17 Jun
2009
17 Jun
'09
2:34 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
They're beautiful in the same sense as a statue is beautiful, but you
can't really interact with them without any software other than take
them apart and put them back together again.
It's the difference between driving a classic race car and just looking
at one which is cordoned off in a museum exhibit. Sure it's pretty and
quite neat, but the only excitement will be in our imagination. It's a
completely different experience.
And okay, granted, to stretch the analogy further, an emulator is like
driving a video game version of a race car instead of the actual one.
I've been trying to stay out of this, but I've just had an
epiphany regarding what the hobby/calling is for me.
I've heard this kind of statement a number of times,
and I can't really argue with the point that a computer
doesn't *do* much without software. But it's never
really had the "ring of truth" for me, and I finally figured
out why. It's the implication that if the computer isn't
*doing* something interesting it *isn't* interesting, and
that's where I differ from some. If one comes at the
I'm with you on this.
Of course I like to obtain at least the boot disk for a classic computer.
If I'm repairing it, I like to be able to boot it afterwards :-). But in
general I am not too interested in all the application software
(languages and utilites probably, but other stuff is not of much interest
_to me_).
But I find beauty (seriously) in the design of some of these classics.
For example, I find the PERQ CPU beautiful. It's beautiful even if I
don't haev POS boot disk. The Philips P850 us an interesting machine to
me, even if all I ever run is programs I've toggled in on the panel
switches. Ditto for the PDP8 and PDP11 actually.