
I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer - zdw
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/why-30-year-old-macintosh-works-better-todays/591154/
======
johnzim
Every time I consider the simplicity of computing in the early 90s (when I was
a kid) I have a pang of nostalgia.

We've made some wonderful things together as an industry but the author
reminded me of something poignant in his last paragraph.

When I was younger I used to strive to keep my computer running as long as
possible. I relished the idea that in the future, it would never need to turn
off. Now I live a life where I seem to be hoping to do the exact opposite.

~~~
speedplane
> Every time I consider the simplicity of computing in the early 90s (when I
> was a kid) I have a pang of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a very subjective thing. Today, people fondly reminisce their
first BASIC application or developing their first program that created a
network socket. In the future, the old hats may look back longingly over
setting up their first multi-server cluster or modifying an app to take
advantage of parallelism or a GPU. Nostalgia isn't going anywhere.

~~~
iamnothere
Personally I think nostalgia is a proxy for a generalized desire for
simplicity. Most people don't long for the days of swapping out 10 different
floppy disks to install an operating system, or of messing around with IRQ/DMA
and UART settings to get a modem configured. It's the simple things (like
BASIC) that are remembered and missed.

~~~
yters
Maybe something like a cheap Chromebook that boots into something like BASIC
where it's easy to write simple PRINT and GOTO based programs, draw stuff on
the screen, and beep and boop the sound card.

It's having access to simple and easily composable basic elements, like Legos,
that made computing so accessible back in the day. Computer gaming was my big
motivation.

So, this simple platform also needs a decent collection of fun and hackable
games, and other useful applications.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Or just boot into Emacs - which one can do e.g. via
[https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm](https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm)

~~~
cameronbrown
Emacs is great. It's got a calendar and a web browser and even comes with a
text editor. What else do you need from a desktop?

------
jmkni
> More sophisticated than MacWrite, Apple’s word processor, the program is
> still extremely basic—the only reason I chose (Microsoft) Word was so I
> could open the file on my modern Mac to edit and file it.

That's a pretty interesting sentence, modern Macs can't work with a document
created using 1980's MacWrite, but they can work with a document created using
1980's Microsoft Word, by using a modern version of Microsoft Word.

------
0898
"I glance past the small form of the Macintosh and ponder that idea while this
file saves. The drone of the disk and the fan seems to lull into a resonant
frequency, with the desk, the chair, and my body and brain connected to them."

I remember this feeling.

~~~
Townley
Whenever my normally-silent macbook needs to fire on its fans (compilation, DB
restores, or any mid-sized 3D render) I love the audible reminder of how
unfathomably hard it's working, and (by extension) what cool stuff is going on
behind the scenes.

------
leoc
That keyboard, the M0116 "Apple Standard Keyboard"
[https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Standard_Keyboard](https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Standard_Keyboard)
, is one of the finest mechanical keyboards ever:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y4fueemzcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y4fueemzcM)
. Unfortunately the ALPS Orange switches don't tend to age well at all, but
while they're in good condition they're fantastic.

Meanwhile, from the everything-old-is-new-again department, note the F-keyless
Mac keyboard ... and a Mac line largely bifurcated between underpowered-yet-
expensive all-in-ones and multi-thousand-dollar modular systems priced to
fleece the employers of creative professionals.

------
mynameishere
_By today’s standards the machine is a dinosaur. It boasts a nine-inch black-
and-white display._

That was pretty ancient-seeming back then. At least, as a kid, I couldn't
fathom what they were thinking. It made the old Apple II seem better, and
certainly anything from Commodore blew it straight out of the water. That was
my impression then anyway.

~~~
flomo
Atari ST had a similar hires/hicontrast black-on-white designed for text
display monitor available. If Commodore sold anything similar, I never saw it.

~~~
LocalH
Commodore had the A2024 monitor. 1024x800 for NTSC and 1024x1024 for PAL.

[https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id...](https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=863)

~~~
flomo
Sounds like an interesting hack :) But from the picture its unclear if it had
the sharp bright pixels of the old toaster Macs.

------
flomo
> The version I have retailed for $3,900, or about $8,400 in 2019 dollars.

Had a similar Mac SE with 1MB RAM and 20MB HD. From the university store it
was student priced under $2500 with the standard ADB keyboard (iirc $130 and
normally not included!), an Imagewriter II printer ($600), Microsoft Word 4
($300), and SuperPaint ($100). Still pricy but just to give folks an idea on
the retail markup on Macs back then. Plus the dealers often quoted more than
sticker.

------
timonoko
I was programming ESP8266 yesterday and I noticed I felt acute distress of the
program size, whopping 250 kilobytes, only 40% left. This was a latent memory
from 1970's when 250 single bytes was aplenty and enough for almost anything.

~~~
tluyben2
256 kilobytes was called a double mega on MSX systems and was used in very
large games mostly. They would be cartridges, mostly from Konami, that had
that whopping amount of game on it. Strange to think that most webpages are
larger than that now.

------
reaperducer
_I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer_

A former colleague wrote this on a 36-year-old computer earlier this year:
[http://wayne.lorentz.me/This_TRS-80/](http://wayne.lorentz.me/This_TRS-80/)

The tl;dr version is that it has a better keyboard than any modern laptop,
runs forever on AA batteries, and is a distraction-free zone.

~~~
jhbadger
I have one myself. But it is important to know its limitations -- most notably
a maximum of 32K (which like on a modern smartphone, is both RAM and storage).
So you are at best going to be writing very short documents. Which is why it
was very popular among newspaper journalists writing columns in the field --
they would use a modem to transfer their column (often only a few paragraphs)
to their editor.

------
blakespot
It’s not magic. Some of us get the appeal of vintage machines, but it’s not
magic that these systems work. I have a large room full of them that I use
daily.

[https://www.bytecellar.com/photo_pano.html](https://www.bytecellar.com/photo_pano.html)

I’m glad that this article is out there, though.

~~~
mysterydip
Offtopic, but that panorama made me wonder if there's a photo equivalent to
fix the fisheye like they do in raycasting engines:
[http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/rayc8.html](http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/rayc8.html)

------
kazinator
> _This [power supply and hard drive being loud] is the experience a computer
> user would have had every time she booted up her Macintosh SE, a popular
> all-in-one computer sold by Apple from 1987 to 1990._

A lot of that is from the hardware being 30 years old. Fans and drives get
louder.

------
santafe
There were so many nice computers with operating systems sporting cool
features and the author picked the least interesting one. We already seen this
type of "look, i wrote text on my old apple" blogposts so many times. This is
terribly sad.

------
sys_64738
Seems pretty advanced compared to the UNIX ed command I started typing with
back in 1976.

~~~
Annatar
ed is not bad at all once one groks the concepts behind it. I still use it in
a jiffy when I want to edit just one or two lines of text on the quick.

------
LyndsySimon
I wonder how many people who aren’t traditional terminal users would benefit
from using a terminal-based editor, like vim, emacs, or even nano?

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
I don’t like hyperlinks in an article. I really prefer a footnote, so I can
see the link directly before clicking on it.

~~~
anderspitman
Firefox and Chrome both show links in the bottom left of the screen when you
hover over them. Not sure about other browsers.

~~~
extra88
In Safari, Show Status Bar must be enabled to do the same thing.

