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Post beautiful retro computers.

Altazor

Altazor

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,272
Chile
sooperkool said:
Atari_800XL_Plain_White.jpg


Atari 800 XL
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this one right here (or maybe the 600 XL, can't quite remember) was the first console/computer I ever played. I think I was around 3 years old, and the Atari wasn't even my dad's - it was a hand-me-down from one of my uncles. First game I remember playing with my old man (which is a precious memory for me): Montezuma's Revenge.

Great times.
 

Deleted member 29464

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 1, 2017
3,121
Why did a lot of things have that dirty grey or beige colour back then? I never liked that look and felt it looked outdated super fast, made offices look like soul-destroying hell.
 
m_shortpants

m_shortpants

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,662
I had this computer circa 2004. Sony made some of best products before Apple became known as the leader in industrial design.

133297-sony-vaio-vgc-ra710g-1367.jpg
 
Herne

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,391
Pmichael said:
CRT makes every computer retro setup ugly.
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I disagree!

C64c-system.jpg


The 1084S monitor was not designed for the C64C (that would be the 1802) but it looks great with it. Plus you couldn't do what they did with the CBM II series machines CRT monitor with a flat screen, and the effect would be ruined.
 
butalala

butalala

Member
Nov 24, 2017
5,472
Could someone who is more knowledgable about the subject explain the design trend of the all in one keyboard and computer?
 
RPTGB

RPTGB

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,189
UK
As a zx spectrum owning kid in the early-mid 80's I always yearned for the SAM coupe, which was sort of a supercharged version of the UK's favourite home computer, again it had that great hard edge look to it.

Flopped terribly though, even though it was a decent bit of kit.

SAM_Coup%C3%A9.jpg

sam-coupe-main-616x345.png
 
maximumzero

maximumzero

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,134
New Orleans, LA
vatstep said:
I kinda liked the look of the old Packard Bell computers back in the day, especially the speakers latched on to the monitor.

sf2dD.jpg
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That's damn close to the first computer my family purchased back in the early nineties, at least in the case design. We had a 486SX at 25mhz with 4MB of RAM and a 200MB Hard Drive. I later upgraded the RAM to 8MB.

Nostalgia, man.

Also, fuck yeah, Megarace!
 
RPTGB

RPTGB

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,189
UK
butalala said:
Could someone who is more knowledgable about the subject explain the design trend of the all in one keyboard and computer?
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I'm guessing, it's because tape and floppy drives were still humongous things at the time? Also from a cost point of view and the fact that a lot of 80 Home computers were hooked up to regular TV sets in homes rather than expensive monitors, it was easier and cheaper to just house the basics needs of the system in one unit.

The first Amiga's came with a separate modulator that you had to stick in the back before hooking it up to your top of the range 14inch portable TV ;)

The kickstarted revamp of the ZX spectrum is still keeping that flame alive!

zx-spectrum-next.jpg
 
Herne

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,391
butalala said:
Could someone who is more knowledgable about the subject explain the design trend of the all in one keyboard and computer?
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The first personal computers were the 1977 Trinity in the Commodore PET, the Apple II (in a mass market way anyway) and the Tandy TRS-80. These were all relatively big modular computers - the PET even opened up it's case like a car hood. Eventually cheaper chips were available and you had Atari in 1979 with their 400 and 800, Commodore in 1980 with the VIC-20, so-called "home" computers with a smaller footprint and no integrated monitor or disk drives. Basically just where the market would have naturally gone anyway. Lesser components, chips coming down in prices all the time meant they could make smaller computers meant for the mass market. Few years down the line then you had 3.5" disk drives which were small enough to fit into these contained home computers, so you have stuff like the Amiga 500 and Atari ST, etc.

Take a look at one of the early disk drives you could get for the Commodore PET -

1200px-Commodore_CBM_2001_%26_8050.jpg


That's a dual disk drive, but you get the idea.

The PC market never really went that way as modularity and expandability was it's strength.
 
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bionic77

bionic77

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,931
Herne said:
I disagree!

C64c-system.jpg


The 1084S monitor was not designed for the C64C (that would be the 1802) but it looks great with it. Plus you couldn't do what they did with the CBM II series machines CRT monitor with a flat screen, and the effect would be ruined.
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Color CRT monitors were unheard of with me and my friends in the early 80s.

I saw plenty of monochrome monitors back then but to have a color monitor in the early 80s you had to be a baller. All of us just hooked our shit up to a tv if you wanted to play a game in color.
 
Megadragon15

Megadragon15

Member
Oct 27, 2017
649
Herne said:
The first personal computers were the Commodore PET, the Apple II (in a mass market way anyway) and the Tandy TRS-80. These were all relatively big modular computers - the PET even opened up it's case like a car hood. Eventually cheaper chips were available and you had Atari in 1979 with their 400 and 800, Commodore in 1980 with the VIC-20, so-called "home" computers with a smaller footprint and no integrated monitor or disk drives. Basically just where the market would have naturally gone anyway.
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No mention of the Altair 8000.
 
maximumzero

maximumzero

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,134
New Orleans, LA
I have a personal fondness for the eMac because it was the first Apple computer I purchased myself back in 2003. I was in my senior year of high school and I wanted something to use throughout college. I was sick of Windows' bullshit and with the release of 10.2 Jaguar OS X seemed to be finally ready for primetime.

02emac_3q.jpg


I opted for the 1Ghz G4 model with 1GB of RAM, the Superdrive, and a 160GB HDD. I recently came across the receipt for it and I paid WAY more for it than I remember because I was opting for most of the upgrade options. I think it was easily over $2000, and that was with the educational discount. A comparable iMac with the same specs would have been much more though, which is why I was okay with opting for the CRT.

I still have it in the closet at my parents house. The hard drive up and died I believe in 2009, so that'll need replacing, but I don't have the heart to toss it because it was my first step into a bigger world. One day I'll go nuts and drop a small SSD in there for shits/giggles. I'm hoping no capacitors leak or anything as I'd love to load it up with old educational software and media (Movies, TV, etc.) for my kids to use someday. I think someone recently found a way to modify the ROM to boot into OS 9 too, which is even better since so much of the edutainment software from my use was back in the mid-90s.
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,650
300px-IBM_5100_-_MfK_Bern.jpg

IBM 5100. I guess I like it because of Steins;Gate, but I love the design for whatever reason no matter how archaic it is.
 
Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,460
Three pages and no posts of original C64 design?! What is wrong with all of you!

Commodore-64-Computer-FL.jpg

Also, A500, which I think is the most insane home computer ever made:
amiga500.jpg
 
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Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,460
khaz said:
I love all-in-one, computers in a keyboard. I'm a bit sad this form factor went away.

The Amiga 1200 is probably my favourite design, even though I never had one or even saw one in real life.
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I had it (I lived in Europe, and Amigas were everywhere there). It was a really good computer, but the case design aged worse than the A500 design IMO, and A1200 was also released around the time when Amiga was already losings its edge compared to Windows PC machines. It was kind of a bittersweet computer for me, because it was a great Amiga computer (you could even squeeze a small 3.5" HDD into it, which made it truly awesome) but I was also well aware that the real action was starting to be elsewhere. Even demoscene was starting to move to PC around that time.
 
Herne

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,391
Lord Error said:
Three pages and no posts of original C64 design?! What is wrong with all of you!

Commodore-64-Computer-FL.jpg
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I love the old breadbin but the C64C has it beat in every way. Also I can't help but resent it because to cut the motherboard down enough to fit into the VIC-20 case they cut the high speed serial lines for the disk drive, meaning we got to use the same slow as shit 1541 as the VIC. I know the designer (Bob Russell) who put those traces in and had a fit when he found them cut.

Quoting from Brian Bagnall's Commodore - A Company On The Edge -

Russell finally received a C64 circuit board and began examining the finished product. "I'm doing tests and everything is working fine because we hadn't written the high-speed code yet," he recalls. "Then I looked at the board and said, 'Where are the high-speed lines?'"
Someone on the west coast had changed Russell's schematic. "The production guys took them off when they did the production boards. I put high-speed lines on and they deleted them," he says.
When Russell realized what happened, he was livid. "I threw a hell of a fit, " he recalls. He was determined to find out why someone had neutered his high-speed serial bus. "I tracked it down and it was the production engineers in California who cut it off."
To make the board fit in the cramped VIC-20 case, the engineers removed the traces for the high-speed lines. "The guys that actually did the production board layout cut off the signals to save some money," explains Russell. "They thought, 'Why are these extra lines running to these signal pins?' So they chopped them off and they screwed us." It was like building an eight-cylinder engine with eight fuel lines and cutting off seven of them.
Russell was determined to rescue the disastrous situation. "I ran down to Charlie (Winterble), throwing a total fit. He says, 'Well is it still functional?' I said, 'Yeah, it still works as a 1540.'"
Winterble looked into the situation and found out the production facility had manufactured too many circuit boards already. "We couldn't change it after hundreds of thousands of PCBs were in production," laments Russell.
Stopping production on the C64 and restarting it with a new design was out of the question. "Technically it would have been possible, but you've got to realize, they were already moving their production and going to ship," says Russell. "If I had done that, it would have been several weeks until I got a finished unit for evaluation."
If Russell attempted to make these changes now, early customers would be extremely unhappy. "There would have been a bunch of machines out there that would have been incompatible," he explains.
It was now pointless to design a faster 1541 drive. "We never bothered spinning another drive," says Russell. "The 1541 became just a 1540 with minor software changes." The deletion of a few metal circuit traces ultimately resulted in millions of wasted hours for C64 owners.
Incredibly, the drive became even slower when they attempted to make the 1541 compatible with the VIC-20. "The biggest compatibility pain in the butt was that stupid VIC-20 disk drive," says Charpentier. "We didn't want to do it but marketing really forced us into it."
 
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Altazor

Altazor

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Oct 25, 2017
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Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,460
Herne said:
I love the old breadbin but the C64C has it beat in every way.
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Perhaps - but not in terms of looks!

Also I can't help but resent it because to cut the motherboard down enough to fit into the VIC-20 case they cut the high speed serial lines for the disk drive, meaning we got to use the same slow as shit 1541 as the VIC. I know the designer who put those traces in and had a fit when he found them cut was told once he wasted millions of people's hours due to that decision (which wasn't even his).
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Oh man, was the drive slow on those things. If you had Turbo on the cartridge, it helped immensely though. Don't even get me started on cassette tape head azimuth adjustment, lol.

bionic77 said:
Slightly off topic. Remember how shit computer joysticks were in the early 80s?

My friend had a C64 and it was amazing but looking back on it those joysticks were horrible.
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Ah the Quick Shot 2. I had that thing. We all did. It was.. better than some other choices, I guess, lol. Competition Pro was quality stuff though.

Joystick_Competition_PRO.JPG
 
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Pop-O-Matic

Pop-O-Matic

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,056
Fuck, it might be too new or this thread (mid 00s) and it's certainly too "gamery" for Era's ultra-snobby, ultra-conservative preference for PC aesthetics, but fuck it, the old alien-head Alienware PCs were the coolest looking shit back in the day:

AQXEH20.jpg

8666717201_761e79a54f.jpg

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Zutrax

Zutrax

"This guy are sick"
Member
Oct 31, 2017
4,236
Does anyone here have a good resource on what parts I'd need to order to be able to build an optimal "late 90's early 00's" PC specifically for DOSBOX gaming? I've done a lot of looking around and it's kind of hard to find anything streamlined. This thread is making me want to take that project up again.
 
Fedeuy

Fedeuy

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
903
i have lots of retro pcs, but not in nice cases, lol.
I can post some hardware pics if you guys want, maybe get a retro pc thread ot going?
 
Fedeuy

Fedeuy

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
903
Zutrax said:
Does anyone here have a good resource on what parts I'd need to order to be able to build an optimal "late 90's early 00's" PC specifically for DOSBOX gaming? I've done a lot of looking around and it's kind of hard to find anything streamlined. This thread is making me want to take that project up again.
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Sorry for the DP, but i can help you with this,.
We should really get an OT, theres a lot of things to discuss.
 
maximumzero

maximumzero

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,134
New Orleans, LA
Zutrax said:
Does anyone here have a good resource on what parts I'd need to order to be able to build an optimal "late 90's early 00's" PC specifically for DOSBOX gaming? I've done a lot of looking around and it's kind of hard to find anything streamlined. This thread is making me want to take that project up again.
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I love LGR's retro builds, maybe this can help you out:



 
Herne

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,391
Lord Error said:
Perhaps - but not in terms of looks!
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It does for me! I can appreciate the breadbin for it's looks but the C model also beats it in that area for me. Just more modern and in line with the rest of what Commodore was doing at the time. Also much more ergonomic, lower to the desk so it's easier to type on.
 
BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,368
Flaurehn said:
Oh man, when Sony owned the VAIO brand no one made more beautiful computers than them, not even Apple
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Jobs always loved Sony; they were his benchmark.

Funny tangential story. Back in the 80's Jobs went to Japan to tour Sony's facilities. He came back to Apple and with the idea that Apple employees should all wear uniforms like Sony's did. Apple has to delicately and firmly deny the request.
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
Always loved the press MSX Era stuff like this Elan Enterprise 64:

z5Mquhy.jpg


The Sord M5 (failed spectacularly but briefly had the best Namco, Konami and Irem ports):

q6dmsoZ.jpg


This version of the Sony Hit-Bit (MSX)

SqCLJ9m.jpg


And the innovative MIDI capable Yamaha MSX.

BJi9vsY.jpg
 
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khaz

khaz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
274
There was also this wonderful toy from SEGA:

sega-sc-3000h.jpe


It's the SG1000 in computer form, the precursor to the Master System. It came with a cartridge containing a BASIC OS that you could use to code your own game and save them on cassettes like any other home computer of the time.
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
Lord Error said:
Perhaps - but not in terms of looks!


Oh man, was the drive slow on those things. If you had Turbo on the cartridge, it helped immensely though. Don't even get me started on cassette tape head azimuth adjustment, lol.


Ah the Quick Shot 2. I had that thing. We all did. It was.. better than some other choices, I guess, lol. Competition Pro was quality stuff though.

Joystick_Competition_PRO.JPG
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"Innovative and persistent state of the art creaking to let you know through kinetic ergonomics that you moved the stick" also microswitches drowned out by creaking.
 
Altazor

Altazor

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,272
Chile
Found another noteworthy (IMHO) VAIO model. This one is from 1999 (!) and it looks good, sorta reminds me of the PS4 mixed with a X360 Slim (?!). Can't find the exact model, though.

sony_5.jpg
 
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