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> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN. It's pretty simple - on the emotional side there's nostalgia, and on the rational
by FartyMcFarter 3y ago
> I don't understand the fascination with obsolete commodity hardware on HN.
It's pretty simple - on the emotional side there's nostalgia, and on the rational side there's the fact that old hardware is typically much easier to understand.
A modern CPU has so much technology that there's probably no person in the world who can understand all of it: cache coherency, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, TSX instructions, the list goes on.
In contrast, a dedicated person could feasibly understand all the logic in an old CPU and keep a good mental model of how all of it works.
- npongratz 3y ago> old hardware is typically much easier to understand. The old hardware is also more trustworthy -- perhaps as a corollary to said easier comprehensibility, or simply thanks to unwitting limitations-as-a-feature. There weren't computers all the way down, each with its own bugs, security issues, modes of surveillance/exfiltration, and ability to poke memory with impunity.