Where's the vintage computing?

[-]

SirTwitchALot@reddit

I hate to break it to you, but even stuff from the early 90s is starting to become vintage now. Get used to it now because it's only going to get worse

[-]

LXC37@reddit

Eh, i'd say early 00s stuff is also becoming vintage...

We are now getting people at work who were born past 00 and never saw floppy, ISA, IDE or AGP in their life. Things like CD/DVD and PCI are vintage to them.

And that's people who are interested in and competent with PC hardware, most of them even curious about old stuff when they encounter it...

[-]

dmd@reddit (OP)

I saw a kid the other day waving around a phone with a home button on it showing all his friends "ever seen a phone with a BUTTON on it before???!!!"

[-]

LXC37@reddit

I'd guess there were plenty of things like this when you were a kid, similarly funny to older people around.

Tech is moving forward, changing all the time. Things become obsolete, shortly after people appear who've never seen that stuff.

How many seemingly revolutionary things became nothing more than a minor footnote in history throughout 80s and 90s? Laserdisk anyone?

For my part i am trying to avoid becoming a grumpy gramp, at least as long as possible 😄

[-]

bio4m@reddit

Because most people dont have space for a PDP-11 or VAX in their house

If you have stuff to post then do share

[-]

AnubisTTP@reddit

Ironically, I posted a PDP 11 I saw for sale at a flea market over the weekend to this subreddit less than a day ago.

[-]

VivienM7@reddit

Or a System/360 or 370...

There is not a lot of pre-1978 stuff that can fit in a house and run on normal residential electricity.

[-]

bio4m@reddit

Even if they did, they need way too much power to run. Electricity is damn expensive where I live (in the UK)

I've seen some old SGI systems I would have liked to have but they need crazy amounts of power and cooling. Not to mention they sound like jet engines

[-]

Suturb-Seyekcub@reddit

I think vintage computing is anything that has been deprecated

[-]

In museums, and it’s unfortunate to not have more places where we can experiment and learn with mainframes or minicomputers. Some local organizations are doing great things but it needs money and rare skills. I’m born in the 90s but I would love to know more about 70s (and before) computing

[-]

sprashoo@reddit

1978 is around when _personal computing_ became a thing. That's when mass produced home computers like the Apple // arrived. Before that computers were mostly much bigger, more expensive mostly used at universities, governments, and large businesses.

It's a lot easier to find 'vintage' personal computers than anything earlier, because they were far more numerous, cheaper, and personally owned, so they turn up in attics and estate sales. Probably a lot of VAXes, PDPs, etc were scrapped by the institutions that owned them decades ago. Nevermind the giant mainframe type systems that preceded them.

[-]

bio4m@reddit

Computing before then was largely for work, or university. I dont think a huge number of people are out there reminiscing about the efficiency calculations they did for their job 60 years ago

On the other hand personal computers were just that, personal. People did pet projects, played games and generally had a lot of fun. Theres a reason why so much retro content is focused on games

[-]