> I think the appeal of vintage computers and software is simply that they were comprehensible.
I was using the Imsai sometime in the late 70's, when I mentioned microcomputers to my boss. My comment was "You'd better get and learn one now, while you can still understand them."
Something along the lines of a TRS-80, which you didn't have to build from parts, and which Isaac Asimov assured us: [0]
> "Radio Shack's TRS-80° Computer Is the Smartest Way to Write." and
> "I may never use a typewriter again!"
Of course, the other side of the coin is that those systems were the vanguard of microcomputing, and many of us made a career out of this "hobby". It was exhilarating, and I wonder what might be the equivalent today (that you can get your hands on and "poke" around. My thought was a Raspberry Pi and DIY peripherals, the comparison being mainframe versus microcomputer at the time and mega datacenter versus the Pi or other now.
The idea being that it does what you tell it to, rather than the computer telling you what to do. Long live learning and agency.
> I think the appeal of vintage computers and software is simply that they were comprehensible.
I was using the Imsai sometime in the late 70's, when I mentioned microcomputers to my boss. My comment was "You'd better get and learn one now, while you can still understand them."
Something along the lines of a TRS-80, which you didn't have to build from parts, and which Isaac Asimov assured us: [0]
> "Radio Shack's TRS-80° Computer Is the Smartest Way to Write." and
> "I may never use a typewriter again!"
Of course, the other side of the coin is that those systems were the vanguard of microcomputing, and many of us made a career out of this "hobby". It was exhilarating, and I wonder what might be the equivalent today (that you can get your hands on and "poke" around. My thought was a Raspberry Pi and DIY peripherals, the comparison being mainframe versus microcomputer at the time and mega datacenter versus the Pi or other now.
The idea being that it does what you tell it to, rather than the computer telling you what to do. Long live learning and agency.
[0] https://2img.net/h/blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/Byte/1-1983/...