What are you running on your machines?

[hunterjwizzard]

Yeah that's the nice thing about a setup like you've got. Its not that expensive to build but a whole lot of fun when you can find seven other people interested in joining you. Its really cool.

 

[Unknown_K]

I purchased Command and Conquer The ultimate Collection (was cheap on ebay) and it has Generals and Zero hour plus it is a digital only version so no CD check.

 

[JAXVintagePC]

Right. Does it have DRM? I remember that you cannot use it for LAN multiplayer.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I have a couple of games in my inventory which cannot be played now thanks to DRM. Specifically, the validation services no longer exist. They make for nice choochkies, but will never be playable on period hardware.

 

[twmiller]

SE/30 - has a scsi2sd with System 6, System 7, and A/UX.
IBM 5160 - MS-DOS 5.0 w/ 4DOS 8.0
Tandon AT Clone - dual boots MS-DOS 6.22 and Xenix 286
80386 Clone - OS/2 Warp 3 running a T.A.G. BBS
80486 Clone - Has a CF card hanging off the back, so I can tinker with it. Right now it has NeXTSTEP 3.3
Pentium 100 - Has a CF card as well, and currently is running OS/2 Warp 4

 

[OzzFan]

I try to make it a point to run a different OS on most of my collection, and I try to make it period correct if I can. For example, I run standard MS-DOS 5 on my 386DX; OS/2 2.11 on my IBM PS/2 56SX, OS/2 3 Warp Connect on my IBM PS/2 model 77, PC DOS 7 on my Cyrix Cx5x86 100MHz. I had IBM OS/2 1.3 running on my IBM PS/2 Model 50Z but after the ESDI drive stopped working and I switched over to a McIDE so I could use some IDE hard drives I already have, and the drive I connected to it has MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1.

My "daily driver" that I use for writing DOS and Win3x programs is a Socket 4 system upgraded with a Pentium Overdrive 133MHz, 128MB of RAM, 1.6GB hard drive running Windows NT 3.51. It was a bit tricky to get it installed since NT 3.51's IDE driver doesn't seem to like drives with more than 1024 cylinders, so I had to borrow NT4's IDE driver as a replacement.

 

[creepingnet]

Tandy 1000A - MS-DOS 6.22 w/ Deskmate II and III (gets it's date and time over the internet using the SNP utility from mTCP)

Compaq Deskpro 386s/20 (w/IBM Blue Lightining BLX3) - MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1x

CreepingNet 486 is my daily driver - 8.4GB Drive w/ DOS 6.22/WFW311, 80GB w/ Win95 OSR 2.5, 80GB w/ FreeBSD 7.4, and a 128GB SATA SSD with FreeDOS 1.3 - it has a 5.25" mobile rack in it so it's a literal playground for operating systems

NEC Versa M/75CP - one drive has FreeDOS 1.2 (soon to be upgraded to 1.3), the other has DOS 7/WFW311/Win95 OSR 2.5 all on the same drive. I'm tempted to make the 2nd drive Windows 98 SE w/ 98lite only though with a WPA compliant WiFi utility so I can use it at home without using my cell phone for tethering.

NEC Versa P/75HC - Windows 95 OSR 2.5, tempted to do the same as I did to the M/75, and maybe build a second drive with FreeDOS for it, even downgrade the screen to 640x480.

NanTan Notebook FMAK9200 - MS-DOS 7.01/Windows For Workgroups 3.11 - this one is my most used of the laptops because of the SoundBlaster compatible sound card and color graphics but still being a 486.

NanTan FMA3500C - FreeDOS 1.3 - on an 80GB HDD, I finally figured out I could work around the controller limitations using a DDO, but it requires the Alternate Jumper Settings for the PC to let it use the drive in question

 

[cjs]

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.

This is total rubbish, and you've simply betrayed how little you know about human-computer interaction.

While there certain situations where a GUI may be the best option for certain people, this is far from universal. My job is to manipulate computers all day, every day, and switching from command line to GUI would absolutely destroy my productivity. You need merely look at people complaining about Tesla cars to see that a GUI can be much worse even for "regular" people.

So, you may use your old machine in many tasks, but it will be a painful and ineffective way of doing things.

Well, it seems that many people here consider late-'80s and '90s computers to be "vintage," so that's dead wrong as well. In the mid-90s I was using a Sun 3/60 (released around 1985, though running software 5-8 years newer than that) as my work-from-home machine. My current desktop environment is essentially the same.

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.

It depends on exactly what you're doing with the pointing device. I find the TrackPoint ("nubbin") far better than a trackpad for most uses, but my primary use for it is to switch focus in a point-to-focus system, so large moves don't need to be particularly accurate. It also works better for me for precision work such as selecting text (though not as well as a mouse, which has its own separate costs), but I suspect that is more about what I'm used to and trained on, rather than something inherent in the TrackPoint or trackpad designs themselves.

When I need to do a lot of precision work, such as schematics and PCB layout, I do primarily use a mouse.

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

I don't use my retro systems regularly. I have some projects in the works for cross-platform demos and games but other than testing them or showing them off to guests, the work is going to be primarily done on my M2 Pro Mac. I also have plans to make some youtube videos of old systems in action.

I'd be worried about ruining a system by leaving it powered on, for example my favorite, a Sun SPARCStation 10 with 2x 60MHz CPU and ZX 24-bit 3d graphics. I was very lucky to get a working ZX board at a reasonable price and I'd like to keep it working.

 

[Zare]

Same here. Only modern stuff is used day to day, the old boxes are stored until I get an idea about something.

My most used is Pentium 100 box with ARK1000PV graphics and Orpheus II/X16GS sound, running PC-DOS 2000. I occasionally hook it to 17" flat CRT and home PA and play some games.

 

[TheDantee]

My "daily driver" that I use for writing DOS and Win3x programs is a Socket 4 system upgraded with a Pentium Overdrive 133MHz, 128MB of RAM, 1.6GB hard drive running Windows NT 3.51. It was a bit tricky to get it installed since NT 3.51's IDE driver doesn't seem to like drives with more than 1024 cylinders, so I had to borrow NT4's IDE driver as a replacement.

Sounds interesting

As you can see I use my old computers to learn about the history of PC computing starting around the late 70's into the early 2000's. For me, it's not about putting them to use as much as it is about appreciating what they capable of and watching the progression of the technology as time went by.

I do use some old computers as my daily drivers using Linux. Mostly from about the 2010's and after Windows 8.1. They are still useful machines and since MS dropped support for them I switched them over to Linux for modern computing tasks such as watching TV, radio, Youtube, Google, etc.

Seaken

Yes learning about the past software is very interesting as well so I can understand you

I usually try to install the OS version that the machine originally came with (or one that was normally used with it).

My Commodores (PET, 64, Plus/4), TRS-80 Model I and Model 102 had no "OS" that was loaded from media. So what's there is what you get.

My TRS-80 Model 4P is running LDOS 6.31 (which was the latest you could run).
My Kaypro 4/83 runs CP/M 2.2g (which I think was the only OS you could run on it).
My Tandy 1100FD has MS-DOS 3.2 loaded in ROM, but you can boot any version from the floppy drive. But it has only 1 floppy drive, so booting something else is cumbersome.
My other MS-DOS machines run 2.11, 3.3 and 6.22 - which were all period correct.

None are my daily driver, though. I'm a "software engineer" so none of those would work for that.
But I do call BBSs from one of my vintage machines each day (I try to rotate through each machine).

Using original software is a great idea and usually offers the smoothest experience ever on modern hardware like smartphones today.

i generally try and use my machines when i have the time and motivation to do so! my brain makes it hard to focus on one thing for too long so i tend to jump between multiple projects, often within the same day, always when i hit a roadblock. as long as i am making progress i will keep going. sometimes i put machines aside for a while for one reason or another, but i do my best to give them some love now and again.

You are running some very cool stuff NetBSD is a very interesting project I have run on a few of my old machines as well

Not so vintage:

• MacBook Air M2: daily office work, MacOS, Teams, connector to office
• iPad Pro M1: everything, including connection to headless Pi 4B, iPadOS
• 2 x headless Raspberry Pi 4B: coding, learning Rust, playing around, Pi OS 64
• Raspberry Pi 400: main second screen, GitHub, ChatGPT, Reddit, TRS-80 emulator, Pi OS 64
• Raspberry Pi 400: playing with wifi and hack-tools, Kali Linux

Understandable, I assume most of us are using modern hardware these days

The short answer for most everything I tend to focus on is play games and tinker in BASIC.

Typically, when I want to play with a VIC-20, I pick one off the shelf, plug it in, attach a few peripherals, and load up one of a few pieces of software: a game, a terminal program, test a new add-on, or experiment in BASIC. I've also spent time writing software using modern tools for the VIC, using it mostly as a test platform. Lately, my focus has been on the Super Expander cartridge, trying out the graphics modes:

Sounds interesting I don’t know much about VIC I’ll have to look into it

CreepingNet 486 is my daily driver - 8.4GB Drive w/ DOS 6.22/WFW311, 80GB w/ Win95 OSR 2.5, 80GB w/ FreeBSD 7.4, and a 128GB SATA SSD with FreeDOS 1.3 - it has a 5.25" mobile rack in it so it's a literal playground for operating systems

This is more what I was looking for a daily driver old pc. What exactly do you run on it?

I don't use my retro systems regularly. I have some projects in the works for cross-platform demos and games but other than testing them or showing them off to guests, the work is going to be primarily done on my M2 Pro Mac. I also have plans to make some youtube videos of old systems in action.

I'd be worried about ruining a system by leaving it powered on, for example my favorite, a Sun SPARCStation 10 with 2x 60MHz CPU and ZX 24-bit 3d graphics. I was very lucky to get a working ZX board at a reasonable price and I'd like to keep it working.

I totally understand about collecting and preserving old hardware. To each there own.

I am more interested in people using vintage machines today as like a daily driver. I have seen a participated in the past in old computer challenges like this or the yearly powerpc challenge. I think these are very interesting and gets people using this old hardware but also working together to fix bugs and figuring out what is usable. Computer software for better or worse keep increasing its requirements year over year, but what if your requirements didn’t change? Nobody is expecting your 300Mhz CPU to edit 4K ProRes but what about 144p video it was designed for like a Powermac G3. Why shouldn’t you be able to use a modern video editor to do that kdenlive?

I think this is a good way to keep software bloat in line look at the bloated JS web of today as an example. And it also keeps machines out of land fills the longer people (not just us) can use them.

That’s more what I’m interested in maybe different from a lot of you and that’s ok. I would love to hear more about others running modern OSes like Linux or BSDs and actually using their machines. Older OSes are cool to as your still getting use out of the machine of course.

 

[Zare]

I don't daily drive my old computers.
The bulk of what I do is related to engineering (mostly software), audio (consumption and creation) and games. I've tried to find a productive purpose for any of my old boxes and I keep failing.

I have a really nice 1040STe config, with VGA output, SD card HDD, PS/2 mouse, maxed RAM. It was my intent for years, to utilize this computer for music. But even if I had a chiptune-alike idea, it would be way faster to realize it on a modern DAW, trading off that 1% of original hardware sound fidelity for a 50 times better interface and capabilities. From the get go, there is so many cables and connections around the Atari just to use MIDI. The upscaler needs power, the SD card interface needs power, the MIDI keyboard needs power. It's a whole bunch of stuff needed for something rather simple on modern platform.

If I had a space/garage for these setups it would be ok, but in a modest living space, there is no room to keep old boxes around, every device permanently installed needs carefully thought out placement and cable management. Not to mention old boxes and modern living space are apples and oranges when it comes to interior design.

I just went through a good example of the circle that I find myself in every time I think I got a purpose - lately felt like playing Heroes 2, and the complete version with CD audio stutters on dosbox. As I have a permanently installed Windows 95 machine, and there is Windows version (WinG) of the game, I said to myself well ain't that nice, now I have an use case for the Pentium box. The game runs ok, but still isn't completely fluid. Meanwhile I found out there is an engine rewrite called fheroes2 which works perfectly on modern platforms.

Even if og game worked as fluid as this modern version, I would still restorage the Pentium box in a day or two. Because it's just not convenient. It would have CRT connected to it because there is no way I'd go for permanent retro setup with LCD, it's just not correct.

The effective volume of slim desktop Olivetti case and Syncmaster 17" atop of it rivals the rack that houses the entirety of my modern platform, computer, networking and audio devices + power routing. It's just not practical.

So yeah, finding it hard to use retro platforms even for retro purposes let alone daily drive on them.

I would love to hear more about others running modern OSes like Linux or BSDs and actually using their machines. Older OSes are cool to as your still getting use out of the machine of course.

I've done some tinkering with FreeBSD 5.4 (year 2005) on a MMX system using TNT2 or GeForce2 AGP. The idle usage of system with full GUI (XFree86+Windowmaker) was 20MB.
For desktop it is pretty unusable below 128MB RAM because Unix applications, especially X11 ones are not memory friendly like DOS stuff.
The FreeBSD package archive still works so you can just install whatever was used then, Opera Browser, early Firefoxes, etc. Quake 2, works normally, meh on TNT2 and superb on Geforce ofc.

I'm sure this is also possible on Linux systems such as Debian. It should also be possible to compile newer versions of software than in package archive that was frozen in 2005.

Linux/BSDs are a good use case, because the software has changed. There's a myriad of early toolkit applications that look pretty shitty on modern desktops or don't work at all.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I've got a full retro setup(CRT monitor keyboard mouse) in the corner which I freely admit I barely use. I wish I could 'get in' to games like I used to. And I mean any game. I don't know where the magic went.

 

[silicontare]

NEC PC-9801RX runs DOS 5.0A-H over normal 5.0A for the larger possible partition sizes. 6.2 is possible, but there's nothing it adds that I want or need for a machine that exists to play obscure Japanese computer games; keep it simple and all that.
NEC PC-8801MA doesn't need an OS, but you can put a BASIC disk in if you want. It was always more of a gaming machine, anyway, versus it's sibling successor that was initially made for business.
Power Mac G3 B&W triple boots OS 8.6, OS 9.2.1, and OS X 10.2.8. Reasons are: OS 8 is what it shipped with, OS 9 is the final version of Classic Mac OS, OS X 10.2 is the earliest version of OS X that's actually worth using, but also runs okay on this thing without a rare CPU upgrade to push things past 450mhz. Maybe one day I'll throw BeOS on there for extra giggles.
iBook 466 SE is a strictly OS 9.2.1 machine. OS X is a terrible experience at 800x600. Surprisingly powerful little notebook, though; not enough people give this model credit.

No daily drivers, but loading up the old Macintoshes with creative software for retro digital art is one of those things I want to do... one day... eventually. Feel bad not trying out these old boxed copies of Bryce 3D and Photoshop.