The people I'm following on the internet put me inside a small but vibrant retrocomputing bubble. When this is combined with the synthwave composers I tend to listen lately, I'm being transported to my earlier years on this planet, repeatedly. The fact that I have grown with a Commodore 64, 486 systems, boomboxes and big Hi-Fi racks makes this a rather harsh, but enjoyable ride every time.
While small, I have my trove of old things. PalmOS devices, MiniDisc decks, an enjoyable vintage HiFi system among other things. As I use these older devices (MiniDisc systems sound nice, btw.), I wonder why we used to dislike some aspects of these things then, or love them now. There's a big question there, and while nostalgia is a big factor, I don't think it paints the complete picture.
See, nostalgia is the longing for a "better" past. Not technologically, but emotionally. Longing for a life less complicated, with less responsibilities, with saner weather, less crowded cities and other small joys. On the other hand, we find a value in this long discontinued, old-fashioned items. They are simpler, built better, can be repaired, have better qualities where it matters, and their little quirks. However, I think there's another small, but crucial reason we hold them close and dear.
We can overcome their shortcomings with better technology of their tomorrow. All the retro technology we love to use today had their shortcomings on their heyday. In old PC days, disks were small and slow, computers made us wait, they were noisy and big, and didn't allow us to connect anywhere or fast if they did. Now, all these are overcame with neat solutions. There are floppy emulators which accept SD cards, IDE disk drives are replaced with CF cards, MiniDiscs can be recorded from your browser, better audio can be ripped from old CDs and verified instantly for quality, old systems can be connected to networks (see Marchintosh or SDF Vintage Systems), and even to the internet with modern electronics... In short, we removed their limitations and integrated them to our more modern worlds with their own terms while preserving their best qualities. This is no less than a miracle.
I have seen someone resurrected their first PC faithful to its original specs, and then some. There are new AppleTalk hardware is being designed for older Apple systems, somebody wrote a TOTP application for PlamOS. Legacy Macs, Amigas and older Windows systems get modern browsers as their OS and computing power allows. Even new demos are being written for old systems like Commodore64 (See the demo “NINE”) to push their limits even further.
In other words, we have not done developing new things for the older hardware, and continue to extract more performance and utility from them. However, paradoxically, the new things we do with these old systems is enabled by the new technology we built on top of them over the years.
As a result, Today's retrocomputing and nostalgia becomes something bigger than the items and the emotions it carries in the first place. Resurrecting these old systems and things not only allow us to relive the parts of the past we cherish, but to carry these systems to future and give them a proper second life, because while these systems are old, they can be useful, or enable us to do things we can't do as effectively with the new tools.
I think we should continue doing this not only because it’s fun, but it’s beneficial to everyone and everything involved in the process. Because while we develop things, we make tradeoffs, and we can’t understand what we lost in the process, if we can’t look back and relive and cherish the things we had back then.
Until next time, Be kind.