10 ms·

Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

97 points by decryption 1y ago

zdw 1y ago
The best thing about old computers is they're so damn simple, and there are a ton of projects out there to enhance them - for $50 you can get a BlueSCSI which gives you hard drive/optical/network emulation on many machines. Also, new tools are way more capable and cheap - all you need to fix an old computer with a sub-50mhz bus clock is a multimeter/scope, soldering iron, and other bits, which can easily be purchased new for $200.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I enjoy my 72 Dodge, because I know what every part in it does.
    - dgfitz 1y ago
      Wholeheartedly agree. I’ll leave this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422763 “ I do a lot of work on my own vehicles. I think a lot of the responses are from people who do not. Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights. All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.”
      - linguae 1y ago
        I’d love to have a project car that I could work on, particularly something simple like a classic Volkswagen Beetle or maybe something more complex but still manageable like a 1980s BMW, but one significant challenge I have (and many other would-be car hobbyists) is being able to afford housing where I’m not subject to lease/HOA restrictions or even local ordinances prohibiting at-home repairs. These restrictions are understandable, especially when considering liability, insurance, and dangers such as the improper storage and disposal of chemicals such as oil. However, this means there isn’t much of a workaround for paying for labor at a mechanic, which has become costly. During my adult life thus far I’ve only lived in apartments, and every apartment that I’ve rented has a lease clause prohibiting car maintenance and repairs except for very simple tasks such as replacing windshield wipers. Thus, I drive newer cars that don’t require many repairs, and I pay a mechanic whenever I need to perform maintenance or repairs, which costs a lot of money, especially in the Bay Area (the mechanic needs to pay for two places: the rent/mortgage for the shop and also for the mechanic’s residence). Being able to afford a house with a garage and no HOA will require me to either become rich or move out of the Bay Area. Paying for labor is indeed a heavy tax, but unfortunately thanks to lease/HOA restrictions and sometimes local ordinances, this tax is unavoidable, short of giving up driving.
        WalterBright 1y ago
        I understand where you're coming from. I've lived in apartments with no garage, and just went ahead and did repairs in the parking lot anyway. But you cannot do major repairs that way. One huge problem is your tools will get stolen if you go back into your apartment to get something. It's all rather unpleasant. But there are places in Seattle where you can rent a garage and the tools you need, for people in your situation. But I doubt it is cheap.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    That sounds like it needs a tune-up. Lots of performance parts available too for cars from that era.
    - flomo 1y ago
      I'd guess it was always a malaise-era smogdog, the same engine from a decade later was much better.
    - floren 1y ago
      These old cars can be a lot of fun but even the fast ones weren't that fast when taken against a modern family car... take a 68 Mustang, an iconic car as featured in Bullitt, with a 0-60 of 5.4 seconds and compare it to a 2012 Toyota Camry doing the same in 5.8 seconds. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15142639/1968-tunnel-port-ford-mustang-vs-chevrolet-camaro-z-28-archived-comparison/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a151426... https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15122183/toyota-camry-se-v6-road-test-review/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15122183/toyota-camry-... I used to drive a 62 Studebaker. People saw an old car and asked me if it was fast. Hell no, I'd answer -- but by God it can suck fuel!
      - flomo 1y ago
        Here's the thing. A 68 Mustang had no almost emissions controls. A 78 Thunderbird was almost the exact same stuff, except it was choked to shit. A modern computer-controlled Camry is not only way better performing, it also orders of magnitude cleaner. IMO the ICE has achieved its final form, so now the future has to be something else (electric).
        Reubachi 1y ago
        RE: "ice final form" It's an intersting time to live, we are indeed seeing the peak of ICE, though I think there are lots of room for improvement in EGR, compression, more efficient catalytic process. "smaller market" ICE manufacturers IE isuzu, mazda, hino etc. are sort of working towards this, as opposed to jumping on EV train. Theoretically, it's completely reasonable for a high compression inlne 3 cylinder with aero wheels/tires to get 60-70 MPG. (With proper EGR, turbo application, CVT)
  - asciimov 1y ago
    My family had a '79 Thunderbird that was our main driver from 91-97. I haven't seen any of them on the road in over a decade. I have several memories of that car. - The water pump going out, as we drove up a mountain, and rolling back down into the drive way of a converted apple barn. Where we found a nice cleaning lady who took my dad the 20 miles into town to get a new water pump, which he replaced in that driveway and got us back on the road. - The rear diff throwing a bearing well after midnight in the middle of nowhere west Texas. The car limped a few miles down the road to a surprisingly still open gas station. My uncle, a mechanic, happened to have the necessary parts to fix it on him. So when he picked my dad up an hour later, they went ahead and spent the rest of the overnight hours replacing it in the parking lot of that middle of nowhere gas station. - Spending several days at various salvage yards looking for rear tail lights. They are just the right height to be taken out by shopping carts. Unfortunately the 79 is the only year that didn't have a connecting strip that goes between the left and right hand sides. In the 90's they were very hard to find, I can't imagine they are any easier today. Seriously, buy an extra set even if you don't need them. If you ever want a to move to a modern V8, Ford's panther platform from '02-'11 are just as big, roomy, and easy to work on as that Thunderbird. Plus you'll get modern conveniences like anti-lock breaks, air-bags, and good part availability.
  - rograndom 1y ago
    Ha! I had one of those in the late 90's. My father had it first and I inherited it when he passed. A couple of months after he bought it, I bought a 1985 LTD, which was basically a 4 door Mustang GT. He asked me if I wanted to race, I said it wouldn't be close. He said "Both cars have the same engine." Yeah, not quite. The Thunderbird had like 120hp, no fuel injection and bogged down to meet emissions, while the LTD had close to 200hp and was several hundred pounds lighter. Another person up the street had the same vintage Thunderbird with the 350ci and had done some work to it. That one went pretty good.
- a_vanderbilt 1y ago
  I've been slowing working on a hobby project to 3D print a lookalike Sony PVM with a computer inside. There is a joy in knowing exactly how something works, and to be able to fix it intuitively.
threeio 1y ago
The se/30 is a beautiful machine, but it’s got some of the worst battery and cap issues, so clean it up quick :)
- decryption 1y ago
  Oh hell yeah, that's top of my list once I crack open the case (waiting for a long T15 driver to arrive!) and poke around inside. I've got a lot of friends who have done it before, so I'll give them the board and and some money and some chocolate/beer (depending on the friend!) and ask for help with recapping the logic board.
jdkee 1y ago
There is certainly a nostalgia that I feel about tech from when I was 8 until 15 years old. This corresponded with Radio Shack 100-in-1 electronics kits, the Mattel Big Trak programmable vehicle, Mattel handheld electronic games, the Vectrex gaming system, the ZX-81 and the Commodore Amiga 500 computer. And I will throw in old Edmund Scientific catalogs for good measure. I was pre-Nintendo and Sega and certainly pre-Playstation and Xbox by a generation I imagine the current crop of college students that I teach today will feel the same about Minecraft, Angry Birds and the original iPad when they reach their 40s or later.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  This is the electronics kit I had as a boy: https://generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html https://generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html If you work through the base kit and the sequels, it offers a complete undergraduate course in electronics, minus the math.
  - jdkee 1y ago
    I should have included my top Amiga games, Defender of the Crown, Dungeon Master and Empire.
keyle 1y ago
I wonder if my kids will feel the same about their iPad 8 or whatever version this is... My guess is not. Technology feels so "all worked out" today, with the right to repair out the window, everything is fused, and just dies one day and that'll be it. I do fantasise about being reunited with my 386 DX 33, 4MB of ram and 40MB of hdd! It was the cream of the crop. Oh, that reset button has seen some action.
JSR_FDED 1y ago
This resonates so hard with me! Except in my case it’s the Apple ][. I’ve decided it’s completely unnecessary to justify this retro computing passion, there’s nothing wrong with venerating the ingenuity, ethos and craftsmanship of the time. The excitement we felt at the breakthroughs that were coming fast and furious back then, the community and camaraderie of fellow nerds, the realization that those massively constrained systems with 10,000 to 100,000 times less power than we have today still managed to offer massive value to us as users and programmers - that’s pretty amazing. Another reason to love that era was that there was still genuine idealism in the industry and everything was far less corporate than today.
- decryption 1y ago
  Totally agree. I recently re-read Revolution in the Valley (Andy Hertzfeld's memoir of working on the Mac) and I absolutely got same same vibe you described. It's also hard not to be in awe of someone like Bill Atkinson - RIP legend. I just wanted to experience first hand the work this team made, rather than just reading about it, looking at screenshots or using it via an emulator. Maybe I'll learn something, or worst case, just a sense of appreciation of the shoulders of the giants we stand on.
ggm 1y ago
Time plays tricks. I also love vintage computing equipment but somehow the keyboards and mice are less kind to my hands than my memory of them. Perhaps my acquired hate of low profile non-buckling-spring keyboards is misplaced?
kaonwarb 1y ago
I have very fond memories of overclocking our 50 MHz Pentium to 75 MHz (after adding in a fan). Magic.
pbohun 1y ago
It's interesting how more "amateur approachable" both old cars and old computers are. Old cars can be worked on by anyone with some basic tools and know-how, and old computers could be understood and programmed the same way. MacPaint was made by one employee. I think this is partially why people want these types of objects. You can actually own them. You can understand them. You can mod them. Modern cars, games, computers, etc. aren't owned anymore. They always have updates, and could be bricked at any moment if the manufacturer wishes, gets bought or goes out of business. There's nothing preventing this from being the golden age of computers. The capabilities of the hardware are near magical. We just need to bring back the concept of ownership.
- dlcarrier 1y ago
  What really disheartens me with modern cars is that electric cars are much simpler than than cars powered by combustion engines, which could be a huge boon to the fix-it-yourself crowd, but car manufacturers now lock customers out of their cars, so electric cars don't have the opportunity to become hobbyist friendly. There are small electric-car companies that let customers do what they want, like Edison Motors, but they make industrial-sized work vehicles. It would be nice if a similar small company started selling consumer cars, but the automotive industry is heavily plagued by bikeshedding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality) to the point that large trucks and busses are allowed to do their thing, while subcompact vehicles have been effectively regulated out of existence.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Contrary to popular belief, EVs really aren't that much easier to repair, that's just a logical expectation from people without service experience based on the idea of less moving parts, but that omits that fact that electronics die too and EVs have more of them and under more strenuous loads. Most of the faults on EVs come from dead electronics like a fried MOSFET or PCB trace, and coolant leaks inside the motor due to gasket failures derived from race-to-the-bottom cost cutting designs to save money, which your average user won't be able to repair themselves unless maybe we're talking about completely swapping out the entire ECU/motor/battery/assembly with a brand new one instead of repairing it, parts which haven't been designed for easy repairability. And that's excluding DRM issues and the fact that those parts aren't sold to consumers and even if they would, stuff like ADAS sensors, motors and batteries still require calibration with dedicated equipment during installation and can't be plug&play like a laptop battery swap. Check out EV clinic(no affiliation) for horror stories on EVs and hybrids failures. Due to poor design, a lot of EVs (maybe excluding Teslas) are reliability ticking timebombs whose failure is a matter of WHEN not IF.
jojobas 1y ago
An old car can still drive on current roads. There's may be no aircon, only AM radio and no airbags, but there's still horsepower and size to do what cars do. Then, cars rust and naturally become rare and expensive to restore to a running state, and almost all of the appeal is that you can show off in them, displaying how much money you can afford to spend on a hobby. Old computers are pretty cheap and are limited to old software, and there's nearly no showing off other than on HN. Whatever rocks your boat I guess.
- geerlingguy 1y ago
  Surprisingly, a lot of the Internet is still accessible to these old dinosaurs, through the efforts of retro enthusiasts. A search engine like FrogFind reformats results for the earliest browsers like Netscape Navigator, and kind of "text modes" the pages. There's even virtual plugfests like GlobalTalk that links together retro enthusiasts' printers over the Internet.
  - nivethan 1y ago
    Wow! Frogfind looks great, I've been thinking of writing my own proxy but it makes me happy to see someone has beat me to it.
  - jojobas 1y ago
    So basically "as long as another machine does the work", which would be like towing an old car on a trailer.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - helf 1y ago
      [dead]
    - wink 1y ago
      Some of us had found many uses for our computers while they were offline, so I don't really get why you're implying they are useless without using the internet. And I'm saying that as someone who only had access to a computer for about 4 years before we got internet access.
doodlebugging 1y ago
I returned the MacSE30 that I bought at the Apple Store back in 1989 or 1990 when I went into grad school. Compared to the Epson that I bought at the same time it was a fantastic machine that would do almost everything that I needed to do out of the box whereas for the Epson I needed to buy other software. It helped that I already had Mac software though. I returned it because I couldn't afford it. The cost with peripherals was almost 3X the price of the Epson so I took advantage of Apple's return policy and let it go. I still have my original computer though, a 128k Mac that I upgraded to 512k within a couple months of getting it back in January 1985. I have the printer, an external floppy drive, and maybe something else. I used it to introduce my kids to computers, teaching them to type and use a mouse and to play the one or two games that I have for it. I have several software applications that are not Apple software including one with capabilities that I made good use of back in the day. It was mathematical software that I could feed the software points defining a line and it would compute the equation defining that line out to the nth order polynomial. It understood linear, logarithmic, and exponential scales so all you needed as input were the points in x,y space and the scale for each variable. It was very powerful and there was nothing like it in DOS land or in early Winland. I used it find the equations of lines in published nomographs and then used those equations to write and debug QuickBASIC software to calculate reservoir properties on an old Compaq 286 (later a 386 and 486, etc). I don't remember the name of the software but it was very a good mathematical application. I still don't think there is similar software for Windows unless Wolfram Alpha can do the same thing. I haven't needed to try in a long time. Thanks for this reminder.
- jdougan 1y ago
  MathCAD? TK!Solver?
  - homarp 1y ago
    Maple?
    - doodlebugging 1y ago
      No it wasn't Maple. I'm familiar with Maple. I found it by following ads in MacWorld magazine back in the day. It should be identifiable by checking issues between December 1984 and May 1987.
LarryMade2 1y ago
Suggestions for old Mac Apps to look out for: - WriteNow! a very nice word processor that was originally developed for Next computers, before word took over it was the favorite. - ClarisWorks/AppleWorks - One of the better pre office integrated apps - the database was REALLY easy to use, and interfaced well with the vector graphics module, spreadsheet, and word processor... - FoxBase+/Mac - Before Microsoft bought Fox Software they got "Mac religion" and it shows in the incredible FoxBase+/Mac its amazin how much capability fits in a floppy. - SuperPaint - great bitmap paint program though not as accurate as later graphics apps. (fractional/grid positioning was an issue) - Ready,Set,Go! A great alternative DTP program to PageMaker/Quark. Never used others but I hear I think it was FrameMaker that had some sort of template/database feature to manage/generate catalogs. There were some interesting things back in the day. - Stepping out - virtual larger desktop - PowerPrint - Hook into epson compatible parallel printers with serial->parallel adapter. - Comic Strip Factory - way before there was ComicLife there was Comic Strip Factory - a nice clipart based comic strip compositor. - HyperCard - Never got into it but it had quite a community. - Of course programming languages like Pascal, Logo, and BASIC in various flavors. Of course you have the early greats like the Adobe programs and Microsoft Word/Excel/Office.
- decryption 1y ago
  Thanks for that info! I'm keen to get stuck into HyperCard stacks running on their native environment (not in an emulator) - so many people love HyperCard and miss it, so I look forward to seeing what the fuss is.
- js2 1y ago
  Dark Castle. Aldus Pagemaker. Word 5.1. After Dark.
  - philistine 1y ago
    My old Mac SE is strictly a toaster display. I turn it on to look at the toasters. After Dark is great!
- rcarmo 1y ago
  Wow, I had forgotten about SteppingOut. I used that thing a lot on the smaller Macs.
whartung 1y ago
Take an SE/30, add some mass storage (something above 20MB), plug in a postscript printer, add ClarisWorks, maybe Filemaker, and you have something that, even today, would do 80%+ of what human beings use computers for. Outside of the internet. Get a network adapter (which pretty sure exists for the SE/30), and, like, Eudora(?), and you MIGHT even get email. Struggle there is everyone (rightly) does email over TLS, so there’s that. BUT, add a raspberry pi as an email gateway, telnet to it for some Lynx love, and, boy, that’s a lot of computer utility. Glaring gaps are anything graphic intensive, notably photos, and graphical internet. Betting there’s some nice games that run on the SE.
- rcarmo 1y ago
  Prince of Persia is a great game to run on older Macs (not necessarily the SE).
- chongli 1y ago
  would do 80%+ of what human beings use computers for. Outside of the internet. The internet is what 80% of people use computers for. They probably spend more than 80% of their computing time on it. Furthermore, for business use you need to run the latest Office 365 applications. While an SE/30 could probably give a modern computer a run for its money at actual productivity, it’s not going to cut IT compatibility-wise. Plus there’s the whole PDF issue.
iqfareez 1y ago
nice photos!
jnaina 1y ago
Have 2 Apple ][e, Lisa, Apple NeXT Cube, Fat Mac 512K, Mac IIci, Mac LC and an Apple Xserve, as part of my Apple collection. Along with Sinclair ZX81 and an Atari 800. Many decades of collecting and maintaining them. Unfortunately kids are not interested in inheriting them after I'm gone, even as I have shared with the some of the great origin stories behind some of these machines. They don't see the value. Their logic is that they can always spin up an emulator and try the software, instead of keeping these old dinosaurs around.
- formerphotoj 1y ago
  I wish I had kept, and could still use, my brown plastic PowerBook...I forgot what model that was but...a brown laptop?!? It was soooo cool! :) Wish you could swap innards like you can swap engines with (some) cars.
- linguae 1y ago
  I also have a collection of Macs and NeXT computers, including a Macintosh SE and a NeXT Cube. I was just a baby when these computers were being manufactured; I first learned about these computers in high school when Mac OS X was new and when I was completely taken by the idea of a Unix with a nice GUI, coming from the world of Windows 9x. While emulators are definitely convenient (especially when living in apartments), there is something about using physical hardware from the era and appreciating their technological limits compared to modern hardware. I also feel it is beneficial for young people who weren’t around to experience these machines during their heydays to experience them, to get a feel for what computing was like and how things have changed, for better and for worse. I miss the Living Computers Museum in Seattle, which was in operation before the COVID-19 pandemic and the passing of its owner, Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. Also, I love my mechanical keyboards from the era! I have a few old mechanical Apple keyboards (including the legendary Apple Extended Keyboard II) and two non-ADB NeXT keyboards.
rcarmo 1y ago
I know what he means. I don’t have the room (or time) to restore and keep an old Mac, but I am 3D printing little replicas (and tweaking the models out there) to build something to toy with: https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2025/06/22/1830 https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2025/06/22/1830 Mine currently runs System 7 and After Dark 24/7 (while acting as a Tailscale exit node) on my shelf, and I’m currently (slowly) designing a facsimile mouse for it. I love tinkering with the thing even if the screen size is atrociously small for practical use because _everything just works without any bullshit_, Then again I have a long history of having something like this around (I used to have the same Pi setup as a Plan 9 terminal solely for SSHing into my homelab without distractions), but there is something about that particular era of computing that makes me not just nostalgic but genuinely interested in re-living it to a degree. I don’t really miss the Sinclair or Ataris I had before, nor any of the other 8/16 bit computers I used—-not even the games—-but there is something about the early Macs (up until the IIfx) that is indelibly burned into my brain. We had rudimentary Internet, Mail, NNTP, all the barebone stuff, and being on the cusp of the browser era was very fun (I do miss my NeXT too, but hardly as much in comparison).
- decryption 1y ago
  That little replica Mac is very cute - the flying toaster screensaver is a nice touch. Is that running on a Pi Zero or something?
  - rcarmo 1y ago
    A 3b, which is what I had gathering dust.
ferguess_k 1y ago
I also own a vintage iBook G4 (maxed at 1.5G RAM so it's pretty powerful) and I'm struggling to find meaning in owning it. Originally I was thinking about getting touch with PowerPC architecture and check out how Apple did the 68K emulator. But now I'm completely burnt out from work, I simply have no interest in programming at all, and the laptop sits in a drawer collecting dusts. I feel sad for it and myself.

97 points by decryption 1y ago

zdw 1y ago

The best thing about old computers is they're so damn simple, and there are a ton of projects out there to enhance them - for $50 you can get a BlueSCSI which gives you hard drive/optical/network emulation on many machines. Also, new tools are way more capable and cheap - all you need to fix an old computer with a sub-50mhz bus clock is a multimeter/scope, soldering iron, and other bits, which can easily be purchased new for $200.

PaulHoule 1y ago
Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I enjoy my 72 Dodge, because I know what every part in it does.
  - dgfitz 1y ago
    Wholeheartedly agree. I’ll leave this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422763 “ I do a lot of work on my own vehicles. I think a lot of the responses are from people who do not. Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights. All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.”
    - linguae 1y ago
      I’d love to have a project car that I could work on, particularly something simple like a classic Volkswagen Beetle or maybe something more complex but still manageable like a 1980s BMW, but one significant challenge I have (and many other would-be car hobbyists) is being able to afford housing where I’m not subject to lease/HOA restrictions or even local ordinances prohibiting at-home repairs. These restrictions are understandable, especially when considering liability, insurance, and dangers such as the improper storage and disposal of chemicals such as oil. However, this means there isn’t much of a workaround for paying for labor at a mechanic, which has become costly. During my adult life thus far I’ve only lived in apartments, and every apartment that I’ve rented has a lease clause prohibiting car maintenance and repairs except for very simple tasks such as replacing windshield wipers. Thus, I drive newer cars that don’t require many repairs, and I pay a mechanic whenever I need to perform maintenance or repairs, which costs a lot of money, especially in the Bay Area (the mechanic needs to pay for two places: the rent/mortgage for the shop and also for the mechanic’s residence). Being able to afford a house with a garage and no HOA will require me to either become rich or move out of the Bay Area. Paying for labor is indeed a heavy tax, but unfortunately thanks to lease/HOA restrictions and sometimes local ordinances, this tax is unavoidable, short of giving up driving.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        I understand where you're coming from. I've lived in apartments with no garage, and just went ahead and did repairs in the parking lot anyway. But you cannot do major repairs that way. One huge problem is your tools will get stolen if you go back into your apartment to get something. It's all rather unpleasant. But there are places in Seattle where you can rent a garage and the tools you need, for people in your situation. But I doubt it is cheap.
- userbinator 1y ago
  That sounds like it needs a tune-up. Lots of performance parts available too for cars from that era.
  - flomo 1y ago
    I'd guess it was always a malaise-era smogdog, the same engine from a decade later was much better.
  - floren 1y ago
    These old cars can be a lot of fun but even the fast ones weren't that fast when taken against a modern family car... take a 68 Mustang, an iconic car as featured in Bullitt, with a 0-60 of 5.4 seconds and compare it to a 2012 Toyota Camry doing the same in 5.8 seconds. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15142639/1968-tunnel-port-ford-mustang-vs-chevrolet-camaro-z-28-archived-comparison/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a151426... https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15122183/toyota-camry-se-v6-road-test-review/ https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15122183/toyota-camry-... I used to drive a 62 Studebaker. People saw an old car and asked me if it was fast. Hell no, I'd answer -- but by God it can suck fuel!
    - flomo 1y ago
      Here's the thing. A 68 Mustang had no almost emissions controls. A 78 Thunderbird was almost the exact same stuff, except it was choked to shit. A modern computer-controlled Camry is not only way better performing, it also orders of magnitude cleaner. IMO the ICE has achieved its final form, so now the future has to be something else (electric).
      - Reubachi 1y ago
        RE: "ice final form" It's an intersting time to live, we are indeed seeing the peak of ICE, though I think there are lots of room for improvement in EGR, compression, more efficient catalytic process. "smaller market" ICE manufacturers IE isuzu, mazda, hino etc. are sort of working towards this, as opposed to jumping on EV train. Theoretically, it's completely reasonable for a high compression inlne 3 cylinder with aero wheels/tires to get 60-70 MPG. (With proper EGR, turbo application, CVT)
- asciimov 1y ago
  My family had a '79 Thunderbird that was our main driver from 91-97. I haven't seen any of them on the road in over a decade. I have several memories of that car. - The water pump going out, as we drove up a mountain, and rolling back down into the drive way of a converted apple barn. Where we found a nice cleaning lady who took my dad the 20 miles into town to get a new water pump, which he replaced in that driveway and got us back on the road. - The rear diff throwing a bearing well after midnight in the middle of nowhere west Texas. The car limped a few miles down the road to a surprisingly still open gas station. My uncle, a mechanic, happened to have the necessary parts to fix it on him. So when he picked my dad up an hour later, they went ahead and spent the rest of the overnight hours replacing it in the parking lot of that middle of nowhere gas station. - Spending several days at various salvage yards looking for rear tail lights. They are just the right height to be taken out by shopping carts. Unfortunately the 79 is the only year that didn't have a connecting strip that goes between the left and right hand sides. In the 90's they were very hard to find, I can't imagine they are any easier today. Seriously, buy an extra set even if you don't need them. If you ever want a to move to a modern V8, Ford's panther platform from '02-'11 are just as big, roomy, and easy to work on as that Thunderbird. Plus you'll get modern conveniences like anti-lock breaks, air-bags, and good part availability.
- rograndom 1y ago
  Ha! I had one of those in the late 90's. My father had it first and I inherited it when he passed. A couple of months after he bought it, I bought a 1985 LTD, which was basically a 4 door Mustang GT. He asked me if I wanted to race, I said it wouldn't be close. He said "Both cars have the same engine." Yeah, not quite. The Thunderbird had like 120hp, no fuel injection and bogged down to meet emissions, while the LTD had close to 200hp and was several hundred pounds lighter. Another person up the street had the same vintage Thunderbird with the 350ci and had done some work to it. That one went pretty good.
a_vanderbilt 1y ago
I've been slowing working on a hobby project to 3D print a lookalike Sony PVM with a computer inside. There is a joy in knowing exactly how something works, and to be able to fix it intuitively.

threeio 1y ago

The se/30 is a beautiful machine, but it’s got some of the worst battery and cap issues, so clean it up quick :)

decryption 1y ago
Oh hell yeah, that's top of my list once I crack open the case (waiting for a long T15 driver to arrive!) and poke around inside. I've got a lot of friends who have done it before, so I'll give them the board and and some money and some chocolate/beer (depending on the friend!) and ask for help with recapping the logic board.

jdkee 1y ago

There is certainly a nostalgia that I feel about tech from when I was 8 until 15 years old. This corresponded with Radio Shack 100-in-1 electronics kits, the Mattel Big Trak programmable vehicle, Mattel handheld electronic games, the Vectrex gaming system, the ZX-81 and the Commodore Amiga 500 computer. And I will throw in old Edmund Scientific catalogs for good measure. I was pre-Nintendo and Sega and certainly pre-Playstation and Xbox by a generation I imagine the current crop of college students that I teach today will feel the same about Minecraft, Angry Birds and the original iPad when they reach their 40s or later.

WalterBright 1y ago
This is the electronics kit I had as a boy: https://generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html https://generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html If you work through the base kit and the sequels, it offers a complete undergraduate course in electronics, minus the math.
- jdkee 1y ago
  I should have included my top Amiga games, Defender of the Crown, Dungeon Master and Empire.

keyle 1y ago

I wonder if my kids will feel the same about their iPad 8 or whatever version this is... My guess is not. Technology feels so "all worked out" today, with the right to repair out the window, everything is fused, and just dies one day and that'll be it. I do fantasise about being reunited with my 386 DX 33, 4MB of ram and 40MB of hdd! It was the cream of the crop. Oh, that reset button has seen some action.

JSR_FDED 1y ago

This resonates so hard with me! Except in my case it’s the Apple ][. I’ve decided it’s completely unnecessary to justify this retro computing passion, there’s nothing wrong with venerating the ingenuity, ethos and craftsmanship of the time. The excitement we felt at the breakthroughs that were coming fast and furious back then, the community and camaraderie of fellow nerds, the realization that those massively constrained systems with 10,000 to 100,000 times less power than we have today still managed to offer massive value to us as users and programmers - that’s pretty amazing. Another reason to love that era was that there was still genuine idealism in the industry and everything was far less corporate than today.

decryption 1y ago
Totally agree. I recently re-read Revolution in the Valley (Andy Hertzfeld's memoir of working on the Mac) and I absolutely got same same vibe you described. It's also hard not to be in awe of someone like Bill Atkinson - RIP legend. I just wanted to experience first hand the work this team made, rather than just reading about it, looking at screenshots or using it via an emulator. Maybe I'll learn something, or worst case, just a sense of appreciation of the shoulders of the giants we stand on.

ggm 1y ago

Time plays tricks. I also love vintage computing equipment but somehow the keyboards and mice are less kind to my hands than my memory of them. Perhaps my acquired hate of low profile non-buckling-spring keyboards is misplaced?

kaonwarb 1y ago

I have very fond memories of overclocking our 50 MHz Pentium to 75 MHz (after adding in a fan). Magic.

pbohun 1y ago

It's interesting how more "amateur approachable" both old cars and old computers are. Old cars can be worked on by anyone with some basic tools and know-how, and old computers could be understood and programmed the same way. MacPaint was made by one employee. I think this is partially why people want these types of objects. You can actually own them. You can understand them. You can mod them. Modern cars, games, computers, etc. aren't owned anymore. They always have updates, and could be bricked at any moment if the manufacturer wishes, gets bought or goes out of business. There's nothing preventing this from being the golden age of computers. The capabilities of the hardware are near magical. We just need to bring back the concept of ownership.

dlcarrier 1y ago
What really disheartens me with modern cars is that electric cars are much simpler than than cars powered by combustion engines, which could be a huge boon to the fix-it-yourself crowd, but car manufacturers now lock customers out of their cars, so electric cars don't have the opportunity to become hobbyist friendly. There are small electric-car companies that let customers do what they want, like Edison Motors, but they make industrial-sized work vehicles. It would be nice if a similar small company started selling consumer cars, but the automotive industry is heavily plagued by bikeshedding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality) to the point that large trucks and busses are allowed to do their thing, while subcompact vehicles have been effectively regulated out of existence.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Contrary to popular belief, EVs really aren't that much easier to repair, that's just a logical expectation from people without service experience based on the idea of less moving parts, but that omits that fact that electronics die too and EVs have more of them and under more strenuous loads. Most of the faults on EVs come from dead electronics like a fried MOSFET or PCB trace, and coolant leaks inside the motor due to gasket failures derived from race-to-the-bottom cost cutting designs to save money, which your average user won't be able to repair themselves unless maybe we're talking about completely swapping out the entire ECU/motor/battery/assembly with a brand new one instead of repairing it, parts which haven't been designed for easy repairability. And that's excluding DRM issues and the fact that those parts aren't sold to consumers and even if they would, stuff like ADAS sensors, motors and batteries still require calibration with dedicated equipment during installation and can't be plug&play like a laptop battery swap. Check out EV clinic(no affiliation) for horror stories on EVs and hybrids failures. Due to poor design, a lot of EVs (maybe excluding Teslas) are reliability ticking timebombs whose failure is a matter of WHEN not IF.

jojobas 1y ago

An old car can still drive on current roads. There's may be no aircon, only AM radio and no airbags, but there's still horsepower and size to do what cars do. Then, cars rust and naturally become rare and expensive to restore to a running state, and almost all of the appeal is that you can show off in them, displaying how much money you can afford to spend on a hobby. Old computers are pretty cheap and are limited to old software, and there's nearly no showing off other than on HN. Whatever rocks your boat I guess.

geerlingguy 1y ago
Surprisingly, a lot of the Internet is still accessible to these old dinosaurs, through the efforts of retro enthusiasts. A search engine like FrogFind reformats results for the earliest browsers like Netscape Navigator, and kind of "text modes" the pages. There's even virtual plugfests like GlobalTalk that links together retro enthusiasts' printers over the Internet.
- nivethan 1y ago
  Wow! Frogfind looks great, I've been thinking of writing my own proxy but it makes me happy to see someone has beat me to it.
- jojobas 1y ago
  So basically "as long as another machine does the work", which would be like towing an old car on a trailer.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - helf 1y ago
    [dead]
  - wink 1y ago
    Some of us had found many uses for our computers while they were offline, so I don't really get why you're implying they are useless without using the internet. And I'm saying that as someone who only had access to a computer for about 4 years before we got internet access.

doodlebugging 1y ago

I returned the MacSE30 that I bought at the Apple Store back in 1989 or 1990 when I went into grad school. Compared to the Epson that I bought at the same time it was a fantastic machine that would do almost everything that I needed to do out of the box whereas for the Epson I needed to buy other software. It helped that I already had Mac software though. I returned it because I couldn't afford it. The cost with peripherals was almost 3X the price of the Epson so I took advantage of Apple's return policy and let it go. I still have my original computer though, a 128k Mac that I upgraded to 512k within a couple months of getting it back in January 1985. I have the printer, an external floppy drive, and maybe something else. I used it to introduce my kids to computers, teaching them to type and use a mouse and to play the one or two games that I have for it. I have several software applications that are not Apple software including one with capabilities that I made good use of back in the day. It was mathematical software that I could feed the software points defining a line and it would compute the equation defining that line out to the nth order polynomial. It understood linear, logarithmic, and exponential scales so all you needed as input were the points in x,y space and the scale for each variable. It was very powerful and there was nothing like it in DOS land or in early Winland. I used it find the equations of lines in published nomographs and then used those equations to write and debug QuickBASIC software to calculate reservoir properties on an old Compaq 286 (later a 386 and 486, etc). I don't remember the name of the software but it was very a good mathematical application. I still don't think there is similar software for Windows unless Wolfram Alpha can do the same thing. I haven't needed to try in a long time. Thanks for this reminder.

jdougan 1y ago
MathCAD? TK!Solver?
- homarp 1y ago
  Maple?
  - doodlebugging 1y ago
    No it wasn't Maple. I'm familiar with Maple. I found it by following ads in MacWorld magazine back in the day. It should be identifiable by checking issues between December 1984 and May 1987.

LarryMade2 1y ago

Suggestions for old Mac Apps to look out for: - WriteNow! a very nice word processor that was originally developed for Next computers, before word took over it was the favorite. - ClarisWorks/AppleWorks - One of the better pre office integrated apps - the database was REALLY easy to use, and interfaced well with the vector graphics module, spreadsheet, and word processor... - FoxBase+/Mac - Before Microsoft bought Fox Software they got "Mac religion" and it shows in the incredible FoxBase+/Mac its amazin how much capability fits in a floppy. - SuperPaint - great bitmap paint program though not as accurate as later graphics apps. (fractional/grid positioning was an issue) - Ready,Set,Go! A great alternative DTP program to PageMaker/Quark. Never used others but I hear I think it was FrameMaker that had some sort of template/database feature to manage/generate catalogs. There were some interesting things back in the day. - Stepping out - virtual larger desktop - PowerPrint - Hook into epson compatible parallel printers with serial->parallel adapter. - Comic Strip Factory - way before there was ComicLife there was Comic Strip Factory - a nice clipart based comic strip compositor. - HyperCard - Never got into it but it had quite a community. - Of course programming languages like Pascal, Logo, and BASIC in various flavors. Of course you have the early greats like the Adobe programs and Microsoft Word/Excel/Office.

decryption 1y ago
Thanks for that info! I'm keen to get stuck into HyperCard stacks running on their native environment (not in an emulator) - so many people love HyperCard and miss it, so I look forward to seeing what the fuss is.
js2 1y ago
Dark Castle. Aldus Pagemaker. Word 5.1. After Dark.
- philistine 1y ago
  My old Mac SE is strictly a toaster display. I turn it on to look at the toasters. After Dark is great!
rcarmo 1y ago
Wow, I had forgotten about SteppingOut. I used that thing a lot on the smaller Macs.

whartung 1y ago

Take an SE/30, add some mass storage (something above 20MB), plug in a postscript printer, add ClarisWorks, maybe Filemaker, and you have something that, even today, would do 80%+ of what human beings use computers for. Outside of the internet. Get a network adapter (which pretty sure exists for the SE/30), and, like, Eudora(?), and you MIGHT even get email. Struggle there is everyone (rightly) does email over TLS, so there’s that. BUT, add a raspberry pi as an email gateway, telnet to it for some Lynx love, and, boy, that’s a lot of computer utility. Glaring gaps are anything graphic intensive, notably photos, and graphical internet. Betting there’s some nice games that run on the SE.

rcarmo 1y ago
Prince of Persia is a great game to run on older Macs (not necessarily the SE).
chongli 1y ago
would do 80%+ of what human beings use computers for. Outside of the internet. The internet is what 80% of people use computers for. They probably spend more than 80% of their computing time on it. Furthermore, for business use you need to run the latest Office 365 applications. While an SE/30 could probably give a modern computer a run for its money at actual productivity, it’s not going to cut IT compatibility-wise. Plus there’s the whole PDF issue.

iqfareez 1y ago

nice photos!

jnaina 1y ago

Have 2 Apple ][e, Lisa, Apple NeXT Cube, Fat Mac 512K, Mac IIci, Mac LC and an Apple Xserve, as part of my Apple collection. Along with Sinclair ZX81 and an Atari 800. Many decades of collecting and maintaining them. Unfortunately kids are not interested in inheriting them after I'm gone, even as I have shared with the some of the great origin stories behind some of these machines. They don't see the value. Their logic is that they can always spin up an emulator and try the software, instead of keeping these old dinosaurs around.

formerphotoj 1y ago
I wish I had kept, and could still use, my brown plastic PowerBook...I forgot what model that was but...a brown laptop?!? It was soooo cool! :) Wish you could swap innards like you can swap engines with (some) cars.
linguae 1y ago
I also have a collection of Macs and NeXT computers, including a Macintosh SE and a NeXT Cube. I was just a baby when these computers were being manufactured; I first learned about these computers in high school when Mac OS X was new and when I was completely taken by the idea of a Unix with a nice GUI, coming from the world of Windows 9x. While emulators are definitely convenient (especially when living in apartments), there is something about using physical hardware from the era and appreciating their technological limits compared to modern hardware. I also feel it is beneficial for young people who weren’t around to experience these machines during their heydays to experience them, to get a feel for what computing was like and how things have changed, for better and for worse. I miss the Living Computers Museum in Seattle, which was in operation before the COVID-19 pandemic and the passing of its owner, Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. Also, I love my mechanical keyboards from the era! I have a few old mechanical Apple keyboards (including the legendary Apple Extended Keyboard II) and two non-ADB NeXT keyboards.

rcarmo 1y ago

I know what he means. I don’t have the room (or time) to restore and keep an old Mac, but I am 3D printing little replicas (and tweaking the models out there) to build something to toy with: https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2025/06/22/1830 https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2025/06/22/1830 Mine currently runs System 7 and After Dark 24/7 (while acting as a Tailscale exit node) on my shelf, and I’m currently (slowly) designing a facsimile mouse for it. I love tinkering with the thing even if the screen size is atrociously small for practical use because _everything just works without any bullshit_, Then again I have a long history of having something like this around (I used to have the same Pi setup as a Plan 9 terminal solely for SSHing into my homelab without distractions), but there is something about that particular era of computing that makes me not just nostalgic but genuinely interested in re-living it to a degree. I don’t really miss the Sinclair or Ataris I had before, nor any of the other 8/16 bit computers I used—-not even the games—-but there is something about the early Macs (up until the IIfx) that is indelibly burned into my brain. We had rudimentary Internet, Mail, NNTP, all the barebone stuff, and being on the cusp of the browser era was very fun (I do miss my NeXT too, but hardly as much in comparison).

decryption 1y ago
That little replica Mac is very cute - the flying toaster screensaver is a nice touch. Is that running on a Pi Zero or something?
- rcarmo 1y ago
  A 3b, which is what I had gathering dust.

ferguess_k 1y ago

I also own a vintage iBook G4 (maxed at 1.5G RAM so it's pretty powerful) and I'm struggling to find meaning in owning it. Originally I was thinking about getting touch with PowerPC architecture and check out how Apple did the 68K emulator. But now I'm completely burnt out from work, I simply have no interest in programming at all, and the laptop sits in a drawer collecting dusts. I feel sad for it and myself.