I’d love to have a reason to pick up an 80’s microcomputer. I had a TI-99/4A but could never afford the peripheral expansion box. I could now though, but what would I do with it?
I had the TI but what I really wanted was an Atari 800 or Apple II. I really wish I could think of something to do with one of these. I’ve thought about getting one and writing some journaling software for it to give me a reason to sit down at the console every day or two, but then I remember how awful those old keyboards were and generally how unpleasant these machines were.
Probably best to leave my nostalgia intact and stick to modern computers.
It's an itch I scratch when I come across something that seems interesting, and is priced right (usually, this means "free").
For instance: I've got a teletype. It's not as impressive as it sounds; it's a little TI SilentWriter that prints on rolled fax paper with a thermal head and talks RS-232. I recycled it from an equipment cabinet we were replacing in 2008, where it looked like it'd been sitting there untouched -- and switched on -- for the past 20 years. It was fun getting that working correctly with a modern Linux box (no, 3-wire serial is Not Good Enough), and one of these days I'd like to put a Linux box inside of it. (I've even got some proper MAX323 chips here...somewhere...to do it "right", but I haven't decided yet what other hardware to use for it. But I'm not dead yet -- there's still time!)
Or: I once scored an 8088 clone machine with two low-density 5.25" floppy drives, Hercules graphics, no hard drive or evidence that it ever had one, and 10base2 Ethernet built into the motherboard. That was a fun thing to get online with on the post-dotbomb Internet. I even had a graphical web browser working and an FTP server -- at the same time -- and I also got it booting over the network as was probably always its intent. I got to spend some quality time at the local computer shop (RIP) buying stuff from their junk bin in the back corner to get it to happen, which was a hoot.
Someone gave me a trash-picked 24" G4 iMac nearly a decade ago. That was a very strange and beautiful machine, and it seemed like it would be quick enough to use in the garage for reading manuals and playing music from Spotify. It failed miserably at both tasks; it seemed like a bad combination of being too old to run current software, and too new to be interesting enough for people smarter than me to do clever things with. I spent more time on that box than I should have, since a freebie x86 closet laptop did both of those things easily, so utility won.
(I remember playing games on the Atari 800 back in the day. If I had one today, I'd probably try to find a CRT TV and do that again.)
There will never be a good reason besides you wanting it. That’s the best it’ll ever be.
A couple years back I promised I’d add Tektronix graphics to VTE (and, therefore, Gnome Terminal), and have, since, been looking for a VT230/240/330 to use as a reference implementation, but never found one. Not even a WYSE with graphics (their model numbering was a mess - I’m not sure I have have a list of the models I could use).
If I ever get a real DEC VT, I’ll even throw ReGIS in into the mix.
That’s not really a good reason. At best, it’s an excuse.
I remember the keyboard being a nice mechanical one. The 2xx and later were those silicon dome ones. I think the 125 had the graphic capabilities I need, but the later ones are much more common.
Fair enough. I've seen many excellent keyboards beaten into unusable states in university labs. The only ones that can resist that kind of environment are the IBM Model M and F's (few universities were rich enough for beam spring ones, even fewer for Hall-effect ones)
I had the TI but what I really wanted was an Atari 800 or Apple II. I really wish I could think of something to do with one of these. I’ve thought about getting one and writing some journaling software for it to give me a reason to sit down at the console every day or two, but then I remember how awful those old keyboards were and generally how unpleasant these machines were.
Probably best to leave my nostalgia intact and stick to modern computers.