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Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

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Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#111

Post by kgwxd »

pan69 wrote: post #67
kgwxd wrote: post #59

Atari 2600 programming is really fun and has a super active community. I suspect it's one of the most active retro communities out there right now. Also, it's kind of fake retro, but I'm pretty excited for the Commander X16, again, mostly because the community is so cool.

The Commander X16 isn't "fake retro", it actually IS retro. Retro literally means "imitative of a style or fashion from the recent past". Real old computers and technology, like the Atari 2600 you mentioned, is "vintage".

Yeah, that sound right to me, but OP used vintage and retro interchangeably, I didn't really think too hard about it.

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#112

Post by TheMog »

albertkoz wrote: post #82
TheMog wrote: post #49

I grew up in the 8-bit era, so that's mostly what I'm interested in from a retro computing perspective. Pretty much the whole Acorn lineup starting with the BBC and then going to the early ARMs is interesting, plus a bunch of the other early UK-built weird machines like home computers using Forth (I think that was the ORIC). Early UNIX workstations are also pretty interesting, like the early SUN stuff, SGI, early NeX…

I used to live in the UK for couple of years and I never heard of BBC before I living there. Right now I am hunting for Acorn and BBC and I am planning on flying to the UK just to pick them up. It's funny how these systems were so big, however only on the domestic market. I would love to get SGI but in the country I live in, it's almost imposible, same as SUN and NeXT.

For my own amusement I just had a quick look at eBay and it looks like old SUN gear has got expensive since last looked.

NeXT gear has always been expensive, that doesn't seem to have changed.

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#113

Post by peatmoss »

cpach wrote: post #107

What I’ve read about Lisp machines[0] really piqued my interest. Haven’t tried one yet though. NeXT’s computers[1] also seems very cool. Haven’t tried them either but I’ve used both WindowMaker and macOS. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

WindowMaker was never a clone of NeXT—it was more of a cool window manager that just happened to superficially look like NeXT. If you want to play with a real attempt to recreate a “deep down” NeXT clone you want this:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#115

Post by markus_zhang »

xkeysc0re wrote: post #7

The C64 is really sweet - one of my goals is to eventually develop a game for it (thinking a monorail/train sim like a simplified version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_de_Go!_2_K%C5%8Dsoku-he... ) Right now I'm interested in the Phillips MSX systems and PC Engine, as they both have a catalogue of unique platform-specific games (such as the original Metal Gear!) and are less-trodden territory for retrocomput…

I just purchased a C64 Mini. Can't afford a real C64 and its maintenance but a Mini is well in the budget. It's essentially an emulator running on another computer but I think it would be a nice place to play some classic games and write my own assembly code!

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#116

Post by mindcrime »

I recently bought an Atari 800, and I have my eye out for an Atari 1040ST. I'd like to add one of the latter to my stable as well.

Beyond that, I've been tinkering a little bit (emphasis on "little") with building a home-built ad-hoc z-80 machine. By ad-hoc, I just mean, not specifically modeling after any well known design from back in the day. Just taking a z-80 CPU, attaching memory, etc., and trying to build something that can - at a minimum - blink some LED's in response to code I write. The plan (for now) is to write code and cross-compile from a PC and burn the code to an EEPROM which the z80 will boot from. Not sure I plan to go as far as implementing keyboard I/O, a display adapter, etc. Maybe. Time / focus will be the big factors.

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#117

Post by Spooky23 »

I’ve always been fascinated with the Coleco Adam. It wasn’t a super successful computer, but I had one as a kid and it was a pretty amazing system that was both ahead of its time and behind at the same time.

They made really unique choices for user experience… the default mode for the system is actually a typewriter rom (!), and you can switch to a word processor mode. The system uses Atari style rom cartridges and had an integrated cassette drive, as well as an optional floppy. The weird thing was that a daisy wheel printer was the power supply and was required for the whole thing to work.

Even crazier was that they had a version where you could attach your ColecoVision game console into a dock and convert it into a general purpose computer.

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#118

Post by mrlonglong »

eb0la wrote: post #105
blablabla123 wrote: post #104

I really like the old SGI computers, the design was amazing. Not sure how much fun those are nowadays even if you happen to be into CAD or 3D modelling. I friend of mine got an old workstation from eBay and it weighed 50 kg and had a huge power supply. A really interesting one might be Apple Newton, they have been quite powerful for their time. I think a few years ago I read that there is still a vibrant community ar…

I miss SGI IRIX `hinv` - it told you what hardware was plugged on the machine. I think Apple Newton (today) seems an interesting piece of hardware to try and tinker.

lshw is your friend on Linuxy systems

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#119

Post by peatmoss »

wisemanwillhear wrote: post #61
bediger4000 wrote: post #4

Radio Shack Color Computer III - they had a multi-tasking OS, OS-9, that worked via memory bank switching. It had a windowing system that worked via in-band signalling, which is quite different than any windowing system today.

I grew up on a Color Computer 2 (Coco 2) (Exact same specs as the Coco 1 but reduced number of chips, making it cheaper I understand). Learning to program on it as early as 7 years old got me hooked on software development. Later someone gave us a Coco 3, which was too little, too late be a market success. Still, there was something attractive about the simplicity of those old 8-bit computers. At the end of the day,…

Yes, we had a CoCo2 as well. What I mostly remember was the cassette recorder disk drive, which was kind of like recorded modem sounds. There were a handful of games that plugged in via a cartridge on the side (like an NES, but usually with more boring games). But then there were some commercial games distributed on cassette tape as well, such as this one:

https://www.pixelatedarcade.com/games/taxi

Re: Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?

#120

Post by the_only_law »

lucidphreak wrote: post #108
the_only_law wrote: post #8

I’m into a weird part of retrocomputing where I mess with things other than just general purpose computers. Most of my equipment is old network/telecom stuff (mostly ISDN and general T1/E1 stuff rn, but I want to get into ATM) and network analyzers. Notably my Agilent J2300E which is a massive Windows 98 machine that look like a laptop but contains all sorts of sync and async serial interfaces too expensive to put on…

I hope you are part of NPSTN and the various phreaking discord groups.. LOTS of old switching stuff going on there.. some people from Binrev, etc... good to meet you. I probably already know you. :) -lucidphreak

I am not familiar with these groups, being rather new to the whole thing, but I would love to find them!
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