[vcf-midatlantic] Introduction
Herb Johnson
hjohnson at retrotechnology.info
Tue Aug 14 15:07:12 EDT 2018
Adding my welcome to Nicholas Fiore, who makes a point about his age
(18) and his Apple/Mac collection and future interest in "vintage PC and
Commodore stuff". I know little about Commodores and there's many
members already encouraging you about those; so I'll say nothing about
that. I'm considerably older than you, so "vintage" means something
different to me, I'd guess.
I was going to elaborate, but that ended up being a lecture on the
history of personal computing. That's too long and wasn't called for. It
might start a fight on "what is vintage" or "what is a PC". So I'll make
it simple - a short lecture, he he.
Nicholas, I see your list is mostly computers after the late 1980's;
your oldest machines are the Apple Mac SE and 512K, from the mid-1980's.
And you have some 90's or later Windows-class computers. That's fine -
in fact I think it's good that people are starting to collect and
preserve those. I say "those", because as an older person, 1) I think of
"vintage" as 1980 or earlier, often MUCH earlier and 2) I myself don't
associate "PCs" with "personal computing" in general.
Age kind-of speaks for itself. If you are 60 today, you'd be your age in
1980. So computers before 1980 would be kind of "normal"; now they'd be
vintage, like *me*. That's simple.
To many of us old people, personal computing began in the 1970's, with
either experiences on minicomputers from an earlier time, or with the
CP/M, S-100 and Apple II and other computers available before (and
after) the IBM PC of 1981. Also: many of us have industrial or academic
computing history. In 1980, those institutions were using
mini-computers, from DEC or IBM or HP or a host of other brands nobody
even remembers now. Those are refrigerator-sized computers; still, some
people own them today. Fewer of us, even have some "mainframes" around.
The 80's and 90's also had some industrial desktop computers; SUN, SGI
and other brands. Those became desirable "vintage" computers in the
2000's for their graphics; then IBM-type PC's became faster and cheaper
with better graphics and those lost favor. I think interest is coming
back now, just because they are old.
There's a lot of kinds of vintage computers; this is just a taste. But
not all "PC's", were Windows or MS-DOS (or Mac OS); vintage goes pretty
far back in computing.
The points I'm making, Nicholas, are two. 1) don't worry much about
"being allowed to join" because you are younger that most in this list.
That's fine with me; you will have more interest in stuff *I'm* not
interested in, it's "too new" - that's good! You will preserve it while
I work on something else. 2) Give some consideration to even more
"vintage" stuff than what's in your experiences, and on your list. That
old stuff, led to the stuff of interest to you. So we both have good
reasons, to support each other. Welcome aboard.
Herb Johnson
--
Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA
http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing
email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com
or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
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