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Across the board is the vintage computer enthusiasm and Forum interest waning?

Well....

0. I've been amazed at how long TTL chips have lasted, after reading in the 70's that plastic TTL chips would all die in no more than 30 years from moisture migration. I have working TTL chips that were made before men landed on the moon.

1. Emulators will become more important. They can even LOOK like the originals. The PiDP8 and PiDP11 are good examples; someone is working on a lookalike SOL-20. That will scratch 90% of people's itches IMO.

2. Maybe computers of the 70's (my general interest) are easier to maintain. Most of the chips are "jellybean" TTL chips, and many (or mostly drop in replacements) are still being made. Many of them didn't have purpose-made cases to begin with! Hybrids of TTL and FPGA's or fast microprocessors might be possible. I was -THIS CLOSE- to successfully developing a signal compatible 8008 chip on a Scenix/Ubicom 50/75/100Mhz processor, and that was 10 years ago. With newer chips, a plug-in board for an unobtainable/expensive micro or complex peripheral chip is or soon will be achievable. The peripherals of 70's and 80's computers are hard to reproduce though.

3. I've always wondered why someone hasn't made programmable universal TTL chips, in 14,16,18,20, and 24 pin packages - sort of like a GAL that could be quickly programmed and keep its programming for many (25+) years guaranteed. This seems technically possible but maybe there's just no market (yet). It would be nice to able to stock blanks and then just make what you need!

4. There are already people who will collect anything made by Apple, even as recently as 20 years ago. Like any hobby, it's all about demographics. At one time, people would pay thousands of dollars (when dollars were actually worth something) for a complete set of Beatles bubble gum cards. At this point, those people are well into "getting rid of stuff they have", not "acquiring more stuff". The values of cars made between 1900 and 1950 plateaued some time ago and is generally dropping, with some exceptions. Tri-Five Chevy's are next, IMO. Even collecting old TV's and radios is a very "static" (so to speak) hobby. If you didn't use it or see it when you were younger, it's just "old". There is no furniture in my house that is "old" unless it has some family connection to me or to SWMBO. I believe that many younger people share that general attitude towards things of the past.

My FIL said "you spend half your life acquiring stuff, and you spend the other half getting rid of it". I myself am somewhat behind schedule.
 
There is a problem with making programmable universal chips. In theory, it would mostly be a matter of an FPGA or CPLD (there are some exceptions, however, mostly in hybrid analog/digital etc.). The larger problem is that 5V logic in general is vanishing from production lines.

How many sources of DTL, RTL, DCTL, HTL, etc., can you find nowadays?
 
What the hell is a SWMBO? Whats a FIL? I was reading along until the make believe words.. Cant we just type what we mean?
 
Prices for gear have gone up so much that what was once a cheap hobby can get rather expensive especially if the machines you don't have were hard to find even back in the day.

It used to be you had to make decisions on what to get because gear was plentiful and cheap.

Even if you can find a deal more then likely it needs work and some parts are unobtanium.
 
falter said:
My question here, given Bil Herd's depressing talk about the reality of IC failures in the long term, is *can* people maintain the hobby in the long run, as it exists today. With a car you can always bend new sheet metal. But it's not easy to make direct replacement ICs. Especially not the custom ones on later computers. Kind of points to a future mainly of emulation rather than the actual hardware running?
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Not read that, but surely its the following lead free generation of SMT computers that are going to be harder to maintain with tin whiskers under ball grids etc ?
At least with a lot of Apple II gen, the logic chips are possible to get new in SMT form so by hook or crook we can keep them going for longer ?
 
Chuck(G) said:
No, just that few remember Rumpole. :)
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Lol

A dichotomy. Those who know the acronym don't know the root of it, and those who know the root, don't know the acronym.

It does seem to be something generally used in Forums for the younger audience.
 
Unknown_K said:
Prices for gear have gone up so much that what was once a cheap hobby can get rather expensive especially if the machines you don't have were hard to find even back in the day.

It used to be you had to make decisions on what to get because gear was plentiful and cheap.

Even if you can find a deal more then likely it needs work and some parts are unobtanium.
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Prices has certainly gone up on some gear but it's actually declined on others. Some of the price increases are temporary waves.. usually whenever a big Youtuber covers something. That seemed to happen with Tandy gear for example but lately that arena has cooled right off.

I remember when original Apple IIs of any serial routinely went for $1500+.. they so rarely came up for sale. Now only the really early stuff clears the big bucks, while anything after 10k or so barely clears $500. Even the almighty Apple 1 isn't fetching anywhere near the $900k record these days.

I think for some genuine collectibles values will hold up but as people move on or pass on things will calm down for most of it.
 
I do check Ebay on pricing, but I only search for the sold items. It does appear that there is a downward trend, except for systems like the Amiga or the really early stuff. On IC death, I'm hoping that at some point we will have nano technology that will allow us to fix them too? I'm going to keep any ICs that die for that reason, although it could be a waste?

Jason
 
I dont think you can repair internally shorted IC dies but i dont blame your wishful thinking. By your post are you saying Amiga prices are on the rise?
 
Internal shorted IC would like having an tiny explosion inside the chip, yeah, that would be bad. :) I was more thinking about how some IC chemistry is not long-term stable and can degenerate over time (a lot of MOS chips have this problem, C64 PLA, etc.) On these chips it doesn't matter how well they are stored, they will fail at some point. But then again, if you have a blueprint for the logic of the chip, you could just rebuild the die completely with nanotechnology and call it good. Even add in extras like over voltage protection, lower power consumption, more redundancy, etc. At that point you are just keeping the packaging as original. Very similar to how we preserve our vintage computers today with modern internal replacement parts.

I haven't seen Amiga prices rise so much, but they are very steady. The Amiga 500 still appears to go for around $300 to $500. Which is strange to me as there were about 7 million Amigas sold over the machines life span, so I don't consider them to be very rare. Fewer TI 99/4As were sold (2.5 million) and you can still find them (in box even) for around $50. It must be that the Amigas are just so much more useful and are in much higher demand.
 
grimm said:
Internal shorted IC would like having an tiny explosion inside the chip, yeah, that would be bad. :) I was more thinking about how some IC chemistry is not long-term stable and can degenerate over time (a lot of MOS chips have this problem, C64 PLA, etc.) On these chips it doesn't matter how well they are stored, they will fail at some point. But then again, if you have a blueprint for the logic of the chip, you could just rebuild the die completely with nanotechnology and call it good. Even add in extras like over voltage protection, lower power consumption, more redundancy, etc. At that point you are just keeping the packaging as original. Very similar to how we preserve our vintage computers today with modern internal replacement parts.

I haven't seen Amiga prices rise so much, but they are very steady. The Amiga 500 still appears to go for around $300 to $500. Which is strange to me as there were about 7 million Amigas sold over the machines life span, so I don't consider them to be very rare. Fewer TI 99/4As were sold (2.5 million) and you can still find them (in box even) for around $50. It must be that the Amigas are just so much more useful and are in much higher demand.
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Well I think my Amiga 500 purchased from ebay a long time ago was well under $50 shipped. So prices have risen over the last 20 years for sure. Amiga 2000's were $50-100 plus shipping back then and the A3000/A4000 were much more. Prices keep rising and machines keep getting old and dying.
 
OK, my opinion is that Youtube consuption and other social networks are taking too much time out of a lot of people who used to come here, and out of people who could potentially come here to post.

A traditional web forum cannot compete in user engagement with Youtube and their ilk.

Also, the forum software here took a dive for the worst, so that didn't help.
 
Pepinno said:
OK, my opinion is that Youtube consuption and other social networks are taking too much time out of a lot of people who used to come here, and out of people who could potentially come here to post.

A traditional web forum cannot compete in user engagement with Youtube and their ilk.

Also, the forum software here took a dive for the worst, so that didn't help.
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I watch alot of youtube. But I dont comment .. EVER.. So there is zero user engagement on youtube. Seems like the wrong platform to use for user engagement.
 
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