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Modern Retro computing
Sebby writes "This is pretty neat - the folks over at retrosystem rebuild old computers/consoles with new guts inside. They have Amiga 1000, Atari 2600, and also NES systems, with lots of options for configuration. If they only made a Sinclair ZX81 with the same specs, I'd be sold!" I mean, who wouldn't want a PC in an
NES box ;)
Putting a PC into an Xbox case! Oh, wait..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I just picked up a mini-itx board for a mp3/divx player in my car. These things are really tiny. I saw one project where they stuffed one of these boards into a playstation, old sparcstations, and lots of other strange places. Not a gaming board, but those are starting to happen too - take a look at the small Shuttle boards that have a bit more kick (and heat) to them.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
"We are patenting this process of customizing old computer and game console cabinets to be Windows, Linux or other contemporary operating systems based on x86 systems. Contact us if you are interested in licensing from us."
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this a bit disturbing?
It's a safe and sane way of expressing nostalgia (as opposed to killing yourself while attempting to use a time travel device made from thirty yards of string and two protracters held together with a rubber band).
Oh, and if you aren't familiar with the concept, here's a link.
The speed of time is one second per second.
turning a VAX into a keg dispenser with webmonitoring
or maybe just a bar or how about a fridge
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Anyone wanna put an Atari 2600 in a PC case?
It's just for the sake of cosmic karma balance.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The computers in the article are just glorified case mods. When you plug a modern keyboard monitor and mouse into those old cases and boot Windows 2000, you totally lack the retro look and feel. The coolest artifacts from the old days are green-screen monitors and heavy, loud keyboards. They are what create the retro look-and-feel that we remember from the old days.
In middle school, we had these Apple IIe computers with green-screen monitors that tilted up and down in a stationary case. Those were sweet. At the time, we had a computer at home with a color screen (CGA graphics, baby). Even though the CGA screen was technically superior to the Apple's, I thought the Apple monitor was way cooler. Now I have a 19 inch Viewsonic monitor and its infinitely more useful than the old Apple screen -- but the Apple monitor is still cooler.
Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type. These flimsy, wussy keyboards that come with modern PCs are terrible! My favorite keyboard was an old IBM AT keyboard from 1984. My dad found it at work, and I used it for several years. The keys are covered with plastic caps, which are what the letters are printed on -- if you want remap your keyboard to Dvorak, you can reposition the printed letters by removing and rearranging the little caps. Pretty sweet. I had to retire it when, while moving from one dorm room to another, I broke off some of the caps that cover the keys. I've still got it in my closet, though.
I guess my point is that, while this is a cool idea, it's somewhat misguided. Creating a retro look and feel is much more important than having a retro case, which you're just going to shove under your desk anyway. And to have the retro look-and-feel, you need cool-looking screens and clicky keyboards.
Steve
Thaat's a great way to celebrate maybe the single greatest personal computer ever designed (top 3, at the very least). Give it a piece of shit celeron, the shittiest cpu ever, made by the shittiest cpu manufacturer ever. Way to pay homage to the 68k, a paragon of simplicity and power. What better way to honor the first color GUI, a gui that fit on a single 880k floppy, than to put the cruddiest OS ever invented? They did put windows on it, right? It's some kind of sarcastic performance art, and the only thing that could contrast beautiful Workbench would be XP, which is lean if it installs in what, less than 300 megs?
Now, I'm hardly a purist. Things don't have to have original condition. I'm fine with PPC's in a1000's, linux on amigas, someone doing a messy hack that gives it more ram. If you want to see a real A1000 hack, ask for pictures of the FrankenThousand on comp.sys.amiga.hardware. But don't pull this shit. This isn't retro-computing, it's vivisectiony at its most sociopathic.
Go ahead, mod me down. Claim I don't know what I'm talking about. But don't come begging when you want to buy a 20mhz overclocking kit for your sinclair 1000.