I have a very nice modern computer but for giggles and also just to get back to basics every now and again I’d love to get a really really old setup just to mess around with.
Am I nuts?
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That’s nothing too crazy, think about all the people you might know with old cars that bring less utility.
What I see as the biggest issue at this point myself are the prices and availability of accessories. Anything that’s recognizable like for a Commodore, is hard to get your hands on, I personally can’t even consider something like an IBM PS2.
Luckily there are some companies making adapters to use SD cards instead of floppy and cassette etc…
What kind of setup were you thinking of?
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I really haven’t thought that far ahead yet.
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Consider the original Shuttle XPC series for starters. Fairly modern (32 bit, so Win-XP era) but still almost 2 decades old. (which, in IT terms, is pre-historic 
) AMD or Intel, I happen to have an old AMD one, based on the Barton core 2500XP CPU. Had a “massive” 1 GB RAM and ran Win-98SE. I also have a later Core2 Duo based box, that one’s already 64 bit capable. Both still boot if I set them up (no room!).
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Haha that’s not old enough for me. My earliest computer use was my first year at school when I was 5 in 1993. I have used in one way or another most of the windows NT’s, MS Dos, and a few of the Mac OS’s.
I’m wanting to go way back before I was born.
This may be more up your street
Edit: if you are ever in London you should go see this thing, it is mesmerising to watch.
How that would make you look like a crazy person? It’s just something you’re curious about and want to mess with, nothing weird about it.
They’re not easy to find so that might take a while, depending on how far back you want to go and what’s your idea of “messing around with it”.
MS-DOS? Minix? Classic MAC OS? OS/2? Start with an OS you might be interested into and find a machine that can run it.
I am talking to you from a pentium M literally just because I like the machine. I have powermacs render video, I have a G3 that I do script writing on and display scripts on, I have an amiga I use for music stuff but will be getting it online for IRC.
Nah legit just do you. The thing about technology is just because its <current.year>, that doesn’t mean you need current hardware. PLL laughs at me but that idiot also wastes money so whatever. To each their own.
I dare you to get a lone terminal and a modem card and hook it up to bash on your computer. Go.
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I kept a vt320 in the basement for 10 years wanting to do something like this:
But in the end just threw it away as I wasn’t really going anywhere with it…
That should be far in the past enough, methinks
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I double down and double dare you for this one! 
c
You don’t run this thread you can’t tell me what to do
(I was gunna set up ssh on an amiga)
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Only acceptable if you mod it with this:
No thats stupid and slow
If your crazy then I’m just as crazy as you are. 80x28 text mode on a CRT is just feels comfy to me.
Short of getting a dedicated terminal, an old netbook with a VGA port and a CRT monitor is a nice combo.
Unfortunately pre-90’s PC stuff is well and truly in the “rare and retro” category on ebay and the like. Hard to get a good price.
If you want to go further back, you may have better luck, CPM compatible Z80 computer kits are not too hard to find. Good luck with software though.
I do miss CRT’s in some weird way.
What I’m thinking of looking for would be a running period correct system so that I can see how things were done before my time.
Unfortunately older Windows based PC’s from post 2000 are merely just old computers down. Sort of like how some old cars never really become classics.
Don’t get me wrong I have a few old computers from that era where it would be fun to set them up and have a play out if nostalgia.
I’m in a fortunate position where I can depending on what I find allow there to be the budget to get something special.
No.
I used a 286 DOS based machine as a serial console for majority of my IT career in the data center and pushed that thing around on a trolley up until 2018 (iLO? Never heard of her). Because model “M” AT keyboard, that’s why! I was the crazy person there but also the only one who knows where the bodies are buried.
It is still here and working, now it’s a DOS “gaming” machine and the CRT croaked but I have some weird EIZO LCD 18" display from back in the day that scales up all CGA/EGA/VGA DOS modes perfectly that I can’t even say I’m using an LCD.
Also, always have ready to go 386-40, 486-80 (T.I. CPU, why… WHY GOD does this even exist!?) and an Pentium MMX 166 for gaming experience of the era.
After this, you can do P4 with any DX9.0 AGP or PCIe level graphics card because once gaming moved past 1997, I don’t know of a single title that would work only on a pentium and not work on a Pentium 4 or AMD AthlonXP.
I am still not sure what exact kind of experience you are looking for but if it’s only using DOS as a terminal to a linux machine, you can get any board with AT connector if it’s about best keyboard ever and you don’t need the stupid windows key (is CTRL+ESC really so hard to do that we need a dedicated key for a thing that does not work?)
I personally have a strange fetish in installing DOS 5.0 and windows 3.11 for workgroups, it soothes me when the darkness gets too close.
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