Reorganization of 'Genres' Category

[vwestlife]

Perhaps update the Later Apple subcategory to include up to the G4? G4 computers first released in 1999 - around the same time the Pentium III did.

I think all pre-Intel Macs are suitably "vintage" by this point. Some of the last PowerPC systems may be of the same age as a Core 2 Duo, but unlike the C2D they have absolutely no hope of running any modern operating systems or software.

 

[JamieDoesStuff]

I've tried to install Gentoo on a PBG4 12", and the Nvidia drivers just plain don't work, like, at all. The machine shits itself the moment it loads the modesetting driver, screen flickering, colours flying everywhere like it's the 70s. Crazy, considering how an x86 machine from that time period would essentially be given a 2nd life with Linux (or a BSD for that matter).

I personally wouldn't consider them vintage quite yet. Obsolete? Absolutely. Maybe if there's a generation limit of, say 2001 or something of that kind for G4 machines?

 

[3lectr1c]

I think all pre-Intel Macs are suitably "vintage" by this point. Some of the last PowerPC systems may be of the same age as a Core 2 Duo, but unlike the C2D they have absolutely no hope of running any modern operating systems or software.

I completely agree, but some members here are strongly against anything above 2000 having a section here, as they don’t think said hardware is vintage yet. I don’t quite get it myself, as one could always just ignore a section they don’t care about, but regardless it’s made the forum operators hesitant to expand the sections to newer machines. I’m all for all PowerPC systems being covered.

 

[3lectr1c]

I personally wouldn't consider them vintage quite yet. Obsolete? Absolutely. Maybe if there's a generation limit of, say 2001 or something of that kind for G4 machines?

Having a mid-generation cutoff like that would be way too confusing. For instance, the last generation iMac G3 was sold through 2003, and the last iBook G3 through the same year. Would those be cut out then? Many people would become confused over what G4s they could and couldn’t discuss, whether or not to put it in off topic, etc.
I tend to run on the liberal side when it comes to what machines to include - that’s, being less strict on it can’t hurt anything. In the end, we’re all here to talk about old/vintage computers, so why not let people talk about the ones they’d like to? Getting hung up on everyone’s personal definition of vintage just seems unproductive when the community opinions on the cutoff range all the way from the 486 to the Core 2 Duo. We’ll never agree on anything, which leaves us to pick between the range from overly restrictive to more liberal. In my mind, one of those options helps encourage more forum activity and discussion, while the other one doesn’t.

I'd love to hear the community's opinions on this - specifically the "why does it matter?" part, rather than the "x is/isn't vintage" part.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I think all pre-Intel Macs are suitably "vintage" by this point. Some of the last PowerPC systems may be of the same age as a Core 2 Duo, but unlike the C2D they have absolutely no hope of running any modern operating systems or software.

I know nothing is ever going to make anyone happy, but maybe a reasonable compromise would be that all PowerPC Macs get to be "vintage" now, and at the same time we once and forever define the "vintage PC" goalpost so only non-x86-64 processors (and their associated software and OS issues) will ever make the vintage cut. It'll give the people bellyaching about P4s somehow being interesting now that last inch.

(I mean, I guess thirty years is the most commonly quoted length of a "nostalgia cycle", maybe it'd be fair to revisit the x86-64 thing in 2033 when the Opteron blows out that many candles. Horrifyingly that's only nine years away.)

 

[vwestlife]

It's not like there is a whole lot of Mac activity here anyway, since there are other, more popular forums which cover Macs exclusively.

 

[3lectr1c]

I know nothing is ever going to make anyone happy, but maybe a reasonable compromise would be that all PowerPC Macs get to be "vintage" now, and at the same time we once and forever define the "vintage PC" goalpost so only non-x86-64 processors (and their associated software and OS issues) will ever make the vintage cut. It'll give the people bellyaching about P4s somehow being interesting now that last inch.

Forever is a little hasty I feel like, but you addressed that.
I feel like doing it by architecture makes no sense - some Pentium 4s are 64-bit, the PPC G5 is, the Athlon 64 launched in 2003 right alongside 32bit P4s that would be allowed under that system, and Atom netbooks released in the early 2010s were 32bit. Are those allowed then?
Why not just make a cutoff, like 2005. That cuts out the Core series that most everyone agrees isn’t quite vintage yet. You could even make it rolling year over year.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I feel like doing it by architecture makes no sense

Why not? The point of doing it by architecture is that 32 bit CPUs are, in fact, incapable of running any modern mainstream operating system, not just "too slow" to do it. And sure, you can whine that it's not an exact year cutoff, there's about 7 years of gray area between 2003 and 2010 where various halfway steps like 64 bit Pentium 4s (and the first 32 bit Core Duos) exist, but it's a fully objective criteria: A CPU supports "long mode" or it doesn't, full stop. Sure, you could counter that in some cases the rest of the machine could suddenly stop being vintage if you pulled out the 32 bit CPU and dropped a socket-compatible 64 bit CPU in instead, but it's not like a year cutoff really makes it any different; are you talking about the year the CPU inside the thing was made, the year the CPU/chipset/whatever *family* came out, the last year someone could have possibly found that dingus new on the shelf at Best Buy, what?

 

[3lectr1c]

A year cutoff may be imperfect, but I feel like an architectural one is worse. A 32 bit chip from 2010 is gonna be more capable than the original Athlon 64. Same deal applies with the technically 16bit TI99 4A - the amount of bits being double doesn’t really make it better than the C64 or Apple II.
Nowadays, is a 64bit Intel Pentium D really that much more capable than a 32bit CPU from the same time? You can technically run Windows 11 on one, or modern Linux, but hardly anyone does that. They just run XP. And regardless, you can run Windows 10 still on a 32bit processor like a Core Duo. That’s still fully supported by Microsoft, and that combined with an SSD will get you a very slow but usable modern computer. That’s gonna be faster than a 64bit Pentium 4. The confusion won’t be with what chips are allowed and which aren’t, it will instead rest on why a Core Duo should allowed but an Athlon 64 shouldn’t.
My point being that if your reasoning is that 64bit chips are far more capable and modern inherently than 32bit ones are, I disagree. There’s a lot more nuance involved.
The only way you’re going to avoid all confusion on what the cutoff truly is would be to pick a cutoff, then also add an “anything newer” category as a few others have suggested. I get the feeling though that a lot of members here wouldn’t like that very much. That’s the only option really though if you want to avoid and confusion or gray areas.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

A 32 bit chip from 2010 is gonna be more capable than the original Athlon 64.

Really? Citation needed. The only 32 bit chips I can think of from that late are the last 32 bit Atoms and maaaybe Via was still churning out the C3/C7 for a few customers. An Athlon 64 will run rings around this trash. People are apparently forgetting just how slow and out-of-the-box obsolete those 32 bit Netbooks that came out during the 2008-2009 fad were. Microsoft stretched out the retirement of Windows XP explicitly to give the manufacturers of those toys something to slap on them. They were, in fact, "vintage' right out of the box.

 

[3lectr1c]

Core Duo handily beats the early Athlon 64s, and this 2012 Atom also beats it, though only barely (and it gets crushed in single core). Ignore the Athlon's release date, passmark has it wrong. It's from 2003.

 

[3lectr1c]

Even this much lower-end mobile Core Duo beats it (though not in single core)

 

[lowen]

"What is vintage?" is simply whatever a significant enough percentage of user's thinks is vintage, where "significant enough" is decided by the moderators. There are neither time-based nor tech-based easy hard dividing lines that could command a consensus.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

this 2012 Atom also beats it, though only barely (and it gets crushed in single core)

Did you bother looking at Ark? That model of Atom is 64 bit. *And* dual core. The last 32 bit Atom was the 2011 "Lincroft" core (parts in the X6xx line, mostly reserved for Intel's aborted play for positioning the Atom as an option for tablets), and those things are utterly destroyed by an Athlon 64; they're actually slightly slower than the original N270 that was used in the first Atom-powered Asus EEE laptops. Also, the Core Duo you're throwing in here is a Yonah CPU from May 2006, not 2009. These things were *dead* in new laptops by 2008.

Again, my point here isn't that you can't find 32 bit CPUs that run faster than some 64 bit CPUs, it's that the architecture change is, in fact, a breaking discontinuity that you can't hem and haw about; practically all modern software assumes 64 bit and these PCs can't run it. There are some 286s that run faster than slow 386s, that doesn't mean that they weren't officially obsolete in a way 386s weren't by the mid-1990's.

 

[3lectr1c]

You’re right, that Atom is 64-bit, my apologies.

Also, the Core Duo you're throwing in here is a Yonah CPU from May 2006, not 2009. These things were *dead* in new laptops by 2008

I’m aware, but it doesn’t change my point that it’s a faster chip.

Which is faster doesn’t really matter to my opinion though - most people tend to lump things together into eras. The vast majority of people will compare the original Athlon 64 to the Pentium 4 and not a CPU from 5 years later that happens to share similar performance.

32bit support is definitely dying, but you can absolutely get a usable system and run the software you need on a 32bit system. You wouldn’t want to because of how slow it is, but you can do it. There are still modern web browsers, and a lot of applications still have 32bit versions. A lot of the stuff that doesn’t is gonna be too intensive nowadays anyway for a 32bit chip to handle (adobe being one example), you’d want an older version.

 

[Torch]

If anyone wants other sub-categories, feel free to suggest them.

- Alex

Am I the only one who feels all the extra sub categories serve no purpose other than adding confusion and clutter?
I've seen this happen in every car and motorcycle forum I belong to after it's been taken over by XenForo or IB. What once had 10 categories of easily managed activity now has upwards of 70. Only the terminally online has time to nitpick through each one. And if there is still a general forum, 99% of the posts still end up going there.

I completely understand the IBM section here, but that's about it.

Atari (thankfully no subs) goes back to July of 2023 on the first page.
I'm looking at the C64 sub. One post today and I can scroll back to Feb. on the first page.
VIC-20 and TED get their own forums?
Early Apple. One post today and I can scroll back to January on the first page.


Tandy is one of the more active forums. Should it be broke down into:
1, 3 and 4
2, 12, 16, 6000
CoCo, MC-10
100, 200
1000
1200
2000
3000, 4000, 5000

And then maybe argue over where the 2000 lands in that order due to processor performance?

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Which is faster doesn’t really matter to my opinion though - most people tend to lump things together into eras. The vast majority of people will compare the original Athlon 64 to the Pentium 4 and not a CPU from 5 years later that happens to share similar performance.

If you're going to draw a line between categories like this it seems like you should have some kind of reasonably solid justification for doing it, and... what's an "era"? To me that implies some significant technical innovation or discontinuity, and as post-2000 developments in desktop computing goes x86-64 seems like by *far* the most significant one. The blunt fact is that desktop computing tech just hasn't changed *that* much in the last 20 years; so far as I'm concerned the "end of history" in the PC department was actually Win32, but I'm willing to actually kick that forward up to the mainstream adoption of NT-kernel based versions of Windows, so... yeah, if it's not x86-64 we should put a hard immovable stake in the ground at October 25th 2001, the day the retail version of Windows XP went on sale. Frankly everything after that is just incremental evolution and a lot of whining about how Microsoft dared to move stuff around or add more popups.

But since apparently it's non-negotiable that we pretend Windows XP is somehow vintage then, well, you're looking for something else, and I think there's a great case to be made for "32 bit", since it's a cutoff that applies regardless of the supporting technologies. If you really don't like it then, well, what else works? If you really want to make it about something else in the box then how about making the presence of PCIe slots disqualifying? There was a pretty long fade to black before parallel PCI went away, but most systems used PCIe as their underlying interconnect by 2005 or so at the latest. I'll just note that this date coincides with the last mainstream 32 bit-only desktop processors within a few months, so in the end you've arrived at the same place.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Tandy is one of the more active forums. Should it be broke down into:
1, 3 and 4
2, 12, 16, 6000
CoCo, MC-10
100, 200
1000
1200
2000
3000, 4000, 5000

And then maybe argue over where the 2000 lands in that order due to processor performance?

That might be a *little* excessive.

Just eyeballing the first few pages of the Tandy forum I'd say you *might* be able to make a case for:

I/III/4
2/12/16/6000
MS-DOS (Tandy 2000 + Radio Shack's PC compatibles)
CoCo
Portables (this covers both Tandy's proprietary laptops and the pocket computers)

Roughly sorted in descending order of popularity, although I'd venture that the MS-DOS and Model II categories would trade blows on a regular basis.

There was a comment earlier about expecting posts for Tandy's MS-DOS machines to go into the separate PC clones bucket, but between the 2000 being a reasonably popular conversation subject that last few months and the fact that the Tandy 1000 family is both weird enough and popular enough to kind of be its own separate thing from normal XTs I'd say "MS-DOS" rates its own category under Tandy. (Although I would say this category is a lot less relevent for machines like the 1200 and the 3000-and-up families that are much more just plain PC clones.)

If you wanted fewer categories you could say "Z80", "MS-DOS", and "Other", but that might offend some people.

Edit: Anyway. This is where I muse again if there might be any method to graft on some kind of #hashtag functionality so you could keep a single company category but tag posts within it for easy searching. (This would also allow tagging the same thread with multiple hashtags if it were applicable to more than one but not all subgroups.)

 

[cjs]

That’s the only option really though if you want to avoid and confusion or gray areas.

I think that grey areas are fine, and probably inevitable anyway.

I’m aware, but it doesn’t change my point that it’s a faster chip.

I feel that that's an utterly irrelevant point. I do not think we should be categorising things by speed because there can massive differences in speed on what's essentially the same platform. People today are running CP/M on Z80 CPUs that are literally two orders of magnitude faster than early CP/M machines. That doesn't make running CP/M less retro.

32bit support is definitely dying, but you can absolutely get a usable system and run the software you need on a 32bit system.

True. That sounds like a good reason to me to entirely exclude x86 32-bit systems, though I expect there are many people who will disagree with me on that.

Am I the only one who feels all the extra sub categories serve no purpose other than adding confusion and clutter?

I don't know if you're the only one that feels that. But I do find the "extra sub categories" useful for browsing, because it works a lot better than, say, a search for "VIC-20."

Tandy is one of the more active forums. Should it be broke down into:
..
CoCo, MC-10

I feel pretty strongly that MC-10 should not go into the CoCo section. It's a completely different computer from the CoCo (not even the same CPU) and, being much less popular, is going to get lost amongst the CoCo posts. It should be put together with other less popular TRS-80 systems, such as the handhelds.

I/III/4
2/12/16/6000
MS-DOS (Tandy 2000 + Radio Shack's PC compatibles)
CoCo
Portables (this covers both Tandy's proprietary laptops and the pocket computers)

My MC-10 comments above apply, of course.

As for "Portables," I don't know about any of Tandy's proprietary laptops, but they should be mentioned explicitly since otherwise they could be confused with the Model 100 series. That, of course, should go in a Kyocera 85 section somewhere as the TRS-80 Model 100 is a rebadged 85 and the NEC PC-8201 and Olivetti M-10 are very little different. (In particular, same CPU, same core hardware and same ROMs excepting localisation).

There was a comment earlier about expecting posts for Tandy's MS-DOS machines to go into the separate PC clones bucket, but between the 2000 being a reasonably popular conversation subject that last few months and the fact that the Tandy 1000 family is both weird enough and popular enough to kind of be its own separate thing from normal XTs I'd say "MS-DOS" rates its own category under Tandy. (Although I would say this category is a lot less relevent for machines like the 1200 and the 3000-and-up families that are much more just plain PC clones.)

I have no idea how much traffic there is on the 1000 that's really distinguished from the PC clone stuff, but if it's there, that sounds reasonable to me. I'd suggest explicitly calling it "Tandy 1000," though and noting that the plain PC clone stuff should go in the PC section. (Not that I care that much; it's not a section I'll be reading.)

 

[Torch]

I thought it was obvious that I was being sarcastic about additional Tandy forums, but I guess not.