for anything less than the Best if you can. What ever materials you have do the best with what you have.
Live within your means and do the best with it.
“Sharing is Caring”
Sun Microsystems said “The Computer is the Network”
You have to “Connect the Dots”.
In other words “Network the computers in order to connect the People”.
The computer is a “Tool” to help you think up, organize, categorize, engineer, design, and build things.
In Steve Jobs and Bill Gates case they were Businessmen so they used the computer for Marketing and Sales and Meetings.
It’s a “Powerful tool”.

Everything People built before 1980 was mainly done without a Computer.
Computers help people build exact copies and record thru software.
If you want to be different and unique don’t use a computer.
Use a pen, paint brush, pencil, even your finger.
Network with people who can help you with your problems.

Avatar Movie #1 is a good example of what a Computer can Help Provide you with on a Distant Planet.

I've been thinking about nostalgia in general and some obversions. or I may be well of the mark here?

Typically Nostalgia really becomes strong about 40 (give or take a few years either side) typically with people thinking back 20 years.

TV shows as an example
The Wonder Years, Season 1 aired in 1988 and set in 1968.
That 70's Show, Season 1 aired 1998 and set in 1976
That 90's Show, Session 1 aired 2023 and set in 1995

I think the 90's show is brilliant from a marketing point of view. potently They could be catching 3 different age groups.
The teens of today
The teens of the 90's that watched the original 70's show with bonus nostalgia of now been set in a decade they grew up in
The parents of those 90's teens who watched the original 70's show who can still relate to the Grand Parents.

I wonder if this is why That 80's show failed. Only been 10 years since after the 70's show ended it was too early for the nostalgic factor to help ratings?

Close to my mid 40's I do feel like I've past the "prime of my life" 20 Years ago I was still new in my carrier and willing to learn, no real responsibilities so was free to do who/what/where/whenever I wanted.
These days I don't always like the way things are heading but no longer feel I have any real say in the matter. That's not to say I'm unhappy, just that my priorities have changed and that little hit of nostalgia reminds me of more carefree/simple times that I think everyone misses from time to time.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-04-18, 11:22:

I've been thinking about nostalgia in general and some obversions. or I may be well of the mark here? […]
Show full quote

I've been thinking about nostalgia in general and some obversions. or I may be well of the mark here?

Typically Nostalgia really becomes strong about 40 (give or take a few years either side) typically with people thinking back 20 years.

TV shows as an example
The Wonder Years, Season 1 aired in 1988 and set in 1968.
That 70's Show, Season 1 aired 1998 and set in 1976
That 90's Show, Session 1 aired 2023 and set in 1995

I think the 90's show is brilliant from a marketing point of view. potently They could be catching 3 different age groups.
The teens of today
The teens of the 90's that watched the original 70's show with bonus nostalgia of now been set in a decade they grew up in
The parents of those 90's teens who watched the original 70's show who can still relate to the Grand Parents.

I wonder if this is why That 80's show failed. Only been 10 years since after the 70's show ended it was too early for the nostalgic factor to help ratings?

Close to my mid 40's I do feel like I've past the "prime of my life" 20 Years ago I was still new in my carrier and willing to learn, no real responsibilities so was free to do who/what/where/whenever I wanted.
These days I don't always like the way things are heading but no longer feel I have any real say in the matter. That's not to say I'm unhappy, just that my priorities have changed and that little hit of nostalgia reminds me of more carefree/simple times that I think everyone misses from time to time.

i think you're right about the 20 year thing, at least for most it's when you get close to or just beyond 40 that you realise things that once seemed 'recent' are suddenly two+ decades away.

life meanwhile became more entrenched and busy but most of all it became defined - i.e. you are doing what you are doing, all those options and possible futures that seemed to exist 20 years ago have all resolved into the one life you are living, so nostalgia for a time when there seemed more open options and possibilities is in some ways natural, even when life now is good

the 1990's seem a special time in history though, a true transition from the non cell phone, non internet days to the always connected life, it was good to be young and interested in technology for instance - but mostly it was good to be young!. a time of ever cheaper goods as globalism gained momentum and the cold war ceased and a time of increasing optimism about the future (not everywhere, but in north America and most of Europe (definitely not all of Europe!) and perhaps for other areas too, Australasia and more.

These days I don't always like the way things are heading but no longer feel I have any real say in the matter

as a general thought - one of the many illusions that melt away when you look back is that in many ways you never did have much say, but it felt as if you did

A lot of the discussion above is ringing a bell for me but another thing that I've noticed about getting older is that it becomes apparent that nothing lasts for ever - things, friendships, opinions, places, social norms, etc. These things are all temporary, which can be a good thing, but it's also somewhat depressing and demotivating when it applies to all of the things you enjoyed in the past. And then there's the "I've seen it all before" thing, which is another demotivator.

But it's not all bad, I'm consistently happier now at mid-40's than I was at 20, and I have stability and money and blah blah. That's just the human condition I've decided, we're never happy with what we have.

Well here is what I think and if it sounds too positive you can kick me off the thread...

What I like about these nostalgia PCs and the software they run is that they represent a medium for an artform. Let me explain what I mean. When I look at the hardware and the software there are two parts to it. One is the tech that made it possible, but the other is the creations that came from someone's imagination. The story of the game. The art and the characters. Also the music. When you look at what we have today on steam you can certainly find some of that if you look hard enough, but in my opinion it is like trying to find modern music as cool as Bach or Gustav Holst. People imitate the classics today, but the classics are better because of the awe that comes out of them, when no one was even aware that a new genre could be created. No one knew this could be popular.

You can try to recreate this all you want with modern tech, but the fact remains that a CRT display is part of the art. Spinning floppies going "woosh!" If you take that away, you take away some of the art. An FM synth was part of the art, even the hissy electronics they were made of. You remove the noise and now you have something that sounds "modern" and ordinary. What is better? And do we believe it because someone with a marketing degree told us to believe, or because we carve our own path?

What I will agree with is that there can still be downsides of being a retro tech user. For one thing, there is a lot of wasted time when old hardware breaks. I have several busted machines and no time to fix them. That doesn't mean we can't stick our heads together to solve these problems. We just gotta figure out what it is that we all want. What we are all searching for, I believe, it is a feeling of awe that comes from something unique, rare, and special, and the people that you can hang with that can experience that awe with you. How about some new hardware that actually is awe inspiring with all new capacitors? CRT screens that move CRT tech forward.

To me retro, doesn't mean old fashioned. It is actually a mixture of the best of the old and a little bit of the new, to create something even newer. Retro is actually newer than current tech, because it takes it all a step further. Retro is the future because: today is one day after yesterday and you are experiencing it today. You aren't in the past. You're moving into the future, at the speed of one second per second.

Your palette for "cool" doesn't have to be what mass marketing wants to brainwash you to want. Instead, you are free to find the best, the coolest, the most fun, the most awe-inspiring works of art in the most unlikely of places. For everyone else, it's just another mindless visit to your modern subscription service, only to be told what to want. You are actually not having a midlife crises at all. Your eyes are opening, and you are starting to understand what it actually means to be alive, and we are the community that is here to experience it with you.

As far as emulation of old hardware on new hardware, I would hazard to say that even fpgas are not really needed anymore.

With the advent of GPUs being able to directly address the system RAM and the PCIe bus being so fast now, most of the emulation that CPUs have issues being fast enough to emulate certain hardware could be emulated just fine with the newest GPUs.

And I am not even convinced that that is needed.

A whole lot of the emulation code I have looked at is nowhere near as optimized as it could be.

Most code I have looked at for that matter is very very slow compared to how fast it could be running if the programmers were interested at all in actually optimizing the code for speed.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-19, 02:19:

A whole lot of the emulation code I have looked at is nowhere near as optimized as it could be.

Most code I have looked at for that matter is very very slow compared to how fast it could be running if the programmers were interested at all in actually optimizing the code for speed.

But, they're not interested in optimizing it, and that is its own very significant travesty. You shouldn't need a 10th Gen i7 and 16 GB of RAM to run an Atari 2600 emulator or to run Pac-man with MAME. Or a 1990 DOS game, or an N64 emulator, for that matter. You didn't used to when people were coding these emulators in assembler and / or optimized C. The code has gotten terribly infefficient just as a matter of laziness, multiple abstraction layers, and bloat.

zyzzle wrote on 2023-04-19, 03:03:

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-19, 02:19:

A whole lot of the emulation code I have looked at is nowhere near as optimized as it could be.

Most code I have looked at for that matter is very very slow compared to how fast it could be running if the programmers were interested at all in actually optimizing the code for speed.

But, they're not interested in optimizing it, and that is its own very significant travesty. You shouldn't need a 10th Gen i7 and 16 GB of RAM to run an Atari 2600 emulator or to run Pac-man with MAME. Or a 1990 DOS game, or an N64 emulator, for that matter. You didn't used to when people were coding these emulators in assembler and / or optimized C. The code has gotten terribly infefficient just as a matter of laziness, multiple abstraction layers, and bloat.

Really for most things assembler is not needed at all if writing in very optimized C/C++... such as manually converting most/all case statements to jump tables and trying to make sure that most used variables can stay in the CPU register.

Even manually memory aligning variables can help a bit but almost nobody even attempts that and expects the compiler to do all the optimization which doesn't really work that well.

I go even as far as to put in manual debug code and timing functions to test my code as well as making small test programs that only loop through different implementations so I can time them to see which is better.

Oh yeah, unrolling loops is another big one that the compilers really can't do.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-04-19, 02:19:

As far as emulation of old hardware on new hardware, I would hazard to say that even fpgas are not really needed anymore.

FPGAs are never about the raw speed, it's about the precise timings.
The FPGAs do not run some high abstraction VM model that will be instructed on how to calculate the next state of simulation, that's what CPUs do.
Instead FPGA implement the old hardware using somewhat different underlying elements. The key point is that FPGA deliver required hardware behavior realtime, precisely down to nS as seen by the observer, and it does not cost any extra power - 1.19MHz of Atari 2600 CPU, or 162MHz of 1600x1200 VGA signal output - for FPGA it's the same. This is something no CPU will be ever to deliver, simply because it was built for computation throughput, and not for exact latency. You will need insanely fast CPU just to approach the cheapest FPGA timing precision. Having GPU "making simulation better" only illustrates this - simulating hardware with any kind of software (as opposed to hardware implementation in FPGA) only approaches the desired precision, taking huge amounts of computational power as you get closer.

Btw, have you tried enabling the PC speaker emulation in DOSBox? It's something that needs the precise timing, and it's just mockery when done in software 😀
It seemingly can play quite acceptably the music in Pinball Fantasies, but is unable to keep a single tone when beeping with the PIT.

Well, as a person who have zero nostalgia to whatever I can propose to look at vintage computers collecting from the different angle.

Me myself if looking back to those years when IBM PC AT 286 was still a modern machine and Internet didn't even exist, have to say I was very glad to get rid of it, of those CRTs, later from those slow 386's, 486's and early Pentiums, of those slow 56K modems occupying your phone line, of those unreliable floppies and CD-ROMs, and of those extremely expensive chunky laptops.
I'm happy to live in a world of cheap lightweight notebooks and sharp and clear high definition LCDs with cheap wireless Internet which works almost everywhere and at a speed of light, to keep in my pocket USB Flash Card with almost everything I need on it and still having lots of free space. God Bless 2020's!!!

But what about old vintage stuff? Well, for me, who is not an IT person at all, even close, world of vintage computers is a whole new undiscovered world of devices which I'm happy not to use in my everyday life, but which are simple enough to allow me to understand them and to give me hours of joy of tinkering. For example, I own Epson HX-20, the first laptop and the same time a slow and incapable piece of crap. But what a joy to play with it and to learn how this thing works and what it is still capable to do!

Try to look at it from this point of view and maybe you'll be a happy person once again.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-18, 20:08:

the 1990's seem a special time in history though, a true transition from the non cell phone, non internet days to the always connected life, it was good to be young and interested in technology for instance - but mostly it was good to be young!. a time of ever cheaper goods as globalism gained momentum and the cold war ceased and a time of increasing optimism about the future (not everywhere, but in north America and most of Europe (definitely not all of Europe!) and perhaps for other areas too, Australasia and more.

Personally I feel like early 2000's was about where the right balance between online/offline was. Homes had "fast" ADSL connections while you were online but once you stepped away from your computer you were offline and lived in the "real world" Having a smartphone and the power of the internet in your pocket at al times is both a blessing and a curse but it is what it is and for the most part it's mostly improved life in a positive way.

popfuture wrote on 2023-04-19, 01:32:

Well here is what I think and if it sounds too positive you can kick me off the thread... […]
Show full quote

Well here is what I think and if it sounds too positive you can kick me off the thread...

What I like about these nostalgia PCs and the software they run is that they represent a medium for an artform. Let me explain what I mean. When I look at the hardware and the software there are two parts to it. One is the tech that made it possible, but the other is the creations that came from someone's imagination. The story of the game. The art and the characters. Also the music. When you look at what we have today on steam you can certainly find some of that if you look hard enough, but in my opinion it is like trying to find modern music as cool as Bach or Gustav Holst. People imitate the classics today, but the classics are better because of the awe that comes out of them, when no one was even aware that a new genre could be created. No one knew this could be popular.

You can try to recreate this all you want with modern tech, but the fact remains that a CRT display is part of the art. Spinning floppies going "woosh!" If you take that away, you take away some of the art. An FM synth was part of the art, even the hissy electronics they were made of. You remove the noise and now you have something that sounds "modern" and ordinary. What is better? And do we believe it because someone with a marketing degree told us to believe, or because we carve our own path?

What I will agree with is that there can still be downsides of being a retro tech user. For one thing, there is a lot of wasted time when old hardware breaks. I have several busted machines and no time to fix them. That doesn't mean we can't stick our heads together to solve these problems. We just gotta figure out what it is that we all want. What we are all searching for, I believe, it is a feeling of awe that comes from something unique, rare, and special, and the people that you can hang with that can experience that awe with you. How about some new hardware that actually is awe inspiring with all new capacitors? CRT screens that move CRT tech forward.

To me retro, doesn't mean old fashioned. It is actually a mixture of the best of the old and a little bit of the new, to create something even newer. Retro is actually newer than current tech, because it takes it all a step further. Retro is the future because: today is one day after yesterday and you are experiencing it today. You aren't in the past. You're moving into the future, at the speed of one second per second.

Your palette for "cool" doesn't have to be what mass marketing wants to brainwash you to want. Instead, you are free to find the best, the coolest, the most fun, the most awe-inspiring works of art in the most unlikely of places. For everyone else, it's just another mindless visit to your modern subscription service, only to be told what to want. You are actually not having a midlife crises at all. Your eyes are opening, and you are starting to understand what it actually means to be alive, and we are the community that is here to experience it with you.

I know what you mean about artform. DOS "cartoonish" platform games are my example.
Take games like Duke Nukem 2, Jazz Jackrabbit, Zone 66, etc These game's look beautiful, The music is amazing, the gameplay is...lacking.
Truth is I can't play these games hours on end, I get bored, but the visuals and sound I find more pleasing then more modern games that may look more realistic and hold my interest longer.

Only today on the radio the news reported that Audio Cassette sales are back to the same numbers as 2003. Wanting vinyl because "it sounds better" I get. but what does an audio cassette give you that you don't get with music on your phone? It's not quality or convenience but you do get interaction. Just like your FDD example. The simple joy of inserting a disk can make you feel warm inside (even if it's only for 2 seconds at which point you see "Cannot read from drive A" brings you back to the real world)

And it's a very good point we have the benefit of picking and choosing how authentic we want to be, even on a hardware level. Most my PC's have things like Gotek drives and CF cards completely bypassing limitations of the day.

badmojo wrote on 2023-04-18, 21:47:

That's just the human condition I've decided, we're never happy with what we have.

Well according to the movie that's why the Matrix is programmed like this and not on some utopian version which our brains could not accept. I'd watch out for men in dark glasses offering you coloured pills shortly!

chinny22 wrote on 2023-04-19, 12:47:

I know what you mean about artform. DOS "cartoonish" platform games are my example. Take games like Duke Nukem 2, Jazz Jackrabb […]
Show full quote

popfuture wrote on 2023-04-19, 01:32:

What I like about these nostalgia PCs and the software they run is that they represent a medium for an artform.

I know what you mean about artform. DOS "cartoonish" platform games are my example.
Take games like Duke Nukem 2, Jazz Jackrabbit, Zone 66, etc These game's look beautiful, The music is amazing, the gameplay is...lacking.
Truth is I can't play these games hours on end, I get bored, but the visuals and sound I find more pleasing then more modern games that may look more realistic and hold my interest longer.

Yes, exactly! Jazz Jackrabbit is a perfect example. Epic Games, the same company now making Unreal Engine (if wikipedia is right), brought us some gems. Jill of the Jungle, also. It had better music than even the gameplay itself. So true.

So good art pulls us in, and good gameplay keeps us there longer. Bad gameplay makes us bored sooner. It's a strange thing.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-04-19, 12:47:

Only today on the radio the news reported that Audio Cassette sales are back to the same numbers as 2003. Wanting vinyl because "it sounds better" I get. but what does an audio cassette give you that you don't get with music on your phone? It's not quality or convenience but you do get interaction. Just like your FDD example. The simple joy of inserting a disk can make you feel warm inside (even if it's only for 2 seconds at which point you see "Cannot read from drive A" brings you back to the real world)

Let me try and take a stab at this, although I can't really explain it fully. I am one of these weird people that likes cassette tapes sometimes. Tape has this a certain sound to it as well. In my opinion it is even more interesting than vinyl in some ways. When you want the music to sound more murky, like how a nebula looks, tape is great. Tape has an "underwater" sound that is hard to describe. A simple Dolby noise reduction applied to the signal takes out enough bad stuff and leaves you the good. It sounds ethereal, out of this world.

Another way to look at things, I happen to think about quality a lot for my day job. What is a bug? What is a feature? Noise is usually defined as something you don't want, so is hiss the same as noise? It depends on if you want it. It could also depend on how much you want. People even argue about whether Dolby should be on or off.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-04-19, 12:47:

And it's a very good point we have the benefit of picking and choosing how authentic we want to be, even on a hardware level. Most my PC's have things like Gotek drives and CF cards completely bypassing limitations of the day.

What I like about the journey of life, is that, at first, we have it pounded into our heads at a young age what right and wrong are. Penalized for doing it wrong, applauded for doing it right.

But as time goes on, things get interesting. The plot thickens. Do CF cards enhance the experience or detract? I don't know. Depends on the situation, but I would say enhance. Someone else says detract, and we both could be right.

I sometimes wonder if it just natural for is to fill nostalgic about past times...even if we "know" they weren't really that great.

I am not saying the OP is old ( I am much older, trust me) but I DO think that as you get older your perspective definitely changes. When you have MANY more years behind you than ahead. When you start to realize that it is much too late for any kind of real course correction. And that everything is doing to go to dust in the end anyway. But OP, you have a LOT more years, trust me.

I sometimes wonder if it just natural for is to fill nostalgic about past times...even if we "know" they weren't really that great.

That depends on each individual's experience. I feel very nostalgic about the 90s and early to mid 2000s because to me they were simply better times, I had on the whole a good life. Of course no time is perfect, not everything was good back then, either, but it's the bottom line that counts.
Other people could have had a different experience, like those who lived in countries where there was war or maybe just their personal life wasn't that good. For me, though, it's clear that I prefer the ways of the 90s/2000s, and to me it's the current times that aren't that great at all.

Kalle wrote on Yesterday, 09:40:

I sometimes wonder if it just natural for is to fill nostalgic about past times...even if we "know" they weren't really that great.

That depends on each individual's experience. I feel very nostalgic about the 90s and early to mid 2000s because to me they were simply better times, I had on the whole a good life.

I think it is perhaps a mix of where you are in life at different times and how you value the things of the past, whether your own relative youth or things of the time, the environment

we can value things like there being more optimism, less echo chambers, more actual socialising and so on while also accepting there was less advanced medicine (still pretty amazing even in 1990 though!), less advanced technology and so on. depending on what is important to you both then and now there will be more or less nostalgia.