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What makes vintage?

J

jconger

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Tezza started the sticky thread "What is vintage?" and opined that for him, vintage is 20+ years. Vlad replied that 286s are vintage for general forums here and that 386 and 486 discussions belong in their designated forums.

I don't want to dispute any of these points, but I'd like to see some discussion about what makes something vintage.

A 100 year old bottle of wine may be a fine vintage, it may be vinegar, or it may be corked -- or perhaps that year wasn't really that good, but the bottle happened to hang around to make 100 and still not be all that spectacular. Clearly age has something to do with making hardware or software vintage, but I'm not sure it is the only criteria.

I think historical significance matters. The folks over at Trailing Edge are trying to use SIMH to preserve historically significant software in simulation. They have lots of interesting details about what it takes to figure out how to emulate hardware. They have made a stand to try to preserve some systems they consider historically significant, but those aren't the only ones.

According to Wikipedia, the 386DX was introduced in 1985 and the 486DX in 1989. By Tezza's 20 year criteria, the first chips of each family are both vintage now. No matter what the definition, I think over time, more systems will become vintage.

How do we agree on what is vintage? Or maybe everyone doesn't agree... Do we define by example and add more examples as time goes by? Do we define by criteria and note when something fits the criteria?

Jim
 
I honestly don't think there is much to add to all the previous threads on this. Yes, 386 and 486 are certainly in the grey area here. On one large BBS where there is an "Antique and Old Computers" forum, they suggest P1 or earlier. The P1 is perhaps also on the edge of becoming "vintage". If you look at what people are discussing here you will see that there is actually general agreement on this.

Perhaps one of the most important distinctions in the evolution of computers is the 286/386 break. A 386 can run modern software and a 286 can't. When it comes to P1s, note that people are still throwing those away. Note also that there are still 386 and 486 computers in active commercial use.

Just for a bit of perspective, when you consider what an IMSAI, Chromemco, VAX, or even an analogue computer looks like, then a 486 starts to look very non-vintage. Yes, many pre-pentium machines are collectible, but they are still modern computers. Just because something is collectible does not make it vintage - yet.
 
This topic comes up from time to time. Here is my take of it...

Vintage is subjective term. The extremes are easy. On one hand I doubt if anyone would call a P3 a vintage microcomputer. On the other hand you wouldn't call a Altair 8800 anything BUT a vintage microcomputer. Most people would agree anything from the 1980s is pretty much vintage also, although a little grey at the 386 level.

Being a subjective term the boundaries can be argued about forever. However, this is a vintage computer forum and is for vintage computer enthusiasts. Therefore someone has to say where the boundaries lie in order to moderate the discussion and point people to the right groups. Otherwise the forums can lose their focus and become just general computer chat. By general concensus that seems to have fallen around the 386/486 for the cut off line. This group does at least get it's own space in these Vintage Comptuer Forums. Personally I'm happy with that, and I think Erik and the moderators who set up the categories have got it about right. I wouldn't regard a P1 as vintage but 386 and 486 computers...well...yea...in my mind they are vintage.

In the end, the final decision of where those boundaries are lies with the person who is paying for the webspace and maintaining the board i.e Erik.

Tez
 
This sounds a lot like the discussions heard at vintage/antique/classic car shows. Maybe some of the more desirable or historically significant computers that fall into the post -286 category may well fit into the area of classic computers.
 
One of the things that strike me about why many consider 286 to be the limit of "vintage" when talking about computers, is because before this time, most computers didn't have any kind of chipset. Instead, they used TTL logics and support chips that could be used in more than a spesiffic model of a spesiffic system.

I consider the folowing:
Without chipset = Vintage, replika, or homebrew
With chipset, 386 to Pentium Pro = Old
With chipset, Pentium II to Pentium 4 = Obsolete
Anything more recent with chipset = Modern

In addition, considering the PC line of computers; After the AT, everything new has basically just been the same, but just bigger and/or faster. A lot of the technology within today's PCs are directly taken from devices/support chips from the 80's computers.
 
Last edited:
linuxlove said:
So, because Windows XP will (slowly) run on a Pentium I, does that make the Pentium I not vintage?
Click to expand...

Yes, this is not vintage.
I even question if 386s are vintage. The 286 is about the break point someplace for the PCs. Pentiums
are just obsolete but not vintage yet.
Dwight
 
Common classics don't interest me, be they C64 or PDP-11. Oddball and truly awful systems do, if for no other reason than the thought processes that went into them. What do you call those? As far as preservation goes, while providing emulation for personal and minicomputers is probably worthwhile, a lot has been lost already about vintage mainframes. For example, does an emulator of an RCA Spectra 70 mainframe exist? Do we even have any software preserved for it? How about a Philco 2000?

Even more significantly, how about the peripherals to these systems? Even in the PC collecting area, I've been amazed by the lack of interest in collecting printers, modems and scanners.
 
It's probably safe to say that "Modern x86", that is 386-486 and perhaps P1s (maybe including MMX, but I'd argue against that since a P1 with MMX might as well be a P2 in some cases), will not really be vintage until the next step of x86 becomes the only current one...

That would be x86-64...and I mean exclusively x86-64, when there are no longer any 32 bit operating systems running on 64 bit hardware. Once 64 bit is in full force and 32 bit is considered entirely obsolete, the early 32 bit systems will become vintage (if only because they'll be 25-30 or more years old by the time 32 bit is ENTIRELY out).
 
Chuck(G) said:
Common classics don't interest me, be they C64 or PDP-11. Oddball and truly awful systems do, if for no other reason than the thought processes that went into them. What do you call those? As far as preservation goes, while providing emulation for personal and minicomputers is probably worthwhile, a lot has been lost already about vintage mainframes. For example, does an emulator of an RCA Spectra 70 mainframe exist? Do we even have any software preserved for it? How about a Philco 2000?

Even more significantly, how about the peripherals to these systems? Even in the PC collecting area, I've been amazed by the lack of interest in collecting printers, modems and scanners.
Click to expand...

Yes. The things that will be truely rare in the future are the oddball systems. They were rare anyway, but they will soon become extremely rare. The reason is, as Chuck says, because they are not classic machines. Being a classic adds to collectability status. I've seen a number of unusual systems which get zero bids even with a tiny reserve price. I don't get them because I don't have the room. They are probably scrapped. Yet these weird and wacky machines had interesting design concepts.

Tez
 
Another thing...do you think we'll be collecting Dells, Gateways and HPs of today in 25 years? I personally don't think I would, but who knows.

Kyle
 
The reason there are so many different interpretations I think is partially due to our age. I remember 386 and 486 coming out and being leading edge so to me much like finding an early 2000 car or late 90's car and thinking "wow, pretty new" until realizing I'm old and that's old. Another big thing (at least for myself) is unfamiliarity with dates of other processors. So the vintage argument kind of takes another shape as folks who didn't follow the wintel market. Knowing what generation of ppc processor is of appropriate age or what type of RISC processor was developed during what years to make it obsolete, vintage, etc is another type of challenge.
 
I think much of what kills the "vintage Mojo" of modems and scanners and the like is lost in that they look too recent still, and it seems that those who are interested in those machines (386-486, and even some of us with 8088 and 286 machines) are interested in putting them to use on the modern network. For example, I run a 286 and 486 on my network almost 24/7 now, they both serve as gaming boxes, the 486 is a print server for a 17 year old HP LaserJet (only kept because it's reliable and lighter on toner than my OfficeJet is on ink, and prints faster), and both of those machines are setup in configurations that would have been very expensive if not impossible from a home user standpoint in their heyday (ie. 286 with 540MB EIDE HDD and 1MB SVGA, a 486 with 4MB of VRAM, 64MB of system memory, running in 32-bit color, 3GB HDD, and a CD-RW drive). It seems with me the 386 and 486 are still rather useful and handy machines when in the right hands, just not in the hands of your average end user, which kind of kills their vintage mojo as well, however, much of wanting to play DOS gmaes on them is because of the feel and look of the oldschool hardware around you when gaming, the environmental aespect so to speak.

And speaking of aesthetics, I'm really interested in the 80's machines the most, because they look retro. Nobody makes big, boxy, computers anymore in 5 shades of beige that look like they were designed to fit in on a Military Submarine with all the black paint and screws everywhere. It sort of takes me back to a time when machines were designed to do a job, not look pretty. And many of those designs, case and otherwise, were made that way to be practical to work on and upgrade, so in a way it's almost like a revolving door museum of industrial design.

Also, I dig the rare and obscure expansion devices and cards, especially stuff that allows my machines to function in both a retro fashion (hitched up to an old EGA Monitor with a big clunky beige clicky keyboard and a big boxy 3 button Logitech mouse), or function in a modern environment (cleverly tucked away under my futon, hooked up to a KVM, granting much confusion to onlookers). ATI VGA Wonders, Early 3-D cards in obsolete busses, Strange hard disk contollers that allow me to use hard disks and numbers of hardware not normally possible on hardware of said vintage, I love that stuff, and jump at the opportunity to get it when I find it. Finding out about weird unknown cards and their uses are also interesting.

To me, all this equates vintage. You can't buy it, you can't find it, some of it costs a lot of money on the second hand market if you know what it is, and it brings back nostalgia for me, even if to someone older or younger it just looks like "old junk".
 
per said:
I consider the folowing:
Without chipset = Vintage, replika, or homebrew
With chipset, 386 to Pentium Pro = Old
With chipset, Pentium II to Pentium 4 = Obsolete
Anything more recent with chipset = Modern
Click to expand...

Since anything that is still reasonably capable of running Windows XP (Pentium III and 4) is still usable (for main-stream users) today, calling them "obsolete" would be a bit harsh. Perhaps those machines could better be called "legacy" instead, reserving "obsolete" for systems that are too slow and/or too limited for the current-day average user.

In the corporate world, the bare minimum for a usable system would be Windows 2000 and IE6, which I would say is currently dangling right between "legacy" and "obsolete" (and in the case of IE6 in particular, will hopefully finally drop down into "obsolete" territory sooner rather than later).

Of course I might be going a bit overboard with semantics here, especially since all of this is outside of the scope of "vintage" anyway. ;)
 
@AntiqueKid

It's been the general consensus that most of these widely produced models from mainstream vendors with outsourced hardware probably are too widely produced to be collectible. Given that I'd certainly be up for finding some of the firsts from vendors (first HP home computer, first Dell computer, first Leading Edge or PC's Limited) etc just for historical significance.

Now to contradict what I just said anyway all of you who do decide to keep your current ware (yikes) with me previous statement you would quickly discover the most successful selling personal computer of all time while it doesn't have huge numbers it IS certainly considered vintage and I do think one belongs in any collection for significance.
 
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