31–40 of 88 posts
...pretty sure you can just get the color scanned and mixed at any paint shop if you really want to
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
In the mid-to-late 90s I had probably fifteen of them laying around and couldn't give them away. No one wanted these heavy bulky noisy keyboards. Now people pay hundreds of dollars for the originals and there's even a company[1] devoted to making new ones.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a Model M and still have a couple, but I would never pay these insane amounts for one.
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
Essentially people used to feel that their inability to perform a given task was gated by their lack of access to a certain sort of machine, such as a UNIX workstation or LISP machine. Now we all have surplus computing power and cheap peripherals the sense is that we must be missing some essence that was lost since these machines, because that is the nicer explanation than that given access to tools far better than those in previous generations most of us have no idea what to do with them, or worse that we allow ourselves to be distracted entirely.
The musical equipment world is just like this too.
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
The key is that you used them. The retro community is for people who lusted after those machines, but we’re stuck with something much more affordable and much less powerful. And now they’re well into middle age and they have money.
Too bad Jobs turned the company into a boring locked-down anti-consumer appliance factory.
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
I had a 386 with 4MB RAM and am not the least nostalgic about it. In fact damn near everything about that machine was limiting and something I couldn't wait to replace with something newer.
I even didn't care for the beige color schemes of the day -- I remember going for the brushed aluminium case way back because I was excited it wasn't freaking beige.
Watching some of the channels though I'd say a lot of the retro experience isn't quite what most people had. A lot of modern retrocomputing is putting together what would have qualified as a "dream machine" back in the day. Some are specced up to the absolute best one could get, some are unrealistic (1990 Monkey Island on a 2000s Pentium 3), some are jazzed up with scifi tech like floppy emulators.
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
Ultimately, they're collectors. They collect the good and the bad.
If Woz were still in Apple there would be Apple-run makerspaces, with Apple branded 3d printers and all the types of filament you could dream of. Too bad Jobs turned the company into a boring locked-down anti-consumer appliance factory.
Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…
The key is that you used them. The retro community is for people who lusted after those machines, but we’re stuck with something much more affordable and much less powerful. And now they’re well into middle age and they have money.
Take a look at the Commodore 64 developer manual and quickly realize that without much difficulty, one can learn the full assembly instruction set along with all BASIC commands.
https://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c...
The machine is completely open to experimentation. You can write to memory anywhere including the active display terminal. The chips are easy to mix, match, swap. Hardware and software is malleable, not a locked-down black box of complexity and TPIM modules!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With an ender 3 it's easy enough, but it does not feel as nice as shot ABS plastic caps. I am sure though, if you spent time polishing and painting the surface it would feel much better. It's still similar plastic after all. Biggest problem for me, if printed in PLA the + shaped slot eventually gets too loose and the key pops off. Can just print another but it's annoying for sure. Resin printers would likely have a m…
Thanks. Do you have any suggestions for printing the glyphs on the faces/sides?
IIRC you make transfers by (2d) printing on a laser printer and dissolving away the paper.