VOGONS


Signs Your're an Old Geek

Topic actions

First post, by StriderTR

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

One sign you're getting old? Your usage of notes goes up.

One sign you're an aging retro computer geek? Using notes to remember old hardware settings. 😜

How about you? What are some of your signs you an aging retro hardware/gaming hobbyist?

Attachments

  • gettingold.jpg
    Filename
    gettingold.jpg
    File size
    56.22 KiB
    Views
    904 views
    File license
    Public domain
Last edited by DosFreak on 2025-01-17, 00:13. Edited 1 time in total.

Retro Blog: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/
Archive: https://archive.org/details/@theclassicgeek/
3D Things: https://www.thingiverse.com/classicgeek/collections

Reply 1 of 55, by Jo22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Me trying to keep English language and my mother language separate? 🤷‍♂️
In past, I had a wild mixture of native MS-DOS and utilities in English language and I didn't mind.
With ongoing age, I have the strange, increasing urge to keep things separate.
English DOS with English utilities, my native language DOS with native language utilities.
I'm not sure if it's just about being tidy or the increasing inflexibility of my mind to switch between English/mother language.
I mean, I have no real problems switching in real life whatsoever.
It just makes me feel uncomfortable to see a mixed language somehow.

"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 2 of 55, by ElectroSoldier

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I know how to do things in Win3.1 to WinXP without even thinking about it but I find newer versions of Windows complicated.

I completely skipped Windows 8.
Its UI was just to much for my old brain to get round.

I look at WinXP and think its nice and modern.

Reply 4 of 55, by feipoa

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-14, 20:20:

How about you? What are some of your signs you an aging retro hardware/gaming hobbyist?

Mostly related to memory:

1) cannot remember vogons password
2) forgot entire threads I started. Even when someone shares me my own thread, I still don't recall posting it
3) cannot recall where I placed vintage hardware and forgetting what I own
4) forgetting my various builds and being surprised when I find them
5) hesitant to turn on previous builds because of CMOS battery failures. Some systems only work on vary particular obscure BIOS settings that I will have forgotten to set.
6) leaving Post-it notes inside system cases of various quirks and caveats
7) insistent on using only beige LCD screens, keyboards, mice, chassis, etc.
8) not having interest in computers much newer than P3's
9) the inability to come up with a larger list in this thread (I cannot remember what I already forgot)

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 5 of 55, by Shponglefan

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-01-15, 00:33:

I know how to do things in Win3.1 to WinXP without even thinking about it but I find newer versions of Windows complicated.

I know how to do things in DOS without thinking about it, but find Windows in general complicated. 😉

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 7 of 55, by Anonymous Coward

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Sometimes when I'm looking for information on old hardware, I learn something new from a thread I posted over 20 years ago.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 8 of 55, by Shponglefan

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
smtkr wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:46:

I know I'm old because I look at new technology and I don't think it's useful, but everyone else is super excited about it.

I feel that way about AI and increasingly, about the internet in general.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 9 of 55, by Grem Five

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:50:

Sometimes when I'm looking for information on old hardware, I learn something new from a thread I posted over 20 years ago.

I have a similar problem, sometimes Im looking up info and find the info only to discover I have about 5 different bookmarks from the same page I'm guessing over the years. Sometimes its the same as you mention that I'm looking up info I seem to vaguely remember only to see I have answered that same info for someone else on vogons before.

Its kinda the hobby that keeps on giving, I seem to have to relearn all the same info I knew previously every year or two.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-01-14, 20:20:

One sign you're getting old? Your usage of notes goes up.

One sign you're an aging retro computer geek? Using notes to remember old hardware settings. 😜

How about you? What are some of your signs you an aging retro hardware/gaming hobbyist?

I have tried that but everytime I find my notes they seem to be written in some form of cuneiform.

Reply 10 of 55, by Horun

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Yes mostly to these:
"Using notes to remember old hardware settings."
"I look at WinXP and think its nice and modern." and functional !
"6) leaving Post-it notes inside system cases of various quirks and caveats." and motherboard boxes....
also referring back to a manual, note or website for same info I just looked at a few days or week ago 🙁

added: you are an old computer geek if you were playing any Keen or similar old XT game when they first came out or bought a Commadore 64 or Vic when they first came out and are still messing with computers at hardware levels. 😁

Last edited by Horun on 2025-01-15, 03:15. Edited 1 time in total.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 11 of 55, by lti

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
dionb wrote on 2025-01-15, 00:38:

You realize your keyboard is older than a lot of the people you are communicating with using it - and it's not even remotely the oldest keyboard you have 😉

I have a keyboard that might be older than me, and it's still PS/2 (a Compaq keyboard with the gold-colored logo - I don't know when they changed to the red logo). I must not be old yet, even though I have gray hair.

Reply 13 of 55, by chinny22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Leaving notes on hardware settings isn't because we are getting old, its because we have so many computers now... is what I tell myself anyway.

But note taking is definitely a thing.
I've got a spreadsheet listing all my hardware and where it is. (which PC or in storage)
a word doc with notes on games that need a bit of specail tweaking, eg Aladdin and memory or optimal settings for my newer Sim's
another word doc with notes on how to install OS's on computers, Like the Asus P2B-DS / ACPI or which ICH driver for XP on newer motherboards.

Absolutely no interest in modern computers or software. It used to make me sad disposing of old computers, now I see them as doner parts for older systems, eg hard drives.

Reply 14 of 55, by chinny22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
darry wrote on 2025-01-15, 04:26:

I look at myself in the mirror and sigh.

Nah I look in the mirror and think glad I was around during the golden age of computing before streaming, loot boxes, subscriptions, etc
The ever increasing grey in my hair may cause a sigh, but hey changing colour is better than loosing it outright!

Reply 15 of 55, by darry

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
chinny22 wrote on 2025-01-15, 04:30:
darry wrote on 2025-01-15, 04:26:

I look at myself in the mirror and sigh.

Nah I look in the mirror and think glad I was around during the golden age of computing before streaming, loot boxes, subscriptions, etc
The ever increasing grey in my hair may cause a sigh, but hey changing colour is better than loosing it outright!

You can say that because you still have hair 😜.

But, as a wise man once sang :

Empty spaces, what are we living for?
Abandoned places, I guess we know the score
On and on
Does anybody know what we are looking for?

===//===

Oh, inside, my heart is breaking
My makeup may be flaking
But my smile still stays on

Reply 16 of 55, by Jo22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
darry wrote on 2025-01-15, 04:26:

I look at myself in the mirror and sigh.

It's fine as long as it won't get cracks when you look at it.

"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 17 of 55, by Blavius

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Yeah, the disconnect with new technology. I love my beige stuff, but even my 'modern' computers are already borderline retro. I've been tempted to buy something new, like some (many?) years back when VR came around with the HTC Vive, but felt bad about the cost and just postponed it. In the mean time the cost of state of the art hardware just went up further. I mean, $2000 for the latest GPU? Seriously?
At this point I'm just hanging on to my machines out of a sense of spite. I've effectively made a kind of cutoff beyond which I won't experience certain things anymore (windows 11, the new India Jones game), but I'm increasingly okay with that.

Reply 18 of 55, by Joseph_Joestar

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
smtkr wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:46:

I know I'm old because I look at new technology and I don't think it's useful, but everyone else is super excited about it.

Same for me. In particular, I look at this latest "frame gen" craze and think of it as a slightly less laggy version of the "smooth motion" feature that was common on the first HDTVs.

Also, I don't like RGB lighting inside my computer, or on my mouse and keyboard.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 19 of 55, by gerry

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
smtkr wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:46:

I know I'm old because I look at new technology and I don't think it's useful, but everyone else is super excited about it.

maybe not AI specifically but i do frequently get the impression that i have already seen, heard or even used "new technology" before years ago. It is often just that i used a forerunner of something that is now trending or that what i am seeing as 'new' is just a new layer over an existing tech. Its useful and new, but at the same time it's not "all new" and when people get excited about it i sometimes think they don't understand it.

There are also things which are new in capability, AI generative stuff. "AI" was never so capable in the past, it is astounding in what it does - no wonder people confuse it with actual intelligence. The idea that you can just talk to a device, be understood and have reasonable responses and have otherwise fairly complex things done for you is something from past sci-fi visions. Humanity has no moonbases or Mars missions in 2025 as would once have been predicted but in computing power, global communications and areas of AI like text, voice, image processing and generation of the same via AI i think its about on a par and perhaps exceeding past predictions

other old geek things:

I can't help but notice language and grammar more ("signs you're an old geek", sorry 😀 ), even my own errors!

in keeping with that i increasingly cannot stand modern 'new speak', especially in corporate tech circles ('cloud', 'ai [anything]', 'take that offline', 'fintech', etc) and generally the unholy alliance of trendy newspeak in culture and corporate worlds ('my truth', abuse of the word 'journey', 'intentional', everything is a 'space', verb abuse like 'learnings' and other endless terms which all sound a bit narcissistic, self aggrandizing, inauthentic and mostly i suspect are fairly light on actual meaning)

generally i feel held at more and more arms length from everything technical by the tech itself. everything is an interface to a far away underlying technology. Learning the interface is important sure, but its a fuzzy guide to what's actually happening. In the world of work people are clicking and dragging things in applications that use browsers, the action all happening in "the cloud", its all further way both in process and in the physical sense.

I just dont care much about media anymore, i wasn't the most excited about new film releases in the past, or new products relating to PCs or other tech - but at least i could be now and then. now i don't care much. There is so much happening all the time and so little that really captures interest, there is almost too much going on to choose from. To think of an analogy, say you like particular characteristics in a candy bar - you can discern the one you want from a selection of 10 or 20 different choices, but if you look at a massive pile of 10,000 candy bars how will you know what to choose? 😀

As such i really have no interesting in paying for streaming services, there is more than enough for free all over the place and who really has time for 6+ seasons of 12+ 60min episodes anyway.

I just don't want siri, alexa or whatever. i'll fill my own fridge! i'm fine with a car that drives - it doesn't need a HUD or whatever latest gadgets for me

i totally recognise that my past self would view all this a little bit as "being old" and to some extent its true, but at the same time it also feels like shaking off some layers of nonsense that existed before and seeing things more clearly as they actually are - a slow process that develops over most of adulthood i think

i'm actually less interested in vintage tech that i was too, its kind of a shame - sometimes i'll get into it again for a while - but in general its somehow less interesting than it was, maybe i have just done enough and maybe its partly because it isnt necessary to having the software experiences on the whole. Still like the whole hobby in general though 😀

edit: sometimes i just go on talking/writing for too long too! 😀