Not a stupid configuration. Basically speaking, server spec's from that period. (number-wise)

The SCSI card was a PCI Adaptec AHA-2940UW and the HDD was Ultra160 7200rpm 😁 The graphics card was a Matrox G200 8MB PCI. I don't think you would ever see that combination in a 486DX2-66 😉

I'll chime in.

I believe it is because what computers were used for in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are vastly different than what they are used for today. So there is a bit of a generational gap.

See they used to be used for home business stuff and games, but until the late '90s it wasn't unusual to not have a computer.

Now computers are essentially built for multi-media, storing pictures, music, games, books, movies, etc and communications.

When somebody who is used to using computers for media usage and social communications sees an old computer they simply don't know what to make of it. It can't play video, it can't stream content, it can't display high resolution pictures, the games don't look appealing to modern eyes, it can't generally play audio etc.

tldr

Old computers can't do the facebook and the youtube so n00bs don't understand them.

Scali wrote:

Didn't sound like it, because you were comparing it to a printer port. A printer port, especially in its original incarnation in […]
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orinoko wrote:

Yes yes yes I know this already. I used to build user port interfaces when I was a kid...

Didn't sound like it, because you were comparing it to a printer port.
A printer port, especially in its original incarnation in the 1980s, was far more limited.
Also, the user port is one interface, the cartridge interface is another: https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Expansion_Port

Somehow you seemed to make a distinction between 'internal' and 'external' upgrades. Which is nonsensical. The physical location of an expansion says nothing about its expandability.
The PCjr also has its equivalent of an ISA slot on the outside (for 'sidecar' expansions). Doesn't make much of a difference for the functionality.
In fact, you can install a converter board that allows you to plug in regular ISA cards: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/pcjr_options.html

PC is very flexible compared to most other options you had those days, surely you must know this is what Orinoko is referring to. I don't see how you can be missing this, it's kinda obvious.

Scali wrote:

orinoko wrote:

I do own a couple of c64s, and understand their significance in computing history... but it's a fixed system. It's not really expandable like a IBM PC/clone is. You all know this.

No, I don't know this, actually.

This is what you're missing here. It's the exact reason why I decided to ignore anything that doesn't fit a standard motherboard, it's not just the printer port thingy.

zstandig wrote:

I'll chime in. […]
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I'll chime in.

I believe it is because what computers were used for in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are vastly different than what they are used for today. So there is a bit of a generational gap.

See they used to be used for home business stuff and games, but until the late '90s it wasn't unusual to not have a computer.

Now computers are essentially built for multi-media, storing pictures, music, games, books, movies, etc and communications.

When somebody who is used to using computers for media usage and social communications sees an old computer they simply don't know what to make of it. It can't play video, it can't stream content, it can't display high resolution pictures, the games don't look appealing to modern eyes, it can't generally play audio etc.

tldr

Old computers can't do the facebook and the youtube so n00bs don't understand them.

The fact that the old PC systems we're messing around with here seem to be nothing more that very very limited old versions of modern PCs at the surface, but when I actually show one in action, I can actually get people somewhat interested.

People seem to think that a PC with only a 20GB harddrive and maybe 128 Megabyte memory must be slow, since little memory is a known feature of systems that are way too slow and annoying.

Tetrium wrote:

PC is very flexible compared to most other options you had those days, surely you must know this is what Orinoko is referring to. I don't see how you can be missing this, it's kinda obvious.

But it isn't.
To people who didn't actually live through that age, it is probably impossible to imagine, but in the mid-80s, C64s were all around, and you could get lots of hardware for your C64, and do all kinds of cool things.
C64s were also popular with electronics hobbyists because you could build all kinds of stuff yourself.
PCs, they were 'around', but you couldn't just walk into a store, and buy a PC, a motherboard, expansion cards etc (aside from the fact that even the stuff you could find on sale was stupid expensive, so out of reach for the average joe. Eg, in 1984 you could buy an entire C64 for $199, but for a PC, yes, you could get eg a Hercules card, but it cost you $499: https://books.google.nl/books?id=hcHq9kHRifYC … %201984&f=false).
That didn't really happen until the late 80s, early 90s.

Before that, most of the 'expandability' of a PC was making up for what it didn't have out-of-the-box, that a C64 did.
I mean, take my IBM PC/XT 5160. It has the following cards:
- CGA card
- Sound Blaster
- Floppy controller
- MDA/printer port
- Serial port
- Harddisk controller

Yes, it has 6 'expansion cards'. But none of them do anything that you can't do with a C64 out-of-the-box. So it doesn't mean anything.
Check out old C64 mags, and see what kind of stuff they had on offer. You'd be amazed. Companies like Cat & Korsh made the most incredible hardware for your C64.
Even today, you can find tons of interesting stuff, such as the Turbo Chameleon: http://www.syntiac.com/chameleon.html
Just stick it into a stock C64 and you get things like VGA output and ethernet.

The problem is that there are alot of conditional ifs in place.

If someone lived through the era the computer was in common use. (as in they know how to use it)

If they are able to come into contact with that kind of computer. This is getting harder as people don't keep old things as much as they used to. (and sadly many parts and files are getting harder and harder to find and maintain as years go on)

If they can figure out stuff that admittedly is not user friendly by todays standards. (they also have to want to do so and have an active interest).

See what I'm getting at? There has to be a want, an inner curiosity and a means to act on it. The instructions on how to act on it help too.

I guess I can try to use myself on that template:

I was gifted a computer, sometime in 1999-2000 (I was about eleven), that's what I used until it broke in 2004 or so. Knowing what I know now, I could have easily remedied the situation. But at the time I had no clue what was wrong with it.

I was too afraid to open it because all I knew about it was that it was 'expensive' and if I broke it I was in deep shit (no more computer). But it kept making odd noises until one day it just wouldn't boot anymore. (that delayed my contact with learning about the innards by a good five years)

We took it to a local computer shop, they gave it a new power supply and installed Windows 2000 on it. Knowing what I know now, replacing Win98 with Win2k was a good move for stability, but now I know the problem was the hard drive (click of death).

At the time I didn't know where the hard drive even was inside the computer, I didn't know what one looked like. I had some vague idea from reading the manual that came with the old dell (imagine that a manual that tells you about the computer...)

Eventually I ended up getting another computer from my parents and they made it clear that this was the last one. Looking back, I know now, that we got ripped off big time (256MB of RAM in 2005).

After I got that new computer, there were no concequences in openning up the old one. That's the first time I took a good look inside a computer case. I took it apart and put it back together many times, it was like a puzzle. Eventually I learned what each part did and what was good and what was bad.

Then I began finding old discarded computers during bulk pickup days, I made some franken-machines of varying quality, but I had fun. Eventually I built my own and have several computers of varying age.

Without those experiences and drives I would never have ended up in this hobby. I'm willing to bet that many other VOGONS users have similar stories. Sort of an origin that got us into enjoying these old neglected machines and other orphaned technology.

Now the average person, who does not have these types of experiences, cannot appreciate these computers the same way that we do. All they see is 'golly what a long way we have come since Zork.'

A darker aspect is that because I began in 2000ish, I don't have any experience with anything much older than that (1997 is about my cutoff). I didn't have the opportunity to tinker with anything older than a Pentium. So when it comes to a computer older than that I can appreciate it because I assume it is somewhat like my newer ones, but I can barely use it. (I can navigate a command line, but forget about knowing anything about jumpers and stuff) By association I think that computers older than what I have are neat and cool. But I know that unless I come into a lot of extra storage space, time and cash, I won't be buying them, setting them up and learning how to use them anytime soon. That saddens me to some degree.

Now try to imagine imagine that darker aspect applied to somebody raised on tablets and ithings 😵

I apologize for the length, but I felt that was the best way to explain my reasoning and point of view.

My children, born 2008 and 2010. Are the ones that are going to get first hand experience with 1985 to 2001 pc's. Not their friends. (Thanks to their old man) They are Lucky to get the whole package of knowledge from me, plus tablets and smartphones, as this is what they use on daily basis. My son has an old iPhone 3G that have dead phone-part and dead WiFi part. He use it as a iPod Touch gaming machine at home. At my place, he is playing Dos games.

When they are old enough, I will let them build an tinker with 486 parts and stuff like that. They need to get that understanding of jumpered hardware too. To apreciate modern technology.

I should bring up another thing about all those old computers having things "out-of-the-box" that PCs needed add-on cards for; in the latter case, it's a lot of added complexity and potential incompatibility, but at least you're not stuck on some old interface nobody else uses.

I mean, I have this Power Mac 6500 that I'm trying to get set up as a gaming system here, and the only thing it has in common with any of the PCs in my house are PCI slots - all TWO of them, one of which is already occupied by a Voodoo2 I had lying around.

Keyboard and mouse (and potential joysticks and webcams) use ADB like most pre-USB Macs, the serial port is RS-422 on some kinda DIN connector instead of the more common RS-232 on DE-9, the proprietary CommSlot II had a crappy software GeoPort modem instead of an Ethernet card as stock equipment, everything but the hard drive uses SCSI instead of PATA while PCs outside of the workstation space practically NEVER have SCSI as a standard feature... I'm just lucky that this uses PCI and not NuBus, or else I'd be really hosed in trying to find expansion cards for it.

I can only imagine how much worse that would get if I throw in things like an Amiga, Atari ST, X68000 or FM Towns into the mix. How many additional proprietary, obsoleted interfaces that require obscure and likely expensive peripherals am I going to be dealing with here?

Granted, PCs aren't entirely free of that problem, either. Micro-Channel Architecture, anyone?

brostenen wrote:

When they are old enough, I will let them build an tinker with 486 parts and stuff like that. They need to get that understanding of jumpered hardware too. To apreciate modern technology.

My kids are the same age as yours but I think differently about their tech education. I don't think they "need" to understand the classics to appreciate the modern stuff. They'll be exposed to it thanks to my never ending projects, but as they say "you can lead a horse to water...". More relevant perhaps will be teaching them how to program an arduino or writing a facebook plugin, but again I don't agree with this "all kids should be taught to write code" bollocks that people bang on about. Like anything, they'll pick it up if they're interested in it, but if they're not then it will be a chore and they won't be at it.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

I can only imagine how much worse that would get if I throw in things like an Amiga, Atari ST, X68000 or FM Towns into the mix. How many additional proprietary, obsoleted interfaces that require obscure and likely expensive peripherals am I going to be dealing with here?

Well, that's part of the charm.
Besides, it's a different culture. Amiga and Atari ST weren't really about expanding your machine. The machines were very capable out-of-the-box.
You might add some memory, perhaps some extra disk drives, a harddisk even, but that stuff isn't that hard to find even today (there's SD/CF card readers for most vintage systems).
People were mostly interested in using the software, and creating their own stuff (graphics, music, code etc).
Stuff like Deluxe Paint, ProTracker, Cubase etc... That stuff simply wasn't possible on PCs to begin with, no matter how much you wanted to 'expand' them.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Granted, PCs aren't entirely free of that problem, either. Micro-Channel Architecture, anyone?

Yup, PCs have tons of incompatible standards as well. What about keyboards for example? DIN, PS/2, USB.
Old mice used serial ports, which you no longer have on modern boards. You can only get those cheap Chinese USB ones, that don't work all that well.
And then there's ISA, VLB, PCI, PCI-e. Try getting a USB keyboard working on a 486 with only ISA slots.

On the other hand you can set up a Linux server using a distribution released yesterday and have a Windows 3.11 machine connect to it perfectly fine. Although if you go for older operating systems and hardware things start to become more difficult but, as you said, that's part of the charm 😉

The reason Amigas and STs don't have as many incompatible standards for connecting stuff is because they simply weren't around long enough for that to happen. The hardware was also barely upgraded over the years, probably for backwards-compatibility reasons, and as we know now a platform that isn't constantly evolving will eventually lose relevance and be replaced by something else.

Also, I think the notion that old PCs are boring is starting to fade away as more and more enthusiasts join communities such as this one and share videos about our hobby. I'm sure it won't be something that will ever be considered "cool" by the society at large, but who knows? Videogames were also uncool geek stuff until not too long ago.

Finally I can't help but wonder if someone somewhere in some kind of early electro-mechanical computer forum is asking "why are thermionic valve computers considered boring?" 🤣

This hobby is and will remain tiny and irrelevant to society at large.

devius wrote:

Also, I think the notion that old PCs are boring is starting to fade away as more and more enthusiasts join communities such as this one and share videos about our hobby. I'm sure it won't be something that will ever be considered "cool" by the society at large, but who knows? Videogames were also uncool geek stuff until not too long ago.

Makes me think of how the recent Captain America Civil War movie showed Peter Parker having a vintage Apple in his room and Tony Stark actually mentioned something about "retro" hardware. A mention of the hobby in the biggest AAA "summer movie" of the year is kind of interesting.

... On a somewhat related note, a scene in Xmen Apocalypse had dozens of vintage IBM 5150\5160s in an office and I almost jumped out of my skin pointing them out to my wife, saying "I have one of those!". I was impressed that she said said recognized it.

There were also IBM PC XT's in X-Men: Apocalypse but those weren't retro in the film, but rather what was available in 1983 when the film takes place.

PS: Ha, you beat me to the punch apparently 😉

Scali wrote:

Well, that's part of the charm. Besides, it's a different culture. Amiga and Atari ST weren't really about expanding your machin […]
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NamelessPlayer wrote:

I can only imagine how much worse that would get if I throw in things like an Amiga, Atari ST, X68000 or FM Towns into the mix. How many additional proprietary, obsoleted interfaces that require obscure and likely expensive peripherals am I going to be dealing with here?

Well, that's part of the charm.
Besides, it's a different culture. Amiga and Atari ST weren't really about expanding your machine. The machines were very capable out-of-the-box.
You might add some memory, perhaps some extra disk drives, a harddisk even, but that stuff isn't that hard to find even today (there's SD/CF card readers for most vintage systems).
People were mostly interested in using the software, and creating their own stuff (graphics, music, code etc).
Stuff like Deluxe Paint, ProTracker, Cubase etc... That stuff simply wasn't possible on PCs to begin with, no matter how much you wanted to 'expand' them.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Granted, PCs aren't entirely free of that problem, either. Micro-Channel Architecture, anyone?

Yup, PCs have tons of incompatible standards as well. What about keyboards for example? DIN, PS/2, USB.
Old mice used serial ports, which you no longer have on modern boards. You can only get those cheap Chinese USB ones, that don't work all that well.
And then there's ISA, VLB, PCI, PCI-e. Try getting a USB keyboard working on a 486 with only ISA slots.

I suppose there's something to be said for not having to upgrade your computer just to get it to do what you want; after all, it took the PC far too many years to get sound capabilities that a C64 or Mac user wouldn't point and laugh at, though the graphics gap narrowed a bit sooner thanks to EGA and especially VGA.

Even once the hardware was there, the software had to catch up; for example, Carrier Command was Amiga/ST first, and while the AI was enhanced for the PC version, all you're getting is crappy PC speaker sound. Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe and Cannon Fodder also still sound way better on an Amiga than a PC with a Sound Blaster, and I'm not sure that a Roland MT-32 would close the gap any in the former case.

Never dealt with a serial mouse before, though. All my mice were PS/2, USB, or in the case of the ol' 6500, ADB. Maybe I'd have to start worrying about it if I ever pick up a Thrustmaster F-16 TQS, but I'm pretty sure that also uses the PS/2 mouse interface in addition to serial.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to touch on joysticks for this incompatible peripheral discussion, too. At least Amigas and STs have it easy: same old Atari VCS/2600 joystick port, down to the expectation that you have ONE button, but at least anyone with a female DE-9, an arcade lever and a pushbutton can wire up a basic joystick. Or you could just grab a Genesis/Mega Drive pad and use that, come to think of it. Not like any of the software would use the extra buttons, but at least it'd work, right?

In that respect, I suppose the PC actually had a better joystick interface owing to its standardized analog axes, but I still want to slap whoever at IBM thought it was a great idea to use a resistive bleeder circuit instead of a voltage divider for reading the pots. A modern voltage divider setup would've made it far easier to use Hall effect sensors on old sticks and generally be less prone to spiking or changes in response due to CPU timing.

Now, as for Mac joysticks? I'm now recalling the time when I tried to play A-10 Cuba! on one of those old PowerBook G3s and quickly finding myself unable to use a USB joystick because it didn't support InputSprocket, meaning that I'd have to hunt down a period-appropriate ADB joystick that I couldn't use on an ADB-less machine anyway. (Meanwhile, the Windows port supports DirectInput like you'd expect and thus works with any gameport, serial or USB stick that comes up in the Game Controllers panel. Go figure.)

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find decent ADB flight sim controls? I glimpsed a few CH Products Fighterstick/Pro Throttle/Pro Pedals ADB setups listed over the years, but they were generally perceived as junk precisely because of that ADB interface. Haven't seen any Thrustmaster equivalents yet save for the FCS, and the FCS by itself isn't enough; I'm too used to having a throttle and pedals, so I fully expect a WCS and RCS to match. The most I can track down right now is an ADB variant of the SideWinder 3D Pro - yeah, that's right, Microsoft's legendary first foray into the joystick market has a Mac version, how about that! But without a dedicated throttle or pedals, it just wouldn't feel right.

Meanwhile, I'm practically tripping over old PC gameport sticks, they're all over the place! I can even find 'em in thrift stores without trying! And if you want a USB joystick, there's so many controller boards you could use that you could make your own, possibly even better than the mass-produced stuff if you get the mechanical bits engineered right.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

In that respect, I suppose the PC actually had a better joystick interface owing to its standardized analog axes

The irony there is that many games were ports from C64/Amiga/Atari, and just treated it as a digital joystick.
Not to mention that for many action games, digital sticks are far easier to control than analog sticks with huge travel. Imagine trying to play a fast game like International Karate or Superfrog with one of those analog IBM sticks!

I actually used a digital-to-analog converter made by Suzo, which allowed me to plug in my 9-pin digital Commodore/Atari joysticks. And when these joysticks had a CPC464-mode for 2 buttons, you could even use those on PC.
For many games, these joysticks worked great. Eg Prince of Persia or Test Drive.

PeterLI wrote:

This hobby is and will remain tiny and irrelevant to society at large.

Until the nukes go off and the survivors have to fight each other (and Mel Gibson) for fuel, food and 486s.

Scali wrote:

The irony there is that many games were ports from C64/Amiga/Atari, and just treated it as a digital joystick. Not to mention th […]
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NamelessPlayer wrote:

In that respect, I suppose the PC actually had a better joystick interface owing to its standardized analog axes

The irony there is that many games were ports from C64/Amiga/Atari, and just treated it as a digital joystick.
Not to mention that for many action games, digital sticks are far easier to control than analog sticks with huge travel. Imagine trying to play a fast game like International Karate or Superfrog with one of those analog IBM sticks!

I actually used a digital-to-analog converter made by Suzo, which allowed me to plug in my 9-pin digital Commodore/Atari joysticks. And when these joysticks had a CPC464-mode for 2 buttons, you could even use those on PC.
For many games, these joysticks worked great. Eg Prince of Persia or Test Drive.

For those sorta games, you indeed want a digital arcade lever. You wouldn't play a fighting game with an analog stick, after all! (Unless that game is Super Smash Bros., anyway, but everyone's standardized on N64 or GameCube pads for that.)

However, it's easier to add digital input on an analog interface than the other way around, as all those owners of Gravis GamePads and arcade sticks for any modern console will attest to. It's technically doable if you make all the microswitch inputs a sort of digital interface, much as later PC joysticks would do with the gameport before USB, but that's non-standard and would require a special peripheral to exist to actually code against - which, again, results in said digital gameport PC sticks not working under DOS, with a few exceptions (mainly the SideWinder 3D Pro).

I just keep noting to myself that you never find anything like a Thrustmaster FCS or CH Flightstick Pro for anything that isn't a PC or a Mac with ADB. All the Amiga flight sims and such had to make do with digital, one-button joysticks, which means an inherent loss of precision and control - not just for the lack of analog axes, but the lack of that second button. There wasn't an entity like TM trying to push the boundaries of what could be done with that joystick interface.

It just makes me wonder how you'd go about playing something like Wing Commander on an Amiga due to its heavy emphasis on that second button as a throttle/roll shift, double-click for afterburner and a trigger shift for firing missiles on top of wanting analog control so you can lead targets properly without having to be a human DAC. If I had to guess, you're expected to hit a keyboard key in its place.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

I just keep noting to myself that you never find anything like a Thrustmaster FCS or CH Flightstick Pro for anything that isn't a PC or a Mac with ADB. All the Amiga flight sims and such had to make do with digital, one-button joysticks, which means an inherent loss of precision and control - not just for the lack of analog axes, but the lack of that second button. There wasn't an entity like TM trying to push the boundaries of what could be done with that joystick interface.

Actually, analog sticks and multiple buttons on Amiga were supported (via the mouse interface basically), and various flight sims made use of them.
You can also buy converter cables to connect PC joysticks to your Amiga: http://www.amigareport.com/ar402/feature2.html
It just wasn't that popular on Amiga I suppose, because the computer wasn't all that fast for advanced 3d sims.
It didn't really take off until the 386/486 era, with games like Falcon 3.0.
And of course there was Microsoft Flight Simulator, that was PC-only (aside from some rare Mac versions).

tikoellner wrote:

Yeah, that's probably the common perspective. PC can really be boring and generic, and those non-generic aspects remain hidden i […]
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Scali wrote:

Also, PCs are very generic. It's not a specific brand or type, everything is interchangeable and upgradable. I generally bought […]
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Also, PCs are very generic.
It's not a specific brand or type, everything is interchangeable and upgradable.
I generally bought a new PC every 2-3 years, and upgraded parts in-between.
A C64, Amiga, NES or whatever is something you'd enjoy for many years at a time. So you get more attached to it, I suppose.

Yeah, that's probably the common perspective. PC can really be boring and generic, and those non-generic aspects remain hidden inside the case, GUS being an example (for me at least).

I generally started this thread, as to me PC was the only system ever. Most of friends at school, then highschoold, were also PC users. There were some Atari gamers maybe, but these days (mid 90s) having an Atari was considered even shameful, as I recall it.

I was pretty ashamed myself sporting 486 in 1997.

On the flipside though, you can just as easily do a nice Socket 370 build in a nice-looking case similar to how you would do a modern Haswell or Skylake build, and if you use an HTPC case or any other case that has a door on the front, to hide the optical and floppy drives or whatever, even better. Basically, if you're doing, for example, an ATX Tualatin build, it would be just as easy for you to stick it in a nice case like this, http://silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=330&area=en that would look good on a shelf, as it would be to stick it in a beige box, making the case a part of the aesthetic.