Slashdot Mirror
Retro Machines Key to Rescuing Old Data
SimilarityEngine writes "New Scientist report on the virtues of old kit. From the article:
'Today's stylish PCs may perform billions of calculations a second and store tens of billions of bytes of data, but for many, they have got nothing on the 32, 48 or 64-kilobyte machines that were the giants of the early 1980s.
This renewed interest in old-school computing is more than just a trip down memory-chip lane. Early computers are a part of our technological heritage, and also offer a unique perspective on how today's machines work. And within growing collections of original computers and home-made replicas, and the anecdote-filled web pages and blogs devoted to them, lies the equipment and expertise that will one day help unlock our past by reading countless computer files stored in outmoded formats.'"
My friend John Titor told me that the IBM 5100 is going to be very popular soon.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
Though most researchers will end up on stuff like the Sega Saturn, doing 'research'.
Quoth the server, "404."
sorry for taking so long to post a reply, but I haven't got the dual-core upgrade for my abacus yet!
That's why I keep my Commodore 64 with 1541 and 1571 disk drives.
That way I can read someone's pirated Donkey Kong or Questron diskette.
You never know when an opportunity like that to be of service to all of mankind will appear.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I know, I know...it's hard to believe that something can run as slow as 333MHz, but I've got it in my basement...it has layers of dust and spider webs built up over the many many years. I think they might have been used back around the time of The Great War. When I visit my grandpa in the home, I ask him...what was it like using parallel ATA drives when the BIOS limited you to less than 128GB. He was so overcome with emotion remembering those heady days that he said "get the hell out of my room!" (he's just covering up...I know that when I left he started sobbing remembering ....he may even be old enough to have used a Pentium I @ 75Mhz in pre-school...I don't know)
Anyway...thank you for letting me share my memories.
Heck...I just heard that before the Mac G5, there was even a Mac G3! Wow.
There's just something you get out of playing the Zork Trilogy on the old hardware that you don't get on the new stuff.
Like radiation sickness?
Interesting...seriously. But, my boss is already on it. Our new project is to print the internet.
rewriting history since 2109
Sounds like you'd better start carving the x86 instruction set onto stone tablets!