29 Sep
2005
29 Sep
'05
4:28 p.m.
You're saying the Apple G4/G5 are vintage? Get real...
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 11:43 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: YATYRD (was: PalmOS no more? :(
Eh. Dump the 10 year rule and cut off at 1994.
I'm serious. The computer world is not a flat, linear space from
1948 to present. Somewhere after the beginning of the pc/appliance
age, computers are qualitatively different.
The culture and tech is different too. You could more easily lump the
mini and mainframe people together than the mini and pc people. When
the computer-user count became in the millions it's simply not the
same.
At some point post-1990 computers became near-pure commodity. It's like
collecting toasters. There are intersting models, but not in the way
that say 1960s or even 1970s are -- pretty much ANY computer from the
70s and even 80s is "interesting". Pretty much anything post-MSDOS is
deadly dull -- with exceptions of course.
Consistency is for machinery.
The problem with dumping the 10 year rule, and putting the cut off at
1994 is that you miss out on some really cool, and classic hardware.
Systems that even if they don't meet the 10 year rule fall into the classic
category in my mind would be the BeBox (and BeOS itself), any SGI IRIX
Workstation, any Alpha capable of running VMS, and any UltraSparc based Sun
box. I'd also include any Amiga HW, including the new Mini-ITX boards, and
the MorphOS boxes. I'm also inclined to include specific pieces of Apple
HW, such as the original G4's running Mac OS 8.6 (yes, they exist) or the
original G5 duals.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |