You know some old computers actually did have an RF transmitter, but for audio not video. My Atari STFM had one, but to this day I still can't find any documentation on that feature (no it was not a dream :D ), maybe they were also trying to evade the FCC.
I was sort of on the fence as to whether it was real until the end... I mean you could feasibly make a short run 486 machine today if you wanted to without too much effort (depending on how hard you are willing to try could do SB emulator, FPGA, or the real thing) and stick it in a chonky case, in fact the case and the keyboard would probably be the most expensive parts. But it would probably be a one person super short run labour of love kind of project, and there's not a huge number of people out there who would necessarily appreciate it.
Who knows, maybe this is where the dream turns into reality :D
Had to stop myself from losing several hours watching emails. I’m sure I would have ended up watching all of Teen Girl Squad. Or starting a light switch rave.
My dream computers tend to be handheld personal organizers with secret backdoors to the internet or hidden hacking features. They usually have strange monochrome displays. I love these dreams and wake up with with an intense sense of loss. My android phone is a million times more capable but doesn't spark the childlike hunger I feel for my mystical dream handhelds.
I do feel for those sensibilities. It's like steampunk trying to realize the character in the waking world--but not quite with the full suspension of disbelief.
I got psyched by a dream once, I woke from a dream pleased to realize that the crystal structure from the dream was still here with me. I remember saying (while looking up at the structure), "That's nice usually when you wake up from a dream you don't get to keep things". Then I woke up.
Some of the most silly fun I've had is with KnightOS [0], on a tiny TI-83+. A calculator, monochrome screen, but with a full C compiler on board, but available memory measured in kilobytes.
A PocketChip like device with an Alpine/OpenWRT like OS with a QWERTY keyboard and a clamshell design. But cheap, no more than $100, unlike the OpenPandora.
Mmhh, no. I had a zipit z2, and it was close. Something with a better and slightly bigger keyboard, with the size of a Nintendo DS. Enough to SSH confortabilty and run stuff well under CWM.
I had a dream once that a coworker had discovered, and was trying to understand a mission-critical system running on an old, unusual computer. "Maybe bitwize can help us out here," she said. "This certainly looks like his kind of thing." So I went over.
The computer was a kind of Lisp machine. It had an ordinary CPU, but custom firmware and an unusual boot process: A very small, binary microkernel provided enough of a Lisp environment to bootstrap the rest of the system which, for security reasons, was streamed in in source form over a UART via an attached, dedicated computer (something small like an Arduino). You could literally watch it initialize first the device drivers, then the file systems and network stack, and finally bring up a window system with a decently modern GUI, all by evaluating streamed-in Lisp source, after which the application -- a service that handled arcane business logic for some obscure but important corner of our company -- was loaded and run. I managed to get an editor running and opened the source code of the OS. It was one of the most straightforward, beautiful pieces of code I'd ever seen. Tremendous power could be afforded the user in inspiringly few lines of code, yet still be completely readable and understandable.
Shortly after having this dream I discovered GNU Mes, an attempt to bootstrap the entire GNU universe using a Scheme interpreter and a C compiler that can mutually bootstrap each other.
For me, LispM was half-way down a world-falling-apart backwards-life nightmare. Something very vaguely like: It started happy with a "dancing code" dream, sort of group-collaborative VR-ish with AI. But became things-going-increasingly-badly, with (an old side project's) laptop with camera tracking, VR, and keyboard as multitouch surface, initially working well (mine didn't) but increasingly broken, with full-speed fan hiss (did). Then a hissing-vent MIT office with Symbolics but a space cadet keyboard - "I want this to be fun ... but it's so very clunky". Then IBM PC but C++ and sad baffled "it's not working?!?" no multiple dispatch (pet peeve). Then the hiss and "chunk, chunk chunk chunk" of a (high-school) IBM card punch - "I don't want to do this anymore". Sigh. Then waking up from the nightmare... but only part way.
> GNU Mes
For browsing, here's (a random fork of) mescc[1] and mes[2].
This kind of post on HN usually continues for 5000 words, a dozen pictures with screwdrivers, and a URL where you can login to the machine which is now running 1997-era BSD
For more than 20 years a have a reaccuring dream for a couple of times a year. In the dream I find a shop or flea-market with vintage computers. It is chuck-full of the most wonderful vintage computers, quirky handhelds and other special electronics. I am in heaven but always I am just to late and the place is permanently closing. It is closing hour and I cannot buy anything anymore.
In my dream I always find a flea market with all sorts of vintage electronics, but it's invariably selling for insanely high prices because "retro" has become a fad among greedy collectors hoping to make a quick buck. At least the high prices act as an incentive to keep the stuff out of landfills.
In some respects, we are lucky. Most vintage computers sell for less than they were new. That is before accounting for inflation. Many collectables cost an order of magnitude more (if not more) after accounting for inflation. In other words, there is a better chance that we can afford to relive our childhood than those who had other interests! Then there is the community itself, where it still seems to be possible to get vintage gear on the cheap if they're convinced it will go to a good home.
> Most vintage computers sell for less than they were new. That is before accounting for inflation.
If you base it on original MSRP, I have well north of a million dollars in older and/or vintage hardware, not accounting for inflation. Resell value today? Maybe a couple grand, if I really tried hard enough.
It sort of happened to me in real life in the early 90s. There was a small used music instrument shop in a small street. That Friday afternoon I got in and there was a Rhodes seventy-three, good as new. I lifted the cover and there still were the spare "hammers" in a plastic bag inside. I plugged it in an old amp that was around and it sounded just beautifully. I was a poor student back then, but the nice old guy in the shop told me it was less than $300. OK, I'll be back Monday! The following week, the shop was closed, never to open again.
The next time I've seen a Rhodes 73 for sale a couple years later, it was more than 6 times more expensive. At some point a good 73 cost as much as $8/10000, though they're now down to $4/5000.
> Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS" recalls Ando; 2001 is the year,
A German site picked up the story and created that mockup (which wouldn't've fit the story; the X505 shipped in 2003): https://winfuture.de/news,80151.html
Linux represents business, homogeneity, AWS, Google, webscale. The H*R games represent the fun and wonder of the Internet in the early 2000s.
We, as a civilization, are installing Linux and wiping our H*R installation. You're conflicted about this. It feels like there should be a place for the H*R install too, but where will the money come from?
> Linux represents business, homogeneity, AWS, Google, webscale
That's what Linux represents to you? To me it represents transparency of software, the fact that I can look at my machine and understand everything that it's doing, because all of the secret sauce is easily available for me to see. If it weren't for OSS, I wouldn't have realized that everything is ultimately knowable, no matter how advanced it seems, and that everything was built by some person like me, not handed down to humanity by a remote god.
My dream machine was a room. There was a keyboard/display terminal, but also the program listing was shown (in that band-printer green/white perforated paper style) scrolled the floor where I could do a code walkthrough. There were also 3D pixelated models made in Lego fashion, one of which was a friend of mind Bill in half-scale. It wasn't apparent whether these things were physically implemented or VR--it was indistinguishable. I think I was walking around, either thinking about how to build something or debugging. Chances are that I was working on something that I'd left unsolved during the day that I considered challenging. I had this dream while I was in engineering in the mid-80s.
My dream computer is a GSV Culture Mind asking me if I want to join it exploring the galaxy and then the universe beyond with all my family and friends. And then I wake up with hope.
94 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadThat's quite a vivid imagination he has, for sure. I wonder how much of it was dream and how much of it was fleshed out after the fact.
"Finally, a computer for your lap!"
Tried it with money before too. Just doesn't work.
Not yet anyway :)
Who knows, maybe this is where the dream turns into reality :D
I often wonder if I'm missing out on any gems like this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Bad
Cue the most awesomest chip tune theme you have ever heard and ever will hear in your life.
I got psyched by a dream once, I woke from a dream pleased to realize that the crystal structure from the dream was still here with me. I remember saying (while looking up at the structure), "That's nice usually when you wake up from a dream you don't get to keep things". Then I woke up.
[0] https://knightos.org/
The computer was a kind of Lisp machine. It had an ordinary CPU, but custom firmware and an unusual boot process: A very small, binary microkernel provided enough of a Lisp environment to bootstrap the rest of the system which, for security reasons, was streamed in in source form over a UART via an attached, dedicated computer (something small like an Arduino). You could literally watch it initialize first the device drivers, then the file systems and network stack, and finally bring up a window system with a decently modern GUI, all by evaluating streamed-in Lisp source, after which the application -- a service that handled arcane business logic for some obscure but important corner of our company -- was loaded and run. I managed to get an editor running and opened the source code of the OS. It was one of the most straightforward, beautiful pieces of code I'd ever seen. Tremendous power could be afforded the user in inspiringly few lines of code, yet still be completely readable and understandable.
Shortly after having this dream I discovered GNU Mes, an attempt to bootstrap the entire GNU universe using a Scheme interpreter and a C compiler that can mutually bootstrap each other.
> GNU Mes
For browsing, here's (a random fork of) mescc[1] and mes[2].
[1] https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2/tree/master/module/mescc [2] https://github.com/oriansj/mes-m2/tree/master/src
If you base it on original MSRP, I have well north of a million dollars in older and/or vintage hardware, not accounting for inflation. Resell value today? Maybe a couple grand, if I really tried hard enough.
The next time I've seen a Rhodes 73 for sale a couple years later, it was more than 6 times more expensive. At some point a good 73 cost as much as $8/10000, though they're now down to $4/5000.
> Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS" recalls Ando; 2001 is the year,
A German site picked up the story and created that mockup (which wouldn't've fit the story; the X505 shipped in 2003): https://winfuture.de/news,80151.html
Linux represents business, homogeneity, AWS, Google, webscale. The H*R games represent the fun and wonder of the Internet in the early 2000s.
We, as a civilization, are installing Linux and wiping our H*R installation. You're conflicted about this. It feels like there should be a place for the H*R install too, but where will the money come from?
That's what Linux represents to you? To me it represents transparency of software, the fact that I can look at my machine and understand everything that it's doing, because all of the secret sauce is easily available for me to see. If it weren't for OSS, I wouldn't have realized that everything is ultimately knowable, no matter how advanced it seems, and that everything was built by some person like me, not handed down to humanity by a remote god.
Basically, the exact opposite of what you say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...
They are working on it. An ugly config window on xsnow with Material design style graphics. What is wrong with those people ? /s
Perusing the website further exposed the tragedy. Some brilliant people can't live like the normies. They could learn, though, if they wanted to.