Modern computers were a mistake. what's a good cheap computer from the 80s I could use as a daily driver?

yeah... no, that's not going to work. But I wish you best of luck in your endeavor.

no u

So you're going to run everything on a newer separate computer and stream it to the old computer. Have you considered just cutting out the middleman steps and just using the newer computer as your "daily driver"?

I'm not running "everything". Just video preprocessing.

>modern computers were a mistake
>let me just reimplement all this modern shit on my retro jerkoff machine

reimplementing everything is better because it'll be way less bloated.

I vote for a Z80 running CP/M

found the hipster
seriously, just use a lightweight linux distro on a ~10 year old computer and call it a day

This is something a guy at Ars did earlier this year on a 1990 mac, and it was absolutely painful to read just thinking about the time wasted to do even basic tasks. If you're wanting something even older than that, you're going to have an even worse (impossible) time

arstechnica.com/features/2018/07/classic-computing-joyride-cruising-through-modern-workloads-on-a-macintosh-iisi/

The funniest thing is intel stole the 8088 design after failing to deliver the og product

DO YOU AVE A LOICENSE FOR THAT COMPUTER SIR!?

PC-98 is the patrician's choice.

>I might just build my own computer based around an 8088.
>and I’ll write my own os

If you were even remotely capable of either of these tasks you would have done it instead of pretending you know how to on the internet

I found a picture of the OP.

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You will absolutely not be able to do anything close to productive on a computer from the 80s

ITT: "Hipster" is used as a synonym for "person with an opinion I don't like"

>You will absolutely not be able to do anything close to productive on a computer from the 80s
>nobody used a computer for anything productive back then

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based and redpilled: ELEKTRONIKA
MK 92
Make sure to install the Ministry of Defense special software package.

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youtube.com/watch?time_continue=173&v=5cNJNKkCQ2E

Well, this turned out to be the most cringiest larping thread of the month. Good job, I guess.

And tried selling the 8088 as a better processor than the 8086 which was 16-bit vs 8. Sneaky bastards.

1. Get a raspberry pi
2. Install a minimal linux distro on it, make sure to really only install the bare basics
3. Install X and mame
4. Install the ROMs for the apollo workstation
5. Boot the apollo vm, install the OS from tape
6. Set up mame to automatically launch the vm after the pi boots
7. Use the vm as your m68k based retro workstation

>0:13
Wait, what's wrong with that PC? The back should be black and have ports and cords on it.

It's not a real PC, it's a cardboard prop.

>early 80s
>still using single density floppies that limited you to 100k per disk
Not cool.

We all know you won't do it anyway, but I can predict your experience if you want:

>use an 80s computer as a daily driver for a few days
>go back using a modern computer because you realize it's just a heavy and power hungry typewriter with a calculator tacked on

>go back using a modern computer because you realize it's just a heavy and power hungry typewriter with a calculator tacked on

And for having fun too.

youtube.com/watch?v=RvQlp7RC13c

This is a good idea, I like it

And what point are you making here?

Have used one as a daily driver a while ago. They are usable. Not the best, but works. Debian has prebuilt packages for armhf. Be sure to look at specs and mainline kernel support.

>what's a good cheap computer from the 80s I could use as a daily driver?
Non-existent. Everything that a computer of that era can do, it does much worse than even something circa 2000, and there's a lot that an 80s computer straight up cannot do on its own. You could use something else as an interface between the modern world and your ancient computer to deal with that, but using a modern computer to do that kind of defeats the purpose of using an old computer to get away from using modern computers.

>If not an 8088, then what? I've also been considering a modern-ish ARM microcontroller instead.
Unironically, get a Raspberry Pi. Powerful enough to be useful in a modern context, even if it's never going to be great at anything. Uses modern connectors, so no need to use old or obscure peripherals or adaptors; you can just use any old USB keyboard and mouse etc.

so, what do you do on the computer?
I'm browsing Jow Forums right now with a Pi 2 for shits and giggles, and I'd really say that it's the lowest spec machine I'd even try to do anything internet related on (I'm using Midori even though it sucks, for the last 25 versions or some shit Firefox just shits itself completely and completely drags, it used to be slow but usable when I got this thing).
You can go weaker if you're willing to use shit like links2 or whatever, although there's also the issue of lol modern SSL support on older machines, and a lot of shit is SSL only these days

if that doesn't matter, but you still want half-decent multimedia playback, you really can't go too much further back than the mid-90s (any further and you enter non-realtime MP3 decoding territory) and really still want a recent machine unless you're willing to let the machine sit there for ages transcoding to something it can play in realtime

you can program on damn near fucking anything (shit, OG Unix was developed for a PDP-7, a machine that maxed out at about 144k RAM), but compile speeds will suck if your language is compiled, and runtime speed will really fucking suck if it's interpreted the further back you go (doing simple math shit in a loop on say, the C64 is absurdly fucking slow)

you can write text on fucking anything
good luck and have fun with that, I guess
80s microcomputers make okay calculators too, and they're usually programmable right out of the box.

gonna assume you don't do any sort of 3D graphics or music making
you can get away with fairly early machines if you're into music making, and any mid-90s PC can run Fast Tracker II or something

tl;dr: you probably could, if you don't do much on the computer

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>and runtime speed will really fucking suck if it's interpreted the further back you go (doing simple math shit in a loop on say, the C64 is absurdly fucking slow)
That's why you program the C64 in assembly language, silly.

It has its use.

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wew, forgot a small bit
>you're willing to let the machine sit there for ages transcoding to something it can play in realtime
was in regards to video, which is something I've gone through playing video on this thing (if I want to see a webm it takes fucking ages)

When I find myself needing to web browse on my Pi, I've actually found Chromium to be more usable than Midori.

What are you using as a video player? Because omxplayer uses its hardware decoder which should work for most things short of h265.

jupiter ace. the cheapest of them all

huh, should give it a go then

omxplayer just says "have a nice day ;)" when I feed it a webm (pretty sure it doesn't support them at all)
I'd need to recode webms to a suitable format, and that takes ages.
doesn't even give any error above, it just fucks off

I can play a surprising amount of shit software only with mplayer (not webms though, VP8's too much, especially with the overhead of software drawing)

>omxplayer just says "have a nice day ;)" when I feed it a webm (pretty sure it doesn't support them at all)
You may not need to actually transcode it, if it's just the webm container it's having trouble with; webm, like mkv, is a container format that can have video and audio streams with any number of codecs. Install mkvtoolnix and just run "mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.webm" and give the resulting mkv a try.

>use an 80s computer as a daily driver for a few days
Strangely, millions of people did at one time.

>>use an 80s computer as a daily driver for a few days
>Strangely, millions of people did at one time.
Strangely, things they couldn't handle weren't commonplace at that time.

damn, I just installed it
didn't even remotely expect it to be this fast
thanks, mate

>Install mkvtoolnix and just run "mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.webm" and give the resulting mkv a try.
just gave it a shot, no dice

the latest alienware is from the 80s iirc

If you read tech literature and magazines from the 8-bit era, the hardware was more like working with a ham radio than anything today.

>8088

Ah, back when AMD manufactured CPUs for Intel. Wrap your tiny heads around that one, Jow Forumstards.

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no they didnt, 80s PCs were basically toys

>no they didnt, 80s PCs were basically toys

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>implying you use one for anything other than shitposting and porn

People were probably 1000% more productive with their computers in the 80s.

>>Install mkvtoolnix and just run "mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.webm" and give the resulting mkv a try.
>just gave it a shot, no dice
Won't work with every webm you come across, it depends on the codec used. Still worth giving a shot with each one before going to the effort of actually transcoding, though. Incidentally, for curiosity's sake, what codec did mkvmerge identify the video stream as?

I mean, if it's a VIC-20, sure that was pretty much of a toy.

Well yeah, home micros were basically toys. The IBM PC and its clones and peers were solid workhorses of the time, it's just that their specs when looked at from a modern viewpoint seem too minimal to do anything serious with.

To write text, yes. Such technology.

>faggots who took op seriously

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pi@pirilala:~ $ mkvmerge -o out.mkv 1533268081567.webm
mkvmerge v9.8.0 ('Kuglblids') 32bit
'1533268081567.webm': Using the demultiplexer for the format 'Matroska'.
'1533268081567.webm' track 0: Using the output module for the format 'VP8/VP9'.
'1533268081567.webm' track 1: Using the output module for the format 'Vorbis'.
The file 'out.mkv' has been opened for writing.
Progress: 100%
The cue entries (the index) are being written...
Multiplexing took 0 seconds.
pi@pirilala:~ $ omxplayer out.mkv
have a nice day ;)

here's the whole output
it's an ordinary webm I got from /wsg/

And run business software and do print shop work and run factory equipment and compose music and do graphics design and play games.

This.
Linux allows a person to cut a system down to almost nothing while still offering any modern features a person might want.

Yeah, codec issue, the Pi's hardware decoder cannot even remotely handle VP9. webms that use h264 aren't too uncommon, though.

>webms that use h264 aren't too uncommon, though.
that's mildly surprising to hear, although my selection is biased to hell since probably 99% of the webms I've dealt with are from Jow Forums, which is vp8 only

I've never seen a webm with h264 anywhere. Webms are meant to use vp8 or vp9.

>Jow Forums, which is vp8 only
Is it? I know the guide uses that in the example, but I didn't think Jow Forums actively rejected h264 webms. Never actually tried uploading one though, so I dunno.

I'm certain I've come across them from time to time, but not entirely sure where off the top of my head.

Back when I was in university (2009-2013) I began developing an almost pathological hatred of modern technology, because I fundamentally believed it was destroying our lives. I got rid of my TV, my shitty Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista, gaming console, cell phone, everything I figured I could do without. Eventually all I had left in terms of "tech" was a digital SLR, a cheap landline phone with answering machine, an old Epson printer and a Macintosh Quadra 605 which I used as my "daily driver" from about November 2009 through March 2010. Keep in mind this computer was about 15 years old at the time. The CPU had been upgraded from a 68LC040 to a standard 68040 at some point in the distant past, so I could have run A/UX but decided to use Mac OS 7.6.1 instead. This experiment was short-lived, and when I found an iBook G3 in the university e-waste, I took it. Here's why:

>I had not considered where to put the photos from my digital camera, and I did want to preserve some of my memories. Needed a modern computer for this
>Even with an integrated floating point unit, complex mathematical operations were slow, and large spreadsheets either totally bogged down the computer or locked up the operating system since they exhausted the 36MB of RAM
>640x480 is a bullshit resolution
>Over the Christmas holidays the university got rid of many of the Windows 2000 computers with floppy drives, which made it very difficult to upload assignments

All that being said, it was surprisingly capable of a lot with ClarisWorks, MS Word, Excel and Mathematica installed on the 250 MB hard drive. And the whole experience was extremely refreshing. I found I had a lot more time to study, exercise and read books, and even though my friends complained that I wasn't on Facebook etc, I also had a lot more time to see them, I wasn't wasting all my time on bullshit. tl;dr it's doable, try it.

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...actually doing some checking now, it seems like I might be talking out of my arse on this. Everything seems to point to webm never being h264.

Honestly, it's never a matter of how modern the technology is, but how much time and attention you give it that's what ruins lives. People in the 80s with dialup modems were managing to ruin their lives spending all their time on it, and before that people were ruining their lives in more analogue ways. Modern technology is just the current incarnation of it, not the root cause of it.

>and large spreadsheets either totally bogged down the computer or locked up the operating system since they exhausted the 36MB of RAM
>Apple OS programming
No surprise.

just use a fucking graphing calculator

Try using an Apple II as your daily driver for one month and using AppleWorks as your primary productivity tool.

>64k of RAM
>280x192 graphics in six lovely '70s colors: purple, green, blue, orange, black and white
>140k floppy disks
>1Mhz CPU
>1-bit bleeper sound

Have fun.

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Bad Things happening when a computer entirely runs out of memory is not exactly remarkable for the era.

"Classic" versions of Mac OS are actually very fast and responsive due to the use of cooperative multitasking. Essentially the applications can run at 100% speed when its their turn to use the system's resources but the OS doesn't enforce any kind of time keeping so if you're not careful the applications can just never give the resources back to the OS and you'll get stuck.

>Macintosh Quadra 605
The Quadra 605 is mid 90's hardware, and even faster than the setup in this article . OP is asking for 80's hardware, and that is simply insane.

they werent

>OP is asking for 80's hardware, and that is simply insane
No he's not, he just can't use the Internet or multimedia stuff. He can still do anything that can work in text mode.

Just use openbsd on modern hardware :)

>Have fun

Don't worry. I have Jumpman, Summer Games, Conan, Montezuma's Revenge, and Ultima for that.

>No he's not, he just can't use the Internet or multimedia stuff.
Yeah no biggie, that's only 95+% of what people do on their computer. If OP wants to actively avoid internet/multimedia for personal reasons, then he'd be better off getting something like an X60 and use it in text mode only.

I kind of disagree. The sort of people who were ruining their lives before were already eccentrics with tendencies towards that behaviour, as well as fundamentally addictive personalities. The frightening thing about modern computing technology (and this is even more true now than in 2009/2010) is that it has the potential to turn EVERYONE into an addict, since it makes that all-consuming behaviour so addictive, and makes us feel isolated when we aren't connected. We seek connection, and we're sad or lost without it, almost like organisms in a hive mind. It's scary. Although I've sort of fallen victim to it, since I have an iPhone 5s and a fairly modern Thinkpad now.

Try opening a 26 megabyte spreadsheet with complex formulae and calculations on a computer with 36 megabytes of RAM and tell me how that goes.

Hehe, no thanks. I was already having some trouble fitting everything onto 1.44 MB floppies, and at least those were robust enough to carry around in your pocket. But this would be a REAL challenge, the Quadra was child's play in comparison.

I am actually still shocked at how the Quadra, which has less processing power than just about anything since the Sony Clie SJ-22, was just so damn fast, and a how modern computer run so fucking slow at doing basic, basic shit like launching a word processor, even with a processor that's many of thousands of times more powerful and storage that's also much much faster.

I actually wanted to try A/UX but never got around to it, and now I don't even know where I could find it.

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To be fair, once you get done playing games and writing silly type-in BASIC programs from magazines, you'd get bored fast.

>I am actually still shocked at how the Quadra, which has less processing power than just about anything since the Sony Clie SJ-22, was just so damn fast, and a how modern computer run so fucking slow at doing basic, basic shit like launching a word processor, even with a processor that's many of thousands of times more powerful and storage that's also much much faster.
This is just a dumb statement. My shitty office computer at work loads Word in under a second.

>I was already having some trouble fitting everything onto 1.44 MB floppies
An 8-bit computer isn't going to have very big files, maybe 20k at most. Plus in practice, most people cut a second write protect notch on their Apple II disks to use the back side of it so you got 280k per disk.
>and at least those were robust enough to carry around in your pocket. But this would be a REAL challenge
You're allowed to cheat and use an Apple CFFA for storage.

>I am actually still shocked at how the Quadra, which has less processing power than just about anything since the Sony Clie SJ-22, was just so damn fast, and a how modern computer run so fucking slow at doing basic, basic shit like launching a word processor, even with a processor that's many of thousands of times more powerful and storage that's also much much faster.

youtube.com/watch?v=1ai9jtJHYow

Count it. Three seconds to load the OS and six to load the game. This is on a 1Mhz CPU. Count how quickly Window 10 boots up. Probably at least 20 seconds.

Oldschool Mac OS was fast. Damn fast.
which is to be expected, much of the underpinning design was based around running on an 8MHz 68k with 128k RAM and no hardware acceleration for anything

ended up with some poor choices (single menubar is objectively a mistake once multitasking enters the fray, cooperative multitasking is a kludge, etc), but overall, classic Mac OS was lean as shit
like, System 7.5 is really, really fucking skinny compared to fucking Windows 95
and Mac OS 8 is absurdly slim next to Windows 98

sounds moderately comfy
90% of my issue with running 68k MacOS today is the complete lack of tracker software ala Fast Tracker II or something

there's PlayerPRO, which I used on my 2001-era iBook G3, and that shit sucked (and IIRC it was a Carbon program anyway), but it made .xm files, and that was what mattered
had a bunch of old 68k-era software on that machine, wouldn't have had to find alternatives for much else (shit, even my copy of Photoshop was still 68k compatible)

depends on the machine, depends on the version of Word
I've got a machine that loads Word in 3 seconds.
I've also seen machines take like 15-20 seconds (at least, on cold boot since they're configured to leave Office in memory).

Windows 95 takes around 50MB of disk space for OSR A and I don't know how big OSR B is. Maybe 70-80MB?

That's possible because you're literally just writing to the bare metal for everything including directly accessing the floppy controller registers. Modern PCs and OSes have layers and layers of code and abstractions to go through. For example, reading a key press requires decoding USB packets while the keyboard on the TRS-80 simply places a scan code into memory when a key is pressed. That's all. You press A and the scan code for A is put into the keyboard buffer. There isn't a hundred layers of packet decoding and API routines to go through.

Fair enough, but the main bottleneck on modern computers is the HD, and using an SSD alleviates this problem by loading data faster since programs are much larger than they used to be (but also more functional). Word 2016 can change 50 references from APA to AMA style with one click, 1990's claris works, that's gonna be a no. I would have to spend a day editing all the references on something like that.

But that's not fair since Windows 95 also has more sophisticated preemptive multitasking.

Also it had memory protection which Mac OSes prior to OS X never did.

I also saw one of VWestLife's videos of a TRS-80 Model 4 and man, it's amazing how fast those things can boot from a floppy.

top quality bait, OP got a lot of bites

>I also saw one of VWestLife's videos
>Youtube celebrities

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