Fun and Profit With Obsolete Computers 186
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has a story about the value of aging computer hardware, and the subculture of people who collect them. The story details some of the more enthusiastic collectors currently participating in the hobby, as well as their old-school beautiful hardware. '[Sellam Ismail] recently brought a quarter century-old Xerox Star computer back to life to be used as evidence in a patent lawsuit. The pride of his collection is an Apple Lisa, one of the first computers (introduced in 1983) with a now standard graphical interface. Such items sell for more than $10,000. In an old barn in Northern California that also houses pigs, Bruce Damer, 45, keeps a collection that includes a Cray-1 supercomputer, a Xerox Alto (an early microcomputer introduced in 1973) and early Apple prototypes. '
classiccmp (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of years ago I was involved in the dissemination of a collection in the south-east of England. From the PDP-11/43 that had people offering to drive over from northern Europe, to the blue Intel MDS to Spain, the old Dragon to America, the stalwart CJE Micros grabbing up the BBC's Torch coprocessor, to the steady stream of people each collecting a VAX, it was amazing to see the interest and enthusiasm.
Three nice things about old machines:
(1) Simple enough that a single human can understand how they work;
(2) Scaled such that this same human can fix problems in his garage;
(3) Sufficiently well built that (2) can sometimes be unnecessary even after 20 years.
Crap.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Best for learning programming (Score:5, Insightful)
On a modern computer, everything is wrapped into so many of abstraction that you can not discover how it works. It will take someone 3 years of experience to create a device driver or a graphics library that can be understood in 3 weeks on an old PC.
Re:Best for learning programming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best for learning programming (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not worth the space they take up (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if people have enough space to start their own personal museum, I'm not going to tell them not to. But if you're an ordinary person with an ordinary house, you're better off putting them on the verge for the next council bulk rubbish collection.
Re:Demo scene (Score:4, Insightful)
However... there's no longer such a thing as 'The PC Demo Scene'; even those who claim there is are realizing it is rapidly degenerating. The reason for this is the extensive hardware acceleration of any type found in PCs these days. It used to be a challenge to stick a procedurally generated 3D scene with an 8-track MOD in a small exe and have it run fluidly on a 386 with a basic VGA card and a SoundBlaster. Nowadays one just takes the regular 3D scene along with an MP3 and feed it to the graphics card and through a simple decoder straight to audio.
From the Gravis UltraSound to the S3, every hardware development was greedily taken advantage of by showing new things that could be done on that hardware... but they've reached a saturation point several years back. If you want to pump the best results out of a graphics card now, you're not doing so in a demo.. you're doing so for profit on a major game engine.
What is left, then, is a limited form of a PC Demo Scene.. demos under 4k, 16k, 32k and 64k (existed before, but these are still challenging now even with all the hardware).. demos that must run on older hardware.. self-imposed restrictions like "no using pixel shaders", etc. But these are all highly artificial limits and no longer push the boundaries of what one can do on the hardware as is... it's pushing the boundaries of what one can do within those artificial limits.
To some that is the same spirit, to others it's nothing alike at all.
=====
To see what people are doing with PC demos nowadays, Farbrausch's debris is a nice one to check out. You don't need the hardware to run it, there's videos made of the things.
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244 [pouet.net]
Profit, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of it this way. If I told you that I wanted you to keep your current computer and all related peripherals for the next *30 years*, in working order, how much would I have to pay you to do that? I bet you'd ask for a lot more than $10k.
Same goes for any "collector's" item. People are amazed that a #1 issue of a golden age comic book will get $5,000 and up, and talk about it like it's an extraordinary profit for the seller. Ok, here's $5,000 -- now keep this piece of paper in pristine condition and obsess over it for the next 30 years. Sound like something you'd want to take up?
Yes, the prices are high but that doesn't imply profit by any human measure of economy.
Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
A dull Dell box (pun intended) is not interesting unless it has a unique form factor.
That 21 inch screen notebook monstruosity is such thing. Buy it and keep it functioning for the next 30 years and you will have something. There was also a Compaq desktop with a built-in LCD. I have a Monorail PC that still boots - it had it's HD and CD-ROM changed because they no longer worked. There is also a Sony Vaio whose keyboard folds up to cover half the screen as it becomes a stereo. There were a couple Compaq models with integrated monitors that were interestingly iMac-like.
Those are interesting PCs. No grey box, no matter how rare it is, will ever become interesting.
Anyway, most interesting computers are not PCs. A Sparcstation 1 is interesting as is a Voyager. Just about every SGI box is somewhat unique. If you are shopping today, buy a Tezro. If you want a Sun, buy a desktop SPARC (the amd64s are just PCs). IBM RS/6000s are a bit on the PC side, but are OK. Apples are very diverse and an interesting piece of study. The "flex-chassis" series is very interesting because of the modular mobos. The tower G3 is interesting because every time you open it, it draws blood from your hand. An IBM 3290 terminal is unique as it had a red plasma screen. An NCD 16 X terminal is interesting because of the square CRT. Any Lisp Machine is worth having. The Convergent non-PC x86 machines are very interesting as is their OS.
Rarity is for newcomers that don't really get it. It is a tool for those who can't see the other forms of value and for those who do to get rid of rare and dull hardware.
IS the hardware... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because the modern hardware IS a Bresenham algo - it's called a graphic card.
Famous words from... (Score:2, Insightful)
Famous words from a
- genius
- mad genius
- evil mad genius
- visionary