Museums

js at cimmeri.com wrote: Good questions, John. My computer of choice is the Amiga. While I'm still trying to get to the bottom of my fascination with the Amiga, one of the reasons is because I grew up with the machine. Many summers between high school years I spent programming, and learning, and hacking, and so on. But also because of the community that was built around this special machine. During the late 80's and early 90's, the IBMs and clones had already taken a pretty good foothold, and so the majority of the software/hardware support for was PCs. This divide created a stronger minority, and the need to stick together produced pretty strong devotees. If you look at places like amiga.org, english amiga board, amigaworld, etc --- this devotion dies hard! The amiga was special in terms of design and held several technical advantages over designs at the time(and some might argue, as I've seen recently, some aspects of today's designs) We were different, and we were better. And we had personality. I spent large sums of money (credit, actually) upgrading my A500 to add hard drive, faster processor, more memory, etc. This held me off until Feb 1998 where I just couldn't deny the technology advances that PC's had made. And the desire to finally have access to all of the software available for Windows. Amiga freeware/shareware was good, and fairly robust, but just couldn't touch the PC base. So I also like playing with my old amiga because older technology is more accessible to the hobbyist. It is often easier to understand. Affordable tools can deal with the single-digit megahertz clocks in comparison to single-digit gigahertz. Cheap logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, etc can be used. And it's more discrete. Less condensed. Getting to the heart is easier. And plus, it's unique. Not everyone has/had one, but they were popular enough. I can't tell you how many people I run into that say, "Oh, Amigas. Yeah, I had a 500. I loved that machine." I hear that all the time. So I recently decommissioned the PII 333mhz Dell I bought in 1998. It was powered on for about 11 years in a row -- had uptimes of 1.5years in some cases. Zero hardware failure. It was worth the $3k I paid for it in 1998. But do I care about it? No. It seems hardly different from the P4 that replaced it. Or the quad core that replaced that. Have there been technological advances? Definitely. But there's just no soul. Sometimes I ran Windows, sometimes Linux. So it's not really the OS. It's something that is hard to put my finger on. I've heard and seen the Mac crowd. And many amigans went the way of the Mac. And I've seen some people talk about their Macs in sort of the same way I talk(ed) about the amiga. But there's just something about Apple that I just can't stand. I'm not sure if it's the elitist attitude, or the prices, or the forced-lock-ins. I see my current machines as tools. As soon as they lose enough life, I get rid of them, and buy a new one. I simply don't have the same connection with the computer. It just doesn't feel alive. I've seen often that fascination comes with ignorance. You know, sort of the "Anything so technologically advanced is indistinguishable from magic"-concept. And so as I learn more about this stuff, the magic-factor dissipates and unfortunately, I'm left with completely understandable and rationally explainable concepts. And so it ruins the magic somewhat. This has NOT happened w/ the Amiga because I'm left with the feeling of, "oh, these guys were smart." They couldn't do xyz with raw cpu power, but instead used the graphics chip to encode/decode MFM. Or whatever. There's a feeling of ingenuity and cleverness that is either a> not there today b> hidden between so many layers of abstraction that it's nearly impossible to put your finger on it. If I could have lunch with someone famous, I'd pick the designer of the Amiga, or the Atari ST, or the TRS-80, or maybe some early apples even. How about someone who designs current motherboards for PCs?? Not so much. While I think that the standard off-the-shelf dell/gateway(whatever ibm clone here) cannot be ignored for their role in making computers more available, cheaper, and more powerful, I just don't see their uniqueness. What is it about PCs today that separates them from ones five years ago, or 10 years ago? Clock speed? Memory? Windows 3.1 -> Vista? More colors? Better sound? Are there groups of young people today that find themselves emotionally attached to the computers of today? Last, but not least, I think it's interesting the whole lifetime of a technology in relation to supply and demand. 1. Best out there 2. Drops in price 3. Becomes commodity 4. Becomes obsolete 5. Has no value. 6. Time passes. 7. Becomes rare 8. Prices increase 9. Niche market is formed. Once something becomes obsolete, it's not often preserved because it seems to have no value, and then you're posting on goofy forums and paying $300 years later to get your hands on one. I apologize for my verbosity. Keith