What are you running on your machines?

[MrImprovement]

It's not about resources, it's about convenience. GUI is the most natural interface for human being. By the way GUI was on purpose designed to replace old fashioned command line one, since GUI is the most convenient and the most natural way of interaction between man and machine.

So, you may use your old machine in many tasks, but it will be a painful and ineffective way of doing things. That's why vintage machines are perfectly suitable to serve as tinkering toys and museum items.

I don't believe it is really the case, in that essentially, aside from artwork, charts, etc. a person who is using a computer is doing a lot of "reading".

And 80x24 or 80x25 is almost exactly the number of characters on a page in a book (books have typically 1500 to 1800 characters per page).

Further, a moment's thought will show you that the density of even constraining typed commands to say 5 characters maximum, will give you a very large number of commands, far more than can be easily or quickly navigated and chosen via GUI. In my /usr/local/bin on the desktop FreeBSD system I am using, there are 1900 commands in just that directory alone - how would you quickly choose/navigate through even 400 commands via mouse, even on a 4k screen?

For concrete things, like CAD, pie charts etc. GUI may well be the way to go, no doubt; but there are plenty of tasks such as data entry, programming, working with text, processing data (awk, perl) etc. that the command line interface or "TUI" aka text user interface shines.

And muscle memory in terms of keyboard commands means that all 8 fingers (thumbs usually used for just the space bar) can type/select far quicker than the mouse.

One of my co-workers has been using only "vi" for 15 years - you should see him zip through a Perl file

 

[pbirkel@gmail.com]

When GUIs were still experimental (80's) there were a number of human factors studies regarding the efficacy of a pointing device. It was quantitatively demonstrated that the cost to reposition a hand between keyboard and pointing device was quite significant in many, perhaps most, human-computer actions. Simple point-n-click-n-done interactions were time-efficient; for tasks involving text processing, however, keeping the hands properly positioned over the keyboard was the "hands down" winner. This was before the track pad and eraser-nubbin embedded pointing devices introduced to save space on laptops; I don't know if the efficiency of those devices was ever formally studied. My personal experience was that the eraser-nubbin was a time-loser while the thumb-operated track pad (centered below the space bar) was more efficient than a separate mouse or trackball. But still not as efficient as keeping the thumb(s) positioned over the space bar. YMMV.

 

[Moondog]

For newer stuff (x86 laptops and desktops) I install a flavor of linux on them to keep them usable. If it's older than 20 years old, I'll use an OS that's suitabel for the platform. I have a Pentium II installed with Windows 98 retro gaming, and use DOS 6.22 and DR-DOS 7.3 on 486's and below. I have a Compaq Portable II (286) with DR DOS 7.3 installed on it because it installed network drivers and the Novell client.

 

[hackneygolish]

The advantages of text-based user interfaces (TUIs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs) over graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are evident in certain scenarios. These interfaces excel in tasks involving reading, quick command navigation, efficient muscle memory utilization, programming and scripting, remote server management, customization, and resource efficiency. Users who are proficient in CLIs can work swiftly and accurately, making them ideal for specific tasks and workflows, even in today's GUI-dominated computing environments.

 

[lcdrugo]

My NEC PowerMate 286 . . . .

Seaken

Sir, maybe you can help me. I recently bought a PowerMate 286 from Ebay and I simply cannot get it to boot from anything at all. I've tried just about every NEC disk image from WinWorld, VOGONS, and archive.org on both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies with no success. The drives and disks themselves are fine - I've verified all of them are functional on my White Box 386. But the NEC just won't boot from them. It either spins for a few seconds and stops or spins continuously. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

 

[Caluser2000]

A couple of days ago I decided get my 386DX25 with IIT 25Mhz moths co-pr, Cirrus Logic SVGA card, XT-IDE Bios in an EPROM in the Nics BootRom socket and a 3gig or there abouts BigFoot spinning spinning rust. I decided to see if any earlier Linux Distro versions would. So for I've tested Slackware 3.5 and Red Hat 5.2. I was plesently surprised that both of them installed fine without a hitch and ran Xwindows without a hitch. A bit slow yes but they functioned perfectly.

 

[modem7]

Sir, maybe you can help me. I recently bought a PowerMate 286 from Ebay and I simply cannot get it to boot from anything at all. I've tried just about every NEC disk image from WinWorld, VOGONS, and archive.org on both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies with no success. The drives and disks themselves are fine - I've verified all of them are functional on my White Box 386. But the NEC just won't boot from them. It either spins for a few seconds and stops or spins continuously. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

Double-post. First post is the thread at [here]. Answers should go to that thread.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I guess this doesn't really count as "vintage" but I have some art software that doesn't play well with windows 10 or 4k resolutions. So I now use my windows XP gaming machine(which I have running at 1080p) to run these older pieces of software. The shocker is the stuff runs faster and more stable than the updated versions on my modern, ten times more powerful workstation.

 

[Moondog]

I guess this doesn't really count as "vintage" but I have some art software that doesn't play well with windows 10 or 4k resolutions. So I now use my windows XP gaming machine(which I have running at 1080p) to run these older pieces of software. The shocker is the stuff runs faster and more stable than the updated versions on my modern, ten times more powerful workstation.

This doesn't surprise me. Over the years I have run into some "updates" to programs I would not consider "upgrades." My worst gripe about migrating to a new OS version is when device support is dropped. When the office I worked at moved up from Win9x to Win2k and XP, some users with document scanners that connected to the parallel port had to abandon them because the OEM didn't produce drivers that worked with the newer OS. In a way it worked out better for me, because I no longer had to stock feed rollers and other consumables for legacy hardware. Our IT solution was replace them with a faster, more reliable networked multifunction copier/ printer/ scanner.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

This doesn't surprise me. Over the years I have run into some "updates" to programs I would not consider "upgrades." My worst gripe about migrating to a new OS version is when device support is dropped. When the office I worked at moved up from Win9x to Win2k and XP, some users with document scanners that connected to the parallel port had to abandon them because the OEM didn't produce drivers that worked with the newer OS. In a way it worked out better for me, because I no longer had to stock feed rollers and other consumables for legacy hardware. Our IT solution was replace them with a faster, more reliable networked multifunction copier/ printer/ scanner.

In my case its an annoying combination of lack of forward thinking and changes in aesthetics.

If you go back a few years, most programs had a very simple grey UI with colored icons, matching the default windows color scheme of the 9x/2k era.

Flash forward to about 2010 and somebody decided "dark grey and black! That's the ticket! EVERYTHING must be dark grey or black!" Well this color scheme hurts my eyes. And while you can generally change it somewhat, it never really works as well as the default. Even so I don't really have hours to spend fine-tuning a piece of software to look like it did a few updates ago.


I would be perfectly happy to simply keep using the legacy software. Its what I trained on. It runs just fine. It does all the things I want to do. You can show me a feature list a mile long but that still doesn't make the new software "worth it" if the UI stinks and I can't find the features I'm used to. Except weirdly some specific pieces of software don't let their UIs scale(including software you would really think should). Or you run into arbitrarily-coded memory limitations that, again, could have been avoided if the original coders had thought more than 2 years ahead. Its very frustrating.

 

[Bluewizard]

I have been focused on Amiga hardware and re-acquiring several machines which I have been successful doing.

With these have been various states of repair. I have been slowly restoring and saving these machines to be in a running state.

I have been playing some games of course. Touch C again after many years to increase my skills with development. Next years plan is to attempt some MC68000 asm development.

I really enjoy the fact that new technology has merged with older tech to have a fun place to explore.

This journey has been fun for another friend any myself where we created a podcast to share out experiences so far. This year was my first VCF east and it was great!

I hope you enjoy your machines I know I am really enjoying mine!

 

[JAXVintagePC]

I have owned and sold/donated/scrapped many vintage/retro PCs over the years. I find it a relaxing and engaging hobby (plus nostalgic) until I do not. So the desire comes and goes.

Currently I own a Compaq ProLinea 486DX2 66 and Compaq DeskPro Pentium 200 MMX. I prefer OEMs because a) they are cheaper (and highly integrated and b) very well documented. Compaqs usually have an external battery header.

I play DOS games mostly, do some MIDI (MPU-401, Roland LA/GM) and networking experiments. Sometimes I play multiplayer games. I do not really use Windows 3.* or 9*.

My wife gets annoyed with too many retro/vintage PCs. And space for hobbies is complicated in FL: no (finished) basements and no attics (insulation). I tried buying a larger house but it is a very difficult real estate market currently.

I also have a lot of contemporary PCs/notebooks.

In the EU I keep eight Lenovo ThinkPad T400s (and spares) with Windows XP for retro gaming (Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, Command & Conquer Generals, Age of Empires 2 Forgotten Empires) with friends when I visit. LAN Party in a suitcase basically.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

LAN Party in a suitcase basically.

That's a really fun concept.

 

[JAXVintagePC]

It is. It only takes 15 to 20 minutes to set up. The one risk is that the CD-ROMs in T400s are not very reliable. So we always have spares (including USB external CD-ROMs). The benefits are that games rarely crash since the amount of "out of sync" errors are vastly diminished since all these T400s have very similar specifications (2GB to 3GB usable RAM, T9400 or similar CPU and all have a Radeon 3650: which is good enough to run C&C Generals flawlessly).

 

[Unknown_K]

When GUIs were still experimental (80's) there were a number of human factors studies regarding the efficacy of a pointing device. It was quantitatively demonstrated that the cost to reposition a hand between keyboard and pointing device was quite significant in many, perhaps most, human-computer actions. Simple point-n-click-n-done interactions were time-efficient; for tasks involving text processing, however, keeping the hands properly positioned over the keyboard was the "hands down" winner. This was before the track pad and eraser-nubbin embedded pointing devices introduced to save space on laptops; I don't know if the efficiency of those devices was ever formally studied. My personal experience was that the eraser-nubbin was a time-loser while the thumb-operated track pad (centered below the space bar) was more efficient than a separate mouse or trackball. But still not as efficient as keeping the thumb(s) positioned over the space bar. YMMV.

I think whatever a person gets used to at an early age tends to be what they are fast at using. A person who used Wordperfect for many years and knows the key commands is probably much faster than the average Microsoft Word user with a mouse. I am probably faster using XTGOLD DOS for moving and deleting files and directories then using a mouse in Windows Explorer.

To be honest I assumed we would all be wearing glasses by now which detect where our eyes are looking to control a virtual mouse so our hands never have to leave the keyboard at all. I mean that is older tech used by the military to train the gatling gun in attack helicopters.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I think whatever a person gets used to at an early age tends to be what they are fast at using. A person who used Wordperfect for many years and knows the key commands is probably much faster than the average Microsoft Word user with a mouse. I am probably faster using XTGOLD DOS for moving and deleting files and directories then using a mouse in Windows Explorer.

To be honest I assumed we would all be wearing glasses by now which detect where our eyes are looking to control a virtual mouse so our hands never have to leave the keyboard at all. I mean that is older tech used by the military to train the gatling gun in attack helicopters.

Its a question of training time vs. utility. If I live in microsoft word, use it 8+ hours a day, it makes sense to take the time to learn all the commands. If I use it twice a week for 20 minutes at a time, not so much. Well-designed, self-explanatory icons are far easier to learn/remember than an equivalent number of keyboard commands.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

It is. It only takes 15 to 20 minutes to set up. The one risk is that the CD-ROMs in T400s are not very reliable. So we always have spares (including USB external CD-ROMs). The benefits are that games rarely crash since the amount of "out of sync" errors are vastly diminished since all these T400s have very similar specifications (2GB to 3GB usable RAM, T9400 or similar CPU and all have a Radeon 3650: which is good enough to run C&C Generals flawlessly).

What do you even use the CDROM drives for at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to simply store disk images?

 

[JAXVintagePC]

Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer Generals have unique serial code validation programmed utilizing CD-ROM protection.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Oh interesting.

Well that kind of sucks. I just found my copy of C&C and was toying with hosting a LAN party for it. Not so easy if I need to find 7 other CDs.

Ah well.

 

[JAXVintagePC]

We bought eight sets of RA2, eight CDs of RA2 YR, eight sets of C&CG and eight sets of AOE2 AOK & TQ. All in all I spent about $750 or so on the entire setup.

Finding C&CG cheap is relatively easy. C&CG ZH is much harder so I have not done that yet.