Vintage Computing

I like the aesthetic of Beige CRT monitors, keyboards, mice, and PC Cases. You guys know any forums or groups with similar interests?

>>67039 I wish I still had my computers from the 90s. I had an old IBM that had Windows 3.1, HP with Windows 95, and a Compaq with Windows 98SE. Also, perhaps I need to search out a dedicated forum.

Sadly, most of the groups dedicated to discussion of old hardware are on platforms like Discord, Facebook, and other dystopian corporate platforms. What forums do exist, such as vogons and the like have their own issues too- such as narrow focus or being glorified ad listings for some ruch individual to pawn off hardware to those with deep pockets.

>>67060 The other problems with those forums is that they do indeed have official Discord groups, which everyone whos been on a site with a Discord attached knows the site is just the soykafting ground for the Discord users I wonder if there are any Matrix groups? Still ass but better than nothing

>>67039 I was just thinking the same thing actually. I know there is a retro PC subreddit but I'm not a fan of reddit. Just wish there was some way to get one of those old keyboards and monitors to work with a newer PC.

anon.cafe has a dedicated retro 2000s board called /retro/

>>67064 damn this is exactly what i wanted thanks!

>>67064 sadly the /retro/ board is hardly active, much like any other imageboard that isn't 4shit

there is also Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe if you are into that sort of thing.

>>67154 I had thought it was more of a vaporwave and similar music forum

>>67039 >You guys know any... groups with similar interests? Your average middle schooler who's on the internet too much, lol. They're in the perfect age range for getting nostalgic about this stuff, as it has been around 20 years since it was the norm

The "retro PC scene" is mostly comprised of tech illiterate kids and scalpers overpricing old warehouse junk. It's sad how fast the old computer market caught the same disease that infected the retro gaming world, but what can you do? I'll tell you, never buy a 30+ year old computer online. Even local sellers pawn their trash off for way too much nowadays. Recyclers/thrift stores are mostly tapped dry of anything good too. I've heard stories of people finding retro technology via urban exploration, but I don't know how likely it would be to find an old as mammoth's soykaf computer in a dilapidated building that's been vandalized over a million times.

>>67063 There are a lot of different ways to do that, converter attachments exist for just about everything

>>67199 >The "retro PC scene" is mostly comprised of tech illiterate kids As is lainchan, lol The whole "retro" scene is dumb, but if you really want something that's old for the sake of it being old, then never pay more than 10 dollars for it. It's absolutely dumb to pay any more than that for officially obsolete equipment.

>>67039 What kind of content do you want to see? FreeDos is a cool DOS operating system. DosBox/DosEmu exist. I have considered going down the DOS Assembly rabit hole, but never have gone further than debug.com

>>67199 I just like te simplicity of it as a reaction to modern internet awfulness. I use an old Dell Trinitron I ad since I was a kid in late 2000s, and a Model M keyboard. Wic doesnt even work properly, as you can see, but Im too lazy to bolt mod it. I want to et my Dads Commodore 64 qoinq too.

>>67039 If I wanted to get a retro computer, I would buy an old C64. You can still find them at almost reasonable prices. But I'm not currently interested in getting any retro computers. I would have to know enough to be able to fix them. I think getting a Raspberry Pi 4 (or 400) or just using emulators would be a better option.

Me too but it really needs to be designed well, too bad there aren't many systems like these now and this thread could be it.

>>67062 There is an active Matrix group about specifically CRTs and related tech, search for it on the room browser.

The Dell Dimension 4100 appears desirable to me as one of the last retro beige computers, to my knowledge. I think a version of the IBM NetVista around this time also came in beige still before IBM switched to black like Dell did. It's comfy and I like the vent cutout/indentation right of the classic blue Dell logo. I believe it was released in 2000, cam preconfigured with an Intel Pentium III at clock speeds ranging from 667 Mhz to 1Ghz or something. It's hard to find one online that's sold for a reasonable price, given its age, and the shipping is usually the same price as the item itself. It's sold typically for parts, with a hard drive missing, or an OS not installed, or some part damaged. Unfortunate, but beige boxes are still treated like they are e-waste, which for the average person they are, but to us, we know how to make use of them somehow, so they still hold some semblance of value.

Do yall know a website lists technical specs for old PCs? I recently acquired a late-90s gateway gp7 from a storage shed. But I don't know much about it besides what I can gleam from the bios screen and the one random blog-post google has about it.

is it true that retro PCs give you more control over hardware and its easier to learn system design from them as they have less resources to bloat out their software? im making my my OS from osdev.org and the only kernel i can currently take inspiration from is the openbsd kernel. is it worth getting something like a c64 just to see how they work at a lower level?

>>74128 Is there any reason you wouldn't want to use a Virtual Machine? That should be trivial for any modern PC.

>>74146 i tried a few different os but they didnt work. ill probally try again soon and use a newer OS that has a man page for virtualization

>>74128 Sure you can start with similar systems and work your way up. I learned on some unix clone from harvard that’s intentionally half done. I honestly don’t remember what it’s called. Then we added a system call in a sub 2.4 linux kernel, I guess after that the difficulty goes up considerably. learning hardware on c64 is doable but the total wizards who came off that system HAD to use it. Try to imagine using your computer to do the things you use it for and wishing your software was behaving differently, knowing your problem was contained somewhere in 64kb of ram leaves a lot of incentive to understand what most of it is doing. I don’t see that happening when a c64 is just a retro toy and not a daily driver. But sure pick apart older software it’s much easier to understand. You don’t have to limit yourself to the c64 either, DOS is pretty easy to understand. I’m sure apple][ is gentle too. It’ll all help close the gap but understanding a preemptive multitasking kernel is going to be several times harder than learning, say DOS. Look into books. I would recommend you a book but I don’t think mine was the greatest and don’t remember the name.

>>74171 Oh dang I should mention cp/m might not be a bad place to learn super bare bones basic operating systems. I don’t know if it’s as well documented as dos though. Oh speaking of which the msdos 2.0 code was leaked! It’s suuuuper simple IIRC so maybe that’s a good option.

https://winclassic.boards.net/ it's a forum where people discuss classic windows versions (with a focus on 9x) and software to restore and recreate the uis of old windows versions