[retrochallenge] Re: What about....
- From: Cory Wiegersma <cory5412@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: retrochallenge@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 09:31:03 -0700
On Mar 28, 2005, at 6:22 AM, Byron Q. Desnoyers Winmill wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 11:33:33PM -0700, Cory Wiegersma wrote:
>> 1) The Manufacture of my particular computer started in SEPTEMBER
>> 1993.... Yet I'd still call it retro.
>
> I'm considering a change to the rules which may or may not allow
> you to use your computer. That is, the model of the processor must
> have been available prior to March 1993. This is to avoid really
> wonky things like a Quadra 950 being a qualifying machine, yet a
> less powerful LC 474 being a non-qualifying machine. It may also
> help to avoid some confusion with machines like the Amiga, where
> there are tonnes of poorly documented accelerator cards from small
> third-party vendors.
>
> Finally, even if your machine doesn't qualify, keep in mind that
> an SGI workstation of that era will be considerably more powerful
> than the personal computers which most people will be using.
>
> Any thoughts?
True, not only is it an SGI workstation "from the time" but it does
happen to have the processor with the highest MHz count in that
particular line, though! that is still before their jump to the next
level which was R5k/R10k.
Avoiding wonkiness like that might work if you just did it by
processor. All Pre PowerPCs, Pre-Pentiums, and Pre-R5k/R10k machines
qualify, for example.
(tee-hee-hee, you said wonky!)
So you could have a 1994 pMac 6100 that doesn't qualify, but a 1995
p650 or lc580 that DOES qualify. It makes sense to me, because that
1995 performa does have a lot of the same guts as 1992 and 1993
quadras.
>
>> 2) I admit... it runs IRIX 6.5, an OS from 1998. Even worse, the
>> release, 6.5.22, is from 2002 I think.
>
> Someone else is asking for that rule to be dropped, suggesting that
> it would limit the capabilities of the hardware -- and that we
> should be proving how good our legacy hardware is, not how good we
> are at being software masochists. In a sense I agree. The original
> point was to exclude anything like Windows 95, unfortunately you
> can still use Windows NT and even OS/2 Warp 3. It also makes it
> more difficult for users of some platforms (eg. the Amiga) to snag
> a network stack. Also, there will still be limits on what you can
> use in most cases: Windows 2k won't run on a 486 after all.
>
> Still, a 486 or an SE/30 or whatever running the latest version of
> NetBSD or Debian Linux doesn't feel very retro to me. (For those
> who don't know, this pretty much means that you can run all of the
> latest software. Even something like PearPC on a Quadra to emulate
> Mac OS X. Thank-you for that one Dana. :) )
>
> Any thoughts?
IRIX hasn't changed too much visually since version 4, just in it's
underpinnings and what hardware it supports. Plus, for us users of
those REALLY wonked out platforms, it's hard to aquire the
"appropriately ancient" OS, and it's even harder to use it in most
cases.
Maybe you could do different points for different levels of Operating
System vintage. While it may not seem "appropriate" to run a newer OS
on some older computers, on certain other machines, it is
rather-awesome to know that a ten year old computer can easily run an
OS that's just 1 or 2 years old.
It continues to be awesome when you can proceed to do 3d modelling and
video editing on the machine, some stuff that may have been considered
hard or impossible even when the machine was new.
I think that the newest apps I'd have are Illustrator 5, Photoshop3,
Lightwave 5.6... all of which worked on 486 PCs and 68k macs, didn't
they? Maybe I'd have Blender, and netscape 4.x too.
>
>> 3) I'm MLAgazine staff, so if this is anything like a radio contest, I
>> don't qualify anyway. :P
>
> Don't worry about that Cory, you can fully participate. The only
> reason why I'm not an official contender for the "prize" is because
> I'm taking responsibility for the rules. I will still be participating
> in the endurance part because I think it is a fun idea and I am
> out to prove something to myself (ie. that I can still do it), but
> I want to avoid a conflict of interest when the point system is
> being designed.
Okay, I'm in if we can get some of the OS and processor issues sorted
out! :D
>
> Byron.
>
>
Other related posts:
