Interest in vintage computers fading?

[Lohmeyer]

This stuff will always go in cycles. The down turn certainly made it easier for me to build my collection.

I wonder if those of us who lived through the computer revolution (late '70's and '80's) have already gone through the cycle - acquired our desired collection, played with them and put them on a shelf again where we'll re-discover them in another 10 years. It may be up to a new generation who didn't live through that time period to discover these machines for the first time in order for vintage stuff to take off in popularity. But, the reason for collecting them will change with the generations.

I don't really know because I just started down the slippery slope of actively collecting old stuff last year. Whether it's happened already, happening now, or will happen soon, though, I'm sure such a cycle is inevitable as the older generation loses interest (again), maybe passes on, and must be replaced by people that didn't live through that era. What I'm really curious to see is 20-30 years from now, how will people view vintage computers. Will they be novelties collecting dust in museums and retro period restaurant shelves as decoration, or will people still power them up, play with them, and maintain/repair them like we do now. I fear that if we (the generation that knew them from the beginning) don't do a good job of preserving the machines, documents, and software for the future, they'll just be dust collectors when we are all gone.

Mike

 

[Terry Yager]

Will they be novelties collecting dust in museums and retro period restaurant shelves as decoration, or will people still power them up, play with them, and maintain/repair them like we do now.

Mike

Yes.

--T

 

[Mike Chambers]

I echo this sentiment. I am still very much into vintage computing, but because my time and finances are more limited as I get older, I am drifting towards "specializing" in specific areas and away from general-purpose collecting. In fact, most of my vintage computing hobbyist time is spent either writing new programs for classic hardware, or playing games on classic hardware with my kids (my 9-yr-old loves Archon).

That said, I do have a fairly nice project planned for the end of the year, a "Sound card museum" of sorts, with a metric ton of photos, sound files, programs, etc. for each sound card I can get decent info for.



The quickest and easiest way to do this is to get your hands on an AT&T PC 6300 or Olivetti M24 (same machine) as it is a 7.16MHz 8086 and somewhat common (I think there's one on ebay right now). Somewhat less common but much more compatible is the 6300 WGS -- you can easily put a VGA card in it, whereas doing that on a 6300 usually required the BIOS upgrade. (Even then, I'm not sure if it worked; my memory is hazy in this area.) The 6300 WGS is a 10MHz 8086.

If you find a 6300 with the keyboard and monitor, grab it -- they both had proprietary connectors, although the keyboard is a simple D9 and the signals are the same as an XT keyboard so you could make an adapter if you didn't have the keyboard. The monitor is very nice (both the color and monochrome monitors are 400-line 25KHz monitors so text is especially sharp). The color monitor could even trigger degauss through software (a bit of a surprise the first time you run diagnostics!) and the monochrome monitor gets its power from the host computer through the monitor cable, so it's a nice clean setup. You win either way, in my opinion.

You might want to drop your requirement of "no AMD" though, because AMD was a licensed manufacturer of Intel chips in that time period and they're all over the place. I have a 5150 Rev B that I was surprised to see an AMD 8088 included (Intel has the copyright of course, but there's an additional message that says "manufactured by AMD" or similar).

cool i hope it keeps your kid interested in older machines. it'll be important for the current young generation to understand where all the current awesome high-tech gadgets started at to have a true appreciation for it all. the fact that everybody's ipod is thousands of times more powerful than a massive XT system still blows my mind. speaking of vintage gaming, i play old ultima games on my apple ][e at least twice a week.

it's sad that 99% of computer users today can run across a pentium 1 and turn a disgusted look and say, "well this is garbage, put it in the trash."

heck, i'm posting this from a p200 mmx.

also yes i've seen quite a few of those AT&T and olivetti systems around the net for sale as well.

as far as the topic at hand, my interest in vintage computers hasn't really faded, i love playing with my toys daily just as i always have but maybe that's just me.

 

[creepingnet]

Some of my thoughts.....

Some of my thoughts.....

The only reason I don't post much anymore is I already have the "perfect" machine of every type already. I'm a pro at tricking out Windows For Workgroups 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.22, I can figure out what I need at any given time and pull it off with minimal effort. The challenge is gone for me, it's time to conquer some new ground, like vintage programming, or even making my own hardware for old machines (and the proper drivers). Vintage Macs are becoming much the same way due to the easier interface and the fact that I have Low End Mac to lookup anything I might need. Some things are a ton easier than they were when I started this hobby in 2001.

My interest has not waned, I still have machines I just can't let go of. My GEM 286 and Cat 486 being two of them, and my Flight 386 which is literally sentimental, had it not been for that computer, I would not have ever found a suitable job in the IT industry. I remember spending HOURS on that computer in 2001 tweaking this and replacing that, and finding ways around hardware limitations that so-called "PC Technicians" would tell me were impossible (like IDE CD-ROM drives on a 486, or running Windows 98 SE on a 486 DX4, or internet on a 286, or decent networking on an XT). That XT I built 2 years ago has been my first foray into SOLDERING things onto a motherboard that were not designed to go there in the first place, and it was a pretty successful project for a first effort, albeit rather rudimentary.

One reason I think interest is waning in some is emulation has gotten so much better in recent years. Now we have VirtualPC, DOSbox, you can run a 1995 Era Windows 95 OSR2 setup or a 1983 C64 setup on a PC, or even both plus more SIMULTANEOUSLY no less. I remember when emulating an Atari 2600 on an x86 PC was a challenge, now One can run Windows Vista on a virtual machine Along Side OS/2 2.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on top of DOS 6.22. Because of this, and space requirements, plus the rising costs and difficulty in finding such machines these days (most of them get junked as soon as they are discarded), most people opt for Virtual Machines and Emulators because it's just easier and takes up less space.

I have toyed with giving back in the form of locating and reselling such machines for a minimal profit (with matched peripherals), sort of a classic PC/Mac referral service of sorts, in attempt to save more of the history in the x86 and classic Mac formats that happens to be on the high road to extinction. I hate seeing good technology go to waste just because it's "old", a lot of those old machines have a lot of life left in them, and I find every time I get rid of one there's five more afterward that "would have taken it".

As far as the split in formats, of course that is going to happen.....you've got younger and younger generations coming up now.....

- The 1950's and 1960's guys who worked in labs with things like the UNIVAC and the ENIAC, playing Computer Space and doing complex computations in a room heated by vacuum tubes.

- The 1970's PC hobbyists who had Altairs, IMSAI's, and Cosmac Elfs, who spend hours sniffing pizza and solder fumes so they could program in assembler or play Colassal Cave and Hunt the Wumpus.

- The Early 80's "Appliance PC" guys who had TRS-80's, Commodore PET/64/128s, and Atari 800s and such, who played all sorts of Arcade Ports, programmed all sorts of innovative new games (like Richard Garriott and his Ultima Games that got started at that time).

- The Early-Mid 80's DOS/MAC kids with their IBM XT's, Tandy 1000's, Mac 128s and Deskpros. The Sim City, Sopwith Playing, Debug knowledgeable, booter-playing kids who annoyed countless parents everywhere by taking up their accounting machine for hours with "silly computer games".

- The Mid-Late 80's/Early 90's Early Win/Late Classic Mac kids with the Mac II si's, PS/2s, Tandy 1000 SLs, Deskpro 286/386 machines, and Packard Bells. Those of us who were urged to quit playing Monkey Island and go outside and play because the weather is nice.

- The 90's kids who played on 486's and Power Macs with DOOM and Duke Nukem 3-D and Wolfenstein, and Diablo. Chugging down Mountain Dew and Listening to Nirvana on our newfangled 2X CD-ROM drives. The first of the lot who got used to Yahoo! meaning more than an idiot, and were weaned on the beginnings of GameFaqs, mIRC, and AIM.

- The late 90's kids who started with Pentiums, Pentium II's, and Pentium III's, and Imacs. Blasting their Limp Biscuit and Metallica from their Napster bootypile on Drive D, playing Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider and Quake. The beginning of the mainstream idea of pushing your CPU beyond it's clock speed to get the best performance (and likely smoking the heck out of it in the process).

- The 2000's kids with all the P4, Dual Core, hot-rodded, multi-colored, consumer machines...the future of collecting possibly. The ones who never saw the start of Youtube, or listen to bands that I have no idea of the name of. Those who never used Windows 95 much less PC-DOS, and don't know what DIR/W means.

Anyway, I got work to do, so I'll post later.