I'm all for using original hardware, I enjoy those more than emulators as well. Except, I don't miss old CRTs. Using a modern LCD on a vintage system doesn't bother me. Even on the IBM 5100, I tend to use the external BNC connector adapted to HDMI and unplug the internal CRT. But sometimes the LCD (or the intermediate adapter to VGA/HDMI) might lose something in translation, some slight color hue or graphic effect.
To me, I'm somewhat concerned on the "health risk" of CRTs - I know there is no direct evidence about it. But they're fundamentally like old radar systems, using a directed beam. I'm not really that paranoid about it -- but I do try to limit exposure. Old computer labs, with rows and rows and rows of CRTs, always made me wonder how healthy all that was (the collective exposure at multiple angles). But also just that working CRTs are hard to replace, so I'd rather save them for limited/focused presentations. Also, I have no idea of modern LCDs are less "radiating" (EM-wise) than old CRTs - but they're certainly easier to find and connect. I think that transition from "line printers" to "screens" has always been underappreciated - and I've always been curious how in old magazine (late 60s, early 70s), there wasn't more apparent excitement about CRT/screens. There was no clever term like "digital paper" or "electronic paper" - it just became "the screen." I guess once the microprocessor was developed, all the excitement was focused around that. And, for me, same for old mechanical drives: I don't mind the SD emulations. It is nice to hear the original drive sound, or to actually show concepts like "flipping a disk over." The whole idea of using magnetic phase to store bits is still fascinating to me - but then, vinyl records are also fascinating to me (mankind figured out a way to precisely mold a microscopic groove that corresponds to a desired audio effect, that's wild). Still, read/write heads do eventually fail, and disk media itself gets harder and harder to source. I think the SD emulators have made the hobby more approachable to me - I want to see software cranked through a processor; how the software got loaded into main memory is of less interest to me (give me an interface and I'll just POKE machine code directly into memory, or make some MCU device to type it in for me). As others have said, for "intense" software development I'd rather use an emulator, to save "wear and tear" on the original vintage equipment. Which brings me to another point: "large" computers have always been used to help make the next smaller computers. Machines-making-machines indeed. The original building-size "hulking giants" helped make the minis, which helped make the micros (emulators on the PDP-11/8's or S/360's), and today we use our micros to dev/emulate MCUs (because all the development tools are more matured in the "next up" larger system from the prior pioneering work). One last thing: I've pondered vintage computing is like finding old Roman artifacts. Like a chariot. As-is, it's fairly useless - you'd need horses to pull the thing. Or, "emulated" horses. But finding such a thing, in complete or operational condition, gives witness that such things did exist -- the craftmanship of it, bound to the talent and time that they had to build/engineer it. And that, "has value" it telling and verifying our history. -Steve On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 3:18 PM js--- via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Would a few people here be willing to share their approaches to their > collection? > > I'll start. I've collected a variety of mainly DEC, HP, and Apple > machines, and have restored or repaired them slowly over time. However, > as they fail from now on, I will *not* be doing modern upgrades or > repairs. As they die, so shall they be retired or given away. > > >
