Okay, story time....
I was working with 8088-80486 PC before it was "retro" - when they were called "doorstops" "boat anchors" and "dinosaurs" - that was over 20 years ago. I was a poor Teenager, and I wanted a computer.....BAD......that had some capability to get on the internet so I no longer needed to heed the 115 degree 88% humidity Alabama summers to try and get on a computer at the Auburn University Library to research all the other assorted things I'm into. Back then, you could get PAID to take away a 386 or a 486 or anyting else "Pre-Pentium". I really treasure my time with that stuff, no matter how foolish people thought I was back then jamming 40GB HDD in 486 DX2-66's and cursing the fact I could not find an SVGA CRT monitor for less than $50.00 because people were still legit using them for work back then.
So classiclaly, ALL of my retro-computers had at least some level of "modern convenience" baked into them. Almost nothing I ever built was 100% period correct. Even my Tandy 1000A at it's most stock had a 800MB Apple Certified SCSI HDD hidden behind the dual 360K Floppy drives running MS-DOS 6.22.
The Creeping Network's desktop computers have a pretty standard configuration in general where I modernize and go vintage....
- Some kind of really really old Beige XT/AT case
- Some kind of really really old power supply that fits said case but has super high wattage for it's time period (ie 220 Watt XT PSU, 500 Wat Baby ATs....)
- A poor unsuspecting motherboard that likely has parts held together with chewing gum and twine but somehow runs at a level on par or higher than it's time
- 8088-80486 CPU which I milk every last gob of performance out of running things that intel/microsoft/Linus Torvaldes never intended to have running on it
- dual Floppies (assuming enough externally accessable slots)
- Some kind of Obscenely fast and over-sized moern PATA or SATA with an adapter hard disk split into multiple partitions with a DDO and running in PIO Mode 4
- Video card with the VRAM maxed out if it's upgradable.....2, 4, 8MB? 3D? I'll find a way to get it working.
- Almost always some kind of actual SoundBlaster card because I built a Cache of those....I use an AWE64 in my 486 because AWE32s are just too bloody expensive now
- 10mbps Ethernet card, almost always wired into the network over TCP/IP using DHCP
- MS-DOS, or some super hacked-up/modified version of Windows where I do a lot of tweaking and tuning......sometimes hours of it, lately FreeDOS has been my favorite O/S
- A browser that can surf the modern web (usually twibright Links these days), mTCP, Irfanview, WinRAR, and of course, a ton of games
- Clicky Keyboard and a decent pointing device(es)
- Some kind of cool multi-button gamepad (Sidewinder and PC PRoPad 4 being my top choice)
- Some old CRT I saved from certain fate by tweaking the focus and voltage....may even drill holes in the side (NEATLY) to access without taking the back off if no door or holes exist.
LAPTOPS - These days it'll almost always be an NEC Versa 486 of some kind with an Active Matrix TFT screen, because I found the NEC screens are almost as good as a modern LCD when it comes to brightness and ghosting. Also, some come with Touch. Modern appointments include some kind of WiFi card networked to my cell phone so I can have internet access anywhere and everywhere with the laptop...to the point I'm toying with making a Velcro attachment for my phone to the back - that's way more mobile than these Versas ever were in the 1990's (not to mention faster....full blown 11.5GBps xfer full time so as long as I keep DHCP.exe refreshed when using FreeDOS), and of course, some kind of insane huge hard disk in excess of 40GB, with an accelerometer, or full blown solid state will be the future replacements.
8088 with Monochrome (non hercules) and some very old disk format I can't find disks for....blech....
Sneaker-netting ginormous programs with floppy diskettes....I'll pass...
Surfing the internet on an emulated dial-up connection because nostalgia....why? WiFi and Ethernet over TCP/IP is less work.
Having to carefully care for aging hard disks and constantly cleaning and reorganizing data to fit more stuff? Nah....slap an 80 gig in there, FTP it for awhile, and call it a day.
running Ultima VI on a 286 because that's what was new when I came out? Nope....overspeeding it on a 486 DX4....makes a 20 minute trip to Yew a 2 minute trip 🤣
Part of my love for these machines is seeing them exceed what most consider their full potential.