I have been having so much fun doing Retro stuff. Vogons is the place to be for this area. I bought a Compaq Presario 4505. Then did lots of upgrades

* Ram to 64MB

* CPU is a 233MMX

* 512KB COAST

* Voodoo 3 3000 PCI

* IDE -> SATA with a 32GB SSD

* Audician 32 Plus

Wavetable cards are especially fun. Serdashop sells a bunch of interesting ones. X2GS, Yucatan FX, E-Wave, McFly and X2S are popular ones. Check out this[0] video. The music can be so dramatically different depending on what hardware you have. It is fun switching between cards.

Games from this era just had so much passion put into them and you can feel it while playing. I am playing System Shock 1 right now and you can see all the different experiments that went into the game (some good and some bad).

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Another cool device to check is the WeeCee [1]. If you want to play games on real hardware but don't feel like collecting (and troubleshooting) old hardware.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQQ7vvW_T4

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA

Re [0] : Whoa, some remarkable differences between those (56! different!) cards. 1.5 hours worth!

WHY?

Being a boomer I don't miss anything about those cards. Drivers were awful (if even existed), sound quality mediocre and all of them came with a ton of compromises, if not quirks.

There's a segment of retro PC gamers that like playing and using period correct hardware because modern OSs and emulation tools can be not quite right. Some vintage sound cards have gotten scarce and expensive while still being desirable to that community (in part because of the quirks) and so reproduction cards have started to become a thing.

Maybe you need to be Gen X or early Millennial. How do you feel about (just inventing an example) the background noise of LPs vs 8-tracks (vs cassettes)? This has to do with what was around when were that specific age, I think. Particularly if it's tied to a game we love.

It's more to do with whether or not you're prone to nostalgia.

And also whether or not you're a collector of physical stuff.

I'm (mostly) not. I sometimes like reading about old technology, but I have very limited interest in owning any.

It's more with your understanding of your nostalgia.

Of course my situation is only applies to me, but after some... things what happened in my life I understoođ what despite my initial reaction I care more about things what directly relates with my memoeries than with things which triggers my nostalgia factor. All and all the only things I have what relates to my memories is a "Six string samurai" DVD, a pack (or maybe two? It had been years since I toched them) of 5,25" diskettes and two pictures of some noname artists wich always reminds me of the place and time I got them.

I'll also throw in - there's something to be said for faithful reproduction, per se. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'm never going to fix up all my old video game consoles, and I'm going to find someone who is willing and able to do something with them. And part of why is that I know I can find an emulator to faithfully replicate it, and I can set up a raspberry pi or something some day and have the same experience.

People with old PC games might want to play and faithfully replicate them again just the same.

(Though modernized versions are often fine too.)

I feel the same way about vinyl aficionados. CDs were a godsend. Why would anyone want to go back to scratchy hissy delicate media? No, it doesn't sound better.

Because it's human scale.

What does that mean?

That CDs are not scaled for humans?

BuildTheRobots 8 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Vinyl records are now outselling CDs

It sounds silly, but I find it extremely comforting to know I can play back my vinyl using entirely mechanical components. I don't expect the world to forget how to decode mp3s, or even loose the ability to generate electric to power my computers/storage to retrieve it. But, in the event all technology collapsing I've got a vibration trapped in a piece of vinyl, and I can play back by scraping a nail over it. There's something quite beautifully "pure" or simple about this. As much as analogue audio tape is doing similar, vinyl is a physical waveform.

Sure, in any world where this could happen there's going to be far more important things to worry about than playing back Paul Simon, but it seems easier to believe I could build a gramophone from first principals than a CD player. Comforting.

bombcar 8 months ago | next [–]

Vinyl is one of those things that is at the limit of human scale but still accessible - without any power you can spin a record and “hear” it by putting your ear near the needle. Both cassettes and CDs go out of human scale and into technology

They're more hobbit-sized I guess.

Frankly, it's self-indulgence. Recently, Stallman has been complaining about the diversion of resources away from free software towards retro computing.

RMS confuses the symptom for the disease. Retrocomputing is almost always pure hobby, done for joy and recreation, while there is plenty of drudgery in libre/open source software. He shouldn't be surprised when geeky goofing off is a lot more fun for people than frequently unpaid labour.

As much as I hate to give Stallman oxygen, as a fellow retro computing enthusiast I'm morbidly curious to read about it. Is there anywhere I can find the full text of his caustic remarks?

I recall having heard it in a somewhat recent solo video address of his, although I don't have the exact timestamp ready to hand.

As a member of Gen-X, I get nothing out of retro Windows machines. And though I was an expert on IRQ, config.sys, etc back in the day I would not want to return to those bad old days.

Give me an old Commodore though and that’s a good time!

For me, DOS was a great learning experience. First I learned to master most of it's intricacies. Then I learned how quickly knowledge like that can get obsolete. I admit the first part was considerably more fun.

Ahhh..... I remember as kid, that I was pretty expert on fine tunning autoexec.bat and config.sys to get the max amount of conventional ram

That too, but I was thinking more along the lines of building TSR programmes and diving into the DOS system programming interna.

That said, the sound canvas was amazing. Some of the music produced by that is still competitive with modern soundtracks. At least to my memory. :)

It’s meaningful to some because it introduced many of us to computing. My parents weren’t academics with access to Unix. Figuring out how to make 90s games work on my ancient hand me down PC was my gateway!

It's a fun hobby