6 ms·

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a c

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a computer I had in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. But in recent days, through the use of modern emulators I’ve dabbled in these retro systems and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just bad. They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just getting a reminder of my younger years. Yet these home computers of that era lack so much. No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory. Even switching from home computers of the era to workstation class system, it’s pure frustration at the limits on what can be done. Don’t get me wrong, for a lot of my computing needs I could probably get along just fine with a next cube or a late model Mac II. But on the other hand you’ll pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for these systems, while I can go on Amazon and spend ~$200 for a mouse, keyboard, cheap monitor, and a raspberry pi zero w and I’ll have a more capable system in every way. For just a little more money I can buy a tiny PC that is able to emulate near perfectly all the computers of my youth. Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

inconceivable 3y ago
nearly all of the old stuff just sucked. there's a reason we threw it all away (for the most part) and have turned to emulation. the new low power SoC systems with actual connectivity are much more interesting... probably why they can barely keep the stuff in stock. as a bonus, they can run emulation just fine. old, and new, in one package.
- chihuahua 3y ago
  I feel the same way about computers of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. I owned several of them, used them a lot (mostly programming for fun), and much of the experience just sucked. I do not understand the appeal of retrocomputing. But I'm happy that there are a lot of options for people who like that sort of thing.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    "I do not understand the appeal of retrocomputing." But at least one knew what was going on. If one didn't then one could probe the hardware with a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope. Try that today and see how far you get. Mind you, the 8088 was a dog of a processor, too little too late and far tooooo slow (nobbling the 8086 was a dumb retrograde idea).
    - avidphantasm 3y ago
      Yeah, using an 8088 in this thing seems dumb. My first thought when seeing this was: put a 386 or 486 with VGA in this and I would buy one. This would be instantly useful for retrogaming. 8088 with CGA, not so much (for me at least).
      - hilbert42 3y ago
        My thoughts exactly, especially the 486. It was a good all-rounder, worked well—thoroughly debuged unlike the Pentium—and fast enough to be useful even today for some work. Also, I'd heard accounts that some influential third parties (companies developing stuff for the military etc.) were still using it long past its used-by date because it was the last of the 86 line whose internals they could fully understand. IBM was second-sourcing it too. Incidentally, I wonder where those 8088s come from, same for the 8087. Seems someone still makes them. __ Edit: Just occurred to me the main/intended use for this computer is as a training aid. The ready access to the chips and that they've sockets for removal would allow access for an ICE (In Circuit Emulator) bond-out chip/board to be inserted. Thus, there's no need for it to run any faster.
        Koshkin 3y ago
        It's an OKI M80C88A-2, and the genuine Intel 8087.
        hilbert42 3y ago
        Thanks. Presumably for use embedded in their hardware products. A genuine 8087 must mean Intel still makes them or there's a lot of old new stock around.
- okasaki 3y ago
  One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though. And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts. And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on. And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists. And ports, lots of ports.
  - lloeki 3y ago
    > 4:3 screens The 16:9 craze drives me mad: it's jack of all trades master of none, compromise every other way. Maybe nice to watch TV shows, not really good to watch movies, not tall enough for a single screen, not wide enough to 50:50 split left/right (each side is too narrow). Putting two side by side makes you face the bezels, and constant-tilt your head either left or right when you focus. Three side by side is way too wide. Probably why some folks put three but have the two outmost ones be vertical. Which brings me to 9:16 which is way too thin AND tall. A triple head 4:3 setup was terrible for movies, but reaaaally nice for a battlestation. Maybe 5:4 would have been quite something but I never experienced that. I do like the Ultrawide things though, 2.4:1 feels like two 4:3, only continuous, no bezel in the middle. 3.5:1 is technically about two 16:9 but feels like triple head 4:3. They're especially comfortable when curved, but damn, none are HiDPI, which kind of ruins it. And of course that's kind of a no-go for laptops (or maybe not, but I bet the manufacturer attempting that would somehow botch the execution)
    - don-code 3y ago
      I actually do use three 24" 16:9 screens, side by side. Though small by anyone else's standards, 24" is sort of the perfect size for the three monitor setup. It doesn't make me strain my neck _too_ much, but also isn't so gargantuan that I can't fit three on my 5-foot desk. I split each monitor down the middle, treating it essentially as a viewport for two windows. Optionally I sometimes fill one screen with a single window, but I never overlap screens. On my home computer running Linux (Cinnamon) this functionality is built in; on my work laptop running macOS, I use Rectangle to accomplish the same thing. I did have three 19" 4:3 CRTs, way back when - beautiful Sun Trinitrons. They took up the entire desk, but I could conveniently stack equipment on top of them (speakers, a clock, an FM radio, etc), because they were so large. But my workflow for those was different - each monitor _was_ a single window, as splitting them resulted in windows that were too narrow to be useful.
- bharathyes 3y ago
  not always because they sucked. Some were replaced by cheaper, easy to mass produce but somewhat inferior products. Others by some insane reasons by manufacturers to increase their profits or differentiate amongst themselves, pushing for thinner, lighter devices. i would gladly use bulkier devices for better specs and reparability.
mnd999 3y ago
I dunno about the ST but my Amiga 1200 very much has an FPU and and IP network. I would be very surprised if that wasn’t something that you could add to an ST as well.
- thorianus 3y ago
  Amiga 1200 is in the ballpark of Atari TT/Falcon and yes STing for IP, browsers etc. were available. But ST was same year as Amiga 1000 which also had just MC68000 without MMU, both Commodore engineers (who designed... Atari ST) and Atari engineers (who designed in HiToro Lorreline - than then became Amiga) had own external MMU.
NovaDudely 3y ago
It always stuck with me when announcing the Virtual Console on Wii U that Satoru Iwata said it perfectly "It can be fun to relive your childhood but just for a little while". It is fun to look back but we tend to forgive a lot of things that kind of sucked. It is like how some people who live through Hurricanes and then a decade later speak about how fun it was coming together even though it was just horrible. Memories can be deceiving. "When you wear rose tinted glasses, red flags just look like flags" - Bojack Horseman
- ianai 3y ago
  Definitely, I always felt just a tinge of bad for how awful I was at the original Super Mario brothers. The NES and SNES games. After playing them on the classic consoles as an adult I realized they were just unforgiving and let my youthful self forgive that. I’ve done much better on the newer Mario games. SMB3 though really does shine.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    There's even a name for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard
    - AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
      The difficulty helped hide the fact that you were paying $50 in 1980s money for a game that took approximately an hour to beat. If you could beat it. But I suspect the more common gameplay loop was the one I and my friends encountered: you put the game in, played for 20-35 minutes, got a Game Over. If you were really motivated maybe you tried again and got to Stage 4 instead of Stage 3, but at some point said, screw it, turned the game off, and played something else. These days every game is made with the intention that it can and should be beaten, which is part of why there's so much needless padding in games to stretch them out beyond the 40-hour mark and make the player feel like they're getting "value" for their money.
      - 3y ago
coldtea 3y ago
>No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory. Isn't that the whole point?
- diydsp 3y ago
  lol true. Although I would say: MMU bad, FPU good, IP bad. ;)
- Koshkin 3y ago
  An FPU is an option though
yitchelle 3y ago
But what is it that you want to do with these retro computers beside playing Wolf3D? As you mentioned even the most basic of RPi can run the pants of the Atari ST machines, so it is hardly a fair usage of the computer if you want to do modern tasks.
pachico 3y ago
I think I will always start my sentences with "As a nerd of a certain age," now. It will give so much more context to all my conversations :)
reaperducer 3y ago
They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just getting a reminder of my younger years. Yet these home computers of that era lack so much. No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory. People just had more patience back then. 45 minutes to LHARC my text file? Sure, I'll talk to my wife. Four hours to download an ILBM? OK. I'll read a book. Today we're so used to living at the business end of a digital firehose that if something takes too many clock cycles we walk away. Some people can't even sit in a chair in their own homes without having music on. That 95% of the retro computing scene seems devoted to games tells me that people just crave a quick hit of digital content and then move on.
nine_k 3y ago
But the point of such devices is emphatically not daily computing. It's like saying you can go and buy a more evenly colored, stronger, cheaper, and less fiddly brick instead of a Rubik cube. Equally, to me the point of devices like this, or fantasy consoles, or old limited machines is in being a puzzle, providing an intellectually stimulating pastime. Spending time on them is more fun and likely more useful in various senses than activities like solving Sudoku or watching TV.
II2II 3y ago
It depends upon what you're trying to achieve. To run software, emulation is great. To develop software, emulation is great. Anything that deals directly with hardware, well, emulation isn't going to cut it. Then there are the other reasons, ones that have nothing to do with the hardware itself. Personally, I use vintage computers as an escape from modern computers and as a reminder of what the technology could have been. I'm not talking about it being slow, unreliable, or downright difficult to manage. I'm thinking more along the lines of being simple enough to understand and a lot more personal. A lot of what we call progress is a mixed bag. Yes, the performance of modern computers is amazing and it comes at the cost of complexity. On the other hand, we have a lot of complexity that is not necessary for day to day use. Yes, having access to a literal world of information at our fingertips is amazing. On the other hand, our computers are also at the whim of the outside world. In other words, there are a lot of tradeoffs. For some things, emulation is the perfect solution. For other things, it simply won't work.
cat_plus_plus 3y ago
Early software was designed to feel as fast as possible, even resorting to hacks like temporarily turning off DRAM refresh to write text on the screen as quickly as possible. Though hardware was very limited, when you pressed a key you generally got a response right away. Fast forward to 2023, and everything runs on top of a non-realtime multitasking OS, causing periodic little glitches as background stuff hogs up resources. Graphics is too complicated to guarantee consistent 60 frames per second. And web is incrementally loaded from shared servers, often with delays of many seconds. Animations introduce intentional lag. Modern hardware could be of course amazing at being fast, but nobody put in the effort into software designed for that goal. Plus obsession with device thinness and fanless designs introduces thermal throttling that no software can overcome.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  > Modern hardware could be of course amazing at being fast, but nobody put in the effort into software designed for that goal. A lot of effort has being thrown that way, it's just that their definition of "go fast" is "having lots of throughput", not the things you are looking for: goodput, low latency, low jitter. We got faster mainframes instead of faster minicomputers - computers and network systems that are optimized at doing batch jobs. We can submit a whole bunch of blocks and the graphics processing unit can display accelerated smooth video for us. Or we can push a whole neural network to a tensor processing unit and have it do inference in very few operations, after the model is loaded. But both of those operations while having smooth output have horrible startup latency. I think is very naive to call what the devices have today as a "single computer" when in fact, for a long while they're several interconnected computer components joined with lots of buffer.
unixhero 3y ago
This is why I refuse to so my retro computing on anything without a floating point co processor. As such the 486 DX/2 66 mhz is ideal. Not too fast. But crazy powerful compared to rubbish 8086 machines.

inconceivable 3y ago

nearly all of the old stuff just sucked. there's a reason we threw it all away (for the most part) and have turned to emulation. the new low power SoC systems with actual connectivity are much more interesting... probably why they can barely keep the stuff in stock. as a bonus, they can run emulation just fine. old, and new, in one package.

chihuahua 3y ago
I feel the same way about computers of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. I owned several of them, used them a lot (mostly programming for fun), and much of the experience just sucked. I do not understand the appeal of retrocomputing. But I'm happy that there are a lot of options for people who like that sort of thing.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  "I do not understand the appeal of retrocomputing." But at least one knew what was going on. If one didn't then one could probe the hardware with a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope. Try that today and see how far you get. Mind you, the 8088 was a dog of a processor, too little too late and far tooooo slow (nobbling the 8086 was a dumb retrograde idea).
  - avidphantasm 3y ago
    Yeah, using an 8088 in this thing seems dumb. My first thought when seeing this was: put a 386 or 486 with VGA in this and I would buy one. This would be instantly useful for retrogaming. 8088 with CGA, not so much (for me at least).
    - hilbert42 3y ago
      My thoughts exactly, especially the 486. It was a good all-rounder, worked well—thoroughly debuged unlike the Pentium—and fast enough to be useful even today for some work. Also, I'd heard accounts that some influential third parties (companies developing stuff for the military etc.) were still using it long past its used-by date because it was the last of the 86 line whose internals they could fully understand. IBM was second-sourcing it too. Incidentally, I wonder where those 8088s come from, same for the 8087. Seems someone still makes them. __ Edit: Just occurred to me the main/intended use for this computer is as a training aid. The ready access to the chips and that they've sockets for removal would allow access for an ICE (In Circuit Emulator) bond-out chip/board to be inserted. Thus, there's no need for it to run any faster.
      - Koshkin 3y ago
        It's an OKI M80C88A-2, and the genuine Intel 8087.
        hilbert42 3y ago
        Thanks. Presumably for use embedded in their hardware products. A genuine 8087 must mean Intel still makes them or there's a lot of old new stock around.
okasaki 3y ago
One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though. And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts. And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on. And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists. And ports, lots of ports.
- lloeki 3y ago
  > 4:3 screens The 16:9 craze drives me mad: it's jack of all trades master of none, compromise every other way. Maybe nice to watch TV shows, not really good to watch movies, not tall enough for a single screen, not wide enough to 50:50 split left/right (each side is too narrow). Putting two side by side makes you face the bezels, and constant-tilt your head either left or right when you focus. Three side by side is way too wide. Probably why some folks put three but have the two outmost ones be vertical. Which brings me to 9:16 which is way too thin AND tall. A triple head 4:3 setup was terrible for movies, but reaaaally nice for a battlestation. Maybe 5:4 would have been quite something but I never experienced that. I do like the Ultrawide things though, 2.4:1 feels like two 4:3, only continuous, no bezel in the middle. 3.5:1 is technically about two 16:9 but feels like triple head 4:3. They're especially comfortable when curved, but damn, none are HiDPI, which kind of ruins it. And of course that's kind of a no-go for laptops (or maybe not, but I bet the manufacturer attempting that would somehow botch the execution)
  - don-code 3y ago
    I actually do use three 24" 16:9 screens, side by side. Though small by anyone else's standards, 24" is sort of the perfect size for the three monitor setup. It doesn't make me strain my neck _too_ much, but also isn't so gargantuan that I can't fit three on my 5-foot desk. I split each monitor down the middle, treating it essentially as a viewport for two windows. Optionally I sometimes fill one screen with a single window, but I never overlap screens. On my home computer running Linux (Cinnamon) this functionality is built in; on my work laptop running macOS, I use Rectangle to accomplish the same thing. I did have three 19" 4:3 CRTs, way back when - beautiful Sun Trinitrons. They took up the entire desk, but I could conveniently stack equipment on top of them (speakers, a clock, an FM radio, etc), because they were so large. But my workflow for those was different - each monitor _was_ a single window, as splitting them resulted in windows that were too narrow to be useful.
bharathyes 3y ago
not always because they sucked. Some were replaced by cheaper, easy to mass produce but somewhat inferior products. Others by some insane reasons by manufacturers to increase their profits or differentiate amongst themselves, pushing for thinner, lighter devices. i would gladly use bulkier devices for better specs and reparability.

mnd999 3y ago

I dunno about the ST but my Amiga 1200 very much has an FPU and and IP network. I would be very surprised if that wasn’t something that you could add to an ST as well.

thorianus 3y ago
Amiga 1200 is in the ballpark of Atari TT/Falcon and yes STing for IP, browsers etc. were available. But ST was same year as Amiga 1000 which also had just MC68000 without MMU, both Commodore engineers (who designed... Atari ST) and Atari engineers (who designed in HiToro Lorreline - than then became Amiga) had own external MMU.

NovaDudely 3y ago

It always stuck with me when announcing the Virtual Console on Wii U that Satoru Iwata said it perfectly "It can be fun to relive your childhood but just for a little while". It is fun to look back but we tend to forgive a lot of things that kind of sucked. It is like how some people who live through Hurricanes and then a decade later speak about how fun it was coming together even though it was just horrible. Memories can be deceiving. "When you wear rose tinted glasses, red flags just look like flags" - Bojack Horseman

ianai 3y ago
Definitely, I always felt just a tinge of bad for how awful I was at the original Super Mario brothers. The NES and SNES games. After playing them on the classic consoles as an adult I realized they were just unforgiving and let my youthful self forgive that. I’ve done much better on the newer Mario games. SMB3 though really does shine.
- userbinator 3y ago
  There's even a name for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard
  - AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
    The difficulty helped hide the fact that you were paying $50 in 1980s money for a game that took approximately an hour to beat. If you could beat it. But I suspect the more common gameplay loop was the one I and my friends encountered: you put the game in, played for 20-35 minutes, got a Game Over. If you were really motivated maybe you tried again and got to Stage 4 instead of Stage 3, but at some point said, screw it, turned the game off, and played something else. These days every game is made with the intention that it can and should be beaten, which is part of why there's so much needless padding in games to stretch them out beyond the 40-hour mark and make the player feel like they're getting "value" for their money.
    - 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago

>No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory. Isn't that the whole point?

diydsp 3y ago
lol true. Although I would say: MMU bad, FPU good, IP bad. ;)
Koshkin 3y ago
An FPU is an option though

yitchelle 3y ago

But what is it that you want to do with these retro computers beside playing Wolf3D? As you mentioned even the most basic of RPi can run the pants of the Atari ST machines, so it is hardly a fair usage of the computer if you want to do modern tasks.

pachico 3y ago

I think I will always start my sentences with "As a nerd of a certain age," now. It will give so much more context to all my conversations :)

reaperducer 3y ago

They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just getting a reminder of my younger years. Yet these home computers of that era lack so much. No MMU, no FPU, no IP networking. Very limited CPU cycles and memory. People just had more patience back then. 45 minutes to LHARC my text file? Sure, I'll talk to my wife. Four hours to download an ILBM? OK. I'll read a book. Today we're so used to living at the business end of a digital firehose that if something takes too many clock cycles we walk away. Some people can't even sit in a chair in their own homes without having music on. That 95% of the retro computing scene seems devoted to games tells me that people just crave a quick hit of digital content and then move on.

nine_k 3y ago

But the point of such devices is emphatically not daily computing. It's like saying you can go and buy a more evenly colored, stronger, cheaper, and less fiddly brick instead of a Rubik cube. Equally, to me the point of devices like this, or fantasy consoles, or old limited machines is in being a puzzle, providing an intellectually stimulating pastime. Spending time on them is more fun and likely more useful in various senses than activities like solving Sudoku or watching TV.

II2II 3y ago

It depends upon what you're trying to achieve. To run software, emulation is great. To develop software, emulation is great. Anything that deals directly with hardware, well, emulation isn't going to cut it. Then there are the other reasons, ones that have nothing to do with the hardware itself. Personally, I use vintage computers as an escape from modern computers and as a reminder of what the technology could have been. I'm not talking about it being slow, unreliable, or downright difficult to manage. I'm thinking more along the lines of being simple enough to understand and a lot more personal. A lot of what we call progress is a mixed bag. Yes, the performance of modern computers is amazing and it comes at the cost of complexity. On the other hand, we have a lot of complexity that is not necessary for day to day use. Yes, having access to a literal world of information at our fingertips is amazing. On the other hand, our computers are also at the whim of the outside world. In other words, there are a lot of tradeoffs. For some things, emulation is the perfect solution. For other things, it simply won't work.

cat_plus_plus 3y ago

Early software was designed to feel as fast as possible, even resorting to hacks like temporarily turning off DRAM refresh to write text on the screen as quickly as possible. Though hardware was very limited, when you pressed a key you generally got a response right away. Fast forward to 2023, and everything runs on top of a non-realtime multitasking OS, causing periodic little glitches as background stuff hogs up resources. Graphics is too complicated to guarantee consistent 60 frames per second. And web is incrementally loaded from shared servers, often with delays of many seconds. Animations introduce intentional lag. Modern hardware could be of course amazing at being fast, but nobody put in the effort into software designed for that goal. Plus obsession with device thinness and fanless designs introduces thermal throttling that no software can overcome.

ElectricalUnion 3y ago
> Modern hardware could be of course amazing at being fast, but nobody put in the effort into software designed for that goal. A lot of effort has being thrown that way, it's just that their definition of "go fast" is "having lots of throughput", not the things you are looking for: goodput, low latency, low jitter. We got faster mainframes instead of faster minicomputers - computers and network systems that are optimized at doing batch jobs. We can submit a whole bunch of blocks and the graphics processing unit can display accelerated smooth video for us. Or we can push a whole neural network to a tensor processing unit and have it do inference in very few operations, after the model is loaded. But both of those operations while having smooth output have horrible startup latency. I think is very naive to call what the devices have today as a "single computer" when in fact, for a long while they're several interconnected computer components joined with lots of buffer.

unixhero 3y ago

This is why I refuse to so my retro computing on anything without a floating point co processor. As such the 486 DX/2 66 mhz is ideal. Not too fast. But crazy powerful compared to rubbish 8086 machines.