TheNeil has written up an article on his website about how the old computers in Computing have souls whereas new computers are "Soul-less"
I am not sure how to capture it as much as he does, but it does explain why older computers have a certain appeal over newer "Beige Boxes"
Anyways, this is his articel http://www.theneil.plus.com/esysparkle.html
It's a great read and you can use it as a basis to figure out why you are so interested in Legacy machines, and can help others figure it out why their friends/spouse/other is so interested in old technology.
Anyways, it is written by "TheNeil" and is an excellent article, and I suggest you 'fritter critters read this.
A good read. Thanks for the link.
I think there are some more points beyond the physical aesthetics that have removed the 'soul' from personal computing.
The variety and charm of older computers, at least during the early personal computer days, was matched by the variety of operating systems and internal hardware. So much beyond the CPU was proprietary, and very different from the competitors, especially...
...the OS. There was charm in the variety of OSs out there. Difference made it more interesting. There were big players competing, gaming vs. business platforms, ZX-81s that you could build yourself, and a lot of here one year, gone the next companies. And who didn't smirk when someone mentioned Wang? And there was charm in their simplicity compared to a modern OS.
With both hardware and the OS, it was easier to get under the hood, muck around, see what it did and how to change it. Those little changes seemed to have greater satisfaction, too.
I'm sure a lot of my feelings are clouded by nostalgia for my old 8-bit. When I got a new DOS, or when I wired my own replacement keyboard, it held much more joy than an upgrade now. Some of it gets lost in the complexity and homogeneity of the modern computer. Some of it, too, was just that personal computing was still new. Now, we're used to it, and take it for granted.
Remembering when 2400 baud was fast,
eeun
PS - get off my lawn
Although I missed out on the old 8-bit computers of the 70s and 80s, I really enjoy running emulators for them on my Mac and one of the reasons I like them so much was the ability to program any computer out of the box, without having to install SDKs or compilers.
I totally agree. I think the same thing actually happened with cars several decades ago. Now all cars have computers in them which makes it hard to fix them.
For me hacking anything now fades in the comparison with modifying a Word (for DOS can't remember which version it was) driver so that instead of using strikethrough it would use characters that I had downloaded into the printers memory. I had done that by using a program from a (Byte?) magazine that I had modified heavily (anyone remember using Turbo Pascal and the text based window environment?).
Maybe I'm just getting old but I don't hack anything now with the current software. Now you run the risk of nothing working if you mess up.
IC
Interesting one-man website. Never seen it before. I like his thumbnail view of his huge personal computer collection, and the "this, this, and this" pics of how he houses them all. I've had to force myself, often unsuccessfully--like right now--not to end up with a pile of beige and fruit and silver boxes myself. I've got a feeling there's thousands of Mac enthusiasts around the world with some sort of museum of their own.
I also find it very interesting that he's another Asperger Syndrome...um..."sufferer" doesn't seem to be the accurate word. The Mac world seems to be populated with a healthy dose of AS people, as illustrated in this AF thread. One might speculate--although I'd never make claims at having any qualifications for psychoanalysis, so sorry for the psychobabble--that the deficiency in proficient personal social intercourse which is a typical characteristic of AS may be compensated with a focused love of Macs, and that Macs are the computer that one would readily have a love for. Well, that's probably way off base.
I never had a great love of the mature 68k machines, ie. the Quadra, Centris, Performa, and LC era. There's only two Macs I would say that I have loved: the IIfx and the 9600, and the probable reason I loved them is because of their power and max-out-ability. I loved maxing them out and having this large construction that I put together and stabilized. Guess I loved their big top-of-the-line souls. I would probably have added the SE/30 to my list if I had spent enough time with one. I only kept one for a short while. The machine I've spent the most time with--the B&W--has been a long like/not-like-so-much relationship. If there's souls in it and the other non-loved machines I've owned, I think I've probably spent more time with the souls sold to the devil than those catching my admiration, so weeding out my personal museum hasn't been all that difficult.
His Apple timeline is funny. It really trails off with huge gaps once it hits the Powermacs. He should note that that's because of his personal bias. Looks very strange if you're not aware of the bias.