strange remark about your collection?

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: A (working) system from 1980 still does what it does in 1980, and in some cases, with recently designed add-ons (like disk emulators with ancient interfaces that use modern FLASH memory, or Ethernet interfaces for machines that never had Ethernet back in the day), *more* than they ever did, but what's changed is what we all expect out of a "computer"... We always processed files, compiled programs, printed images (even if in ASCII art), played music, played games, and more. The data rates and bandwidths and visual/auditory quality keep going up and up, so that what's common now was impossible to achieve with home gear, or at best a very big deal. I certainly play more high-res graphic games than I play text-based console games these days (compared with 1982 when I had a C-64 for video games, and a PET for text/character-graphic games), and the same trend goes for the less computer-involved public who used to game on Atari or NES or whatever before there were massive GPUs for PCs or gaming consoles. At least when you set up an Atari 2600 these days, there's a line of folks who want to play, just for the nostalgia, because it's something *they* remember doing 25 years ago. "They" never sat down at a VT100 or a printing console and installed an operating system (or at least *very* few did). But I hear you - I get asked all the time, "but what's it _good_ for?" I compare it to building ships in bottles - not a productive activity, but an entertaining one. That explanation seems to deflect most of the odd looks. Most. -ethan