- not everything needs to be connected to the internet. it's nice to have an old simple system that is secure because it's connected to nothing. it's solid, reliable and doesn't need megabytes or gigabyte of updates to keep secure.
solid hardware built to last. this is selection bias at it's best mind as the ones we collect are the ones that have survived and not the flimsy cheap systems that died early. problems that do exist have been rectified or worked around so there should be no nasty shocks in the next 10 years with them.
single tasking. it allows us to focus on doing one thing and doing it well. we've grown too used to having 10-20 programs running at same time and swapping between them. it can be beneficial to concentrate on just one thing avoid distractions.
- 6.7k for a text editor is luxury on such a micro system.
use ted.com https://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TED
<3k. and will do all you want.
- seeing video of the game back in the day was mind blowing. more so when you realised it was written in basic the slow clumsy interpreted language of the 1980s.
- not a laptop but a psion ii. the companies accountant borrowed a psion ii and a landrover to do a job in back of nowhere rural ireland. he needed the landrover to get to the site where no road vehicle not 4x4 would go. he needed the psion for stock taking and a few other tasks.
psion ii is a brick that wouldn't fit in briefcase so was in his hand when going to the car. put it on roof while he opened the door and forgot about it.
got to the motorway before he remembered it and braked, which flung the psion off the roof onto the road ahead of him and which he then drove over. pulled over. retrieved it. it was fine.
was telling another psion owner in ireland this story and they told me of a different accountant who ran over their psion ii with a range rover. and again it was fine.
- worked fine when it defaulted to english and ireland where i'm located.
- it's really neat but i don't think i'd risk putting it in my wallet or pocket.
my fave business card remains kevin mitnicks locking pick business card. https://cleverbusinesscards.com/lock-pick-business-card/
- perhaps a cutoff point would be 32bit os or less. cpm, dos, os/2 and it's pretty retro. anything with a 64bit os modern windows or linux is not applicable to this site?
- I would prefer to stick to the bounds of good taste than a hard cutoff. IRIX on SGI equipment from the 1990s was 64-bit. It would be a shame to not post anything for that kit because it is 64-bit. iPod is on its way to be vintage / retro since. And what about the revive 800xl built totally on modern FPGA kit - an Atari with native HDMI.
At this point my post is going to tumbleweed along as it has not received a single upvote and will never see the front page. And I am ok with it if that is the will of the site.
- as soon as i hit enter i remembered the early 64 bit systems from the 90s PLUS the mainframes we're now emulating in micro systems like https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/pidp-11-review
perhaps a better definition would be 2 out of 3 of ancient, obsolete, legendary?
- Tbh. I spent a lot of time thinking on this today. My self regulation was to post an interesting cyberdeck link on “Cyberdeck Thursday”. Mostly im suckered by ones that harken back to gas plasma displays or look futuristic in some way.
Ultimately, I want to see this site succeed and grow . So many amazing things I’ve seen and learned about.
- some of the early laptops had real cyberdeck vibes
- lcd was a wonderful display tehnology. so much better to my mind than modern screens in outdoor use. i often find i have to turn around or shade the screen to get bright light/sun off the screen before i can read it. with lcd it made it easier to read.
my fave was the screen of the olpc which could be b&w lcd or colour screen depending on config. which also saved a lot of power in b&w mode.
- i've loved the of the model 100 since i first saw them. have always kept an eye out for similar form factors. not carrying around a huge fragile screen. not having to power said screen when a small one would be enough for my simple needs.
the cambridge z88 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88
the alphasmart dana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
the clockworkpi devterm https://www.clockworkpi.com/shop
some day i'll just have to bite the bullet and buy one of them :-)
- More
You’ve clearly not owned Atari gear :-). The keyboard eventually goes. I think I’m on #3 for my Atari 1200. I never owned an ST so I cannot speak to the durability of those devices.
as a fan of sinclair i know about bad keyboards :-) but they could be repaired. there was a thriving market in add on real keyboards. looking today and i can find
https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/06/14/a-zx81-replacement-mech.../
which for a system over 40 years old is not too shabby.
it's not like some modern machines where if the keyboard was broken by someone eating toast nearby the machine can only be fixed by the manufacturer for considerable cost.