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My god I'm not the only one!

D

dpatten

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2006
Messages
285
Location
Melbourne, FL
I used to think I was unique in my pack-rat like behaviour regarding old machines. People give me funny looks when I pull over on the side of the road and grab a PC that someone has trashed. My wife has begun refusing to enter thrift stores with me on the grounds that I have too much crap already.

So for the record, here's what I have, from memory and not complete.

Atari 2600 (4 and 6 switch versions, not really a computer but fun)
Vic 20
Commodore 64 (6 including the one my parents bought Christmas 1984)
IBM PS/2 model 30 (8086)
IBM PS/2 Model 50Z (with Kingston 486slc card & 8MB MCA adapter)
Zenith 386SX-16 upgraded with TI 486SLC/2 66, ISA large HDD adapter & 8.4 GB HDD) surfs the net and runs Win 95 My favorite!!
IBM PC-AT 5170
Dell 286 AT
Whitebox 486 DX/33 with Micronics board (16 30 pin simm slots!)
Whitebox TI486 DX/2 80 ( I paid $1200!)
Whitebox Intel P-60 with F-div bug
Toshiba Satellite 205CDS (paid $1700!)
Intergraph workstation with dual Pentium 200 CPUs w/o MMX (currently broken)
Generic AT case circa 1984 containing Micronics dual PPro 200 512K cache 256 MB EDO (future file server)
Centris 610 upgraded to Power PC 6100 with Newer tech 300 Mhz G3.
Generic white box with NEX dual PIII 1 GHz 1GB ram and 100 GB HDD (wife's)
Generic whitebox with Asus A7v133 ver 1.05. Athlon XP 2400. (mine)

Am I sick?
 
dpatten said:
Am I sick?
Click to expand...

No more than the rest of us! :)

I get the same grief from my wife, by the way. If you ever figure out how to alleviate it please let me know!

Welcome to the forums!

Enjoy!
 
Erik said:
No more than the rest of us! :)

I get the same grief from my wife, by the way. If you ever figure out how to alleviate it please let me know!

Welcome to the forums!

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

My method was to ignore her threats to pitch everything into the dumpster... Ummn, not a recomended solution!

--T
 
Erik wrote:

> No more than the rest of us! :)

> I get the same grief from my wife, by the way. If you
> ever figure out how to alleviate it please let me
> know!

I thought about this scenario for if I ever got married. It
would involve building some sort of secret passage - have you
ever seen "Meet the Parents" with Robert De Nero?

Otherwise my folks don't seem to mind my Laptop, which is a
386! Still it's easy to hide away - which is good,
unfortunately you can't simply collect vintage laptop
computers (unless there legimate laptop computers). You'd
think someone would build an all in one machine of all the
popular 8bitters. Can't that be done?

CP/M User.
 
My wife and I have a kind of arrangement. I can have as many computers that I can squeeze in as long as she can have the small spaces for bags of herbs, make-up and chinese ceramics. It works but it's CLUTTERED!
 
CP/M User said:
Terry Yager wrote:

> Emulators!

Na!! You just can't beat the real thing! ;-)

My computer doesn't know what the definition is of Emulators!

CP/M User.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel ya, CP/M U. I used to think it was kewl to have every available vintage computer emulator running on a single machine, but that got old pretty quick. It is vastly better to run the real vintage haardware. I only keep a couple of ems around now, to experience machines that I'll probably never have a chance to own, like the Altair or Cosmac Elf.

--T
 
Terry Yager wrote:

> Yeah, I feel ya, CP/M U. I used to think it was kewl
> to have every available vintage computer emulator
> running on a single machine, but that got old pretty
> quick. It is vastly better to run the real vintage
> haardware. I only keep a couple of ems around now, to
> experience machines that I'll probably never have a
> chance to own, like the Altair or Cosmac Elf.

Yeah, I thought my old Pentium based machine was great for
emulation, not in Windows mind you - well the EDSAC emulator
in Windows was fine - they should have done in in DOS. I said
it then & I'll say it now, DOS (after CP/M) is the best OS for
emulation & games.

Nowdays it's all Windows & people are writting stuff for it.
So what's the verdict - DOS still rulez. Perhaps it's all this
flash hardware which stuffs things up - in any event I've kept
the bare bones with Windows XP, cause if I put too much on -
it'll simply become what my Pentium currently is - a slow laid
back computer. Incidently - I removed quite a bit of stuff of
my Pentium (Win95) system - since I don't need it, which
seemed to help out quite a bit. Now to defragment the drive
(pity it's slow in that regard!).

All I see on these Emulation forums are posts about people
having problems with the emulation program they downloaded. I
simply can't be bothered to spend time on these silly problems
which require [CTRL]+[ALT]+[DEL] to close the problem!

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
One of the agreements I made with my wife before we bought our house when moving from our condo is that I take one of the bedrooms for my collection. She's very understanding like that. I have modern consoles in the living room and our bedroom, and quite a bit of stuff neatly in the den/office, but most of the classic stuff is absolutely limited to that one room. Also, I have a full-size MAME arcade cabinet in the laundry room. I definitely have a good wife and she's not even a gamer/hacker...
 
I had an idea for everyone worried about their wife's distaste for vintage computing. What you do is, when you're doing the bedtime thing, don't perform well, and everytime you buy an old machine, perform your best, that way, she thinks the old computers make you better in bed, and will encourage you to buy them....lol
Disclaimer-I am not married, so I cannot garentee this to work, if you get slapped, dont blame me.
 
But if every vintage computer only works once, she will encourage you to sell or throw out the parts of your collection you had the longest time, in order to buy "new" stuff.

Regarding emulation or not; for systems I only have a limited interest in, emulation is perfectly fine. I also emulate my favorite systems when it comes to dull work like programming that would only wear out the keyboard and sometimes power button when the program crashed. I try to save the real deal for final checking and playing the finished programs.
 
Having the real system is wonderful, but it's very hard to beat emulation for convenience and comfort, as you indicated. Still, sometimes emulation is not quite right or pokey in its own right, so having the real system as optimized as possible is ideal. We discussed this topic back in November 2004 here: http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.70

There are days when I love having all the original stuff around and days that I curse it and just want to go for emulation. The biggest catch however besides maintenance and original performance is of course physically storing all the original stuff...
 
I own nine functional (and three broken) computers, if I'm allowed to count my current work PC and my retired PC:

On my desk: Athlon XP2000+, Amiga 1200, Amiga 500+
In a desk drawer: VIC-20, C64, BBC Master Compact* and a broken ZX Spectrum
In the closet: Mac LC475, Pentium 200MMX, broken VIC-20, broken C64
In another drawer: Casio PB-700

The desk drawers are big enough to fit one computer each, easy to bring out when needed. Since I almost never use the Amiga 500, I've considered putting it away in its box. I'd only use it to play a few games that are not Amiga 1200 compatible.

*) The disk drive case is located on the desk, but the keyboard/computer part is in the drawer.
 
Carlsson, I didn't think of that, but if she makes you get rid of one, perform even worse..lol

Too many variables..

About emulators, they dont emulate, they just run the old software. You cannot emulate the feel of pressing play on a c2n, or inserting the good ole 5.25in floppies.
 
Some emulators actually have optional noises of disk heads bumping, a mode for blurry TV output, a setting to randomly cause load error etc. I like to see emulation as a perfection of the computer itself (well, as far as the emulation is able to copy the behavior into smallest detail), so those side effects representing a bit of downside of vintage computing is something I can live without.
 
carlsson wrote:

> Some emulators actually have optional noises of disk
> heads bumping, a mode for blurry TV output, a setting
> to randomly cause load error etc. I like to see
> emulation as a perfection of the computer itself
> (well, as far as the emulation is able to copy the
> behavior into smallest detail), so those side effects
> representing a bit of downside of vintage computing
> is something I can live without.

I think some of the Amstrad CPC emulator writers are trying to
get some sort of Tape thingy happening - not sure if it's been
archieved, but they certainally have a file (cdt) format
occurning & some programs - which work in conjunction with a
sound card (to output the sound of the file loading).

CP/M User.
 
That isn't what I am talking about, I was talking about picking that 5.25in disk up, popping it into the disk drive, and typing the commands to load it, and I was talking about "pressing" the tape play button after you type in load.
THese cannot be emulated, but sounds can, but it aint the same, trust me. I wouldn't be spending my money on these machines if the emulators were the same.
 
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