I don't mean to but I lost one of my best friends partially this way :(
It's hard to control sometimes
If I ever find someone who cares about communism/Unix/Plan 9/computer architecture (I see all these as deeply interconnected) as much as I do our power will be unstoppable
Edit: Thanks everyone for your replies and for sharing your experiences, it means a lot to me. I want to reply to everyone I just don't know what to say lol
I'm glad you found a group, that sounds pretty cool :3
Oooh I see, if it helps I'm not that good at it either but I try my best lol. You have any projects you're working on or anything specifically you're interested in?
The goal is to work on some kind of Foss home automation iot stuff to combat the absolute flood of crappy insecure proprietary iot shit on the market. But the topic is quite limited on resources online and I need to get good at making hardware which is a challenge.
Previous project was a fair bit similar which was home server, nas backups, nextcloud and routing traffic via pihole and unbound. Plus some Foss services to help me out with day to day things.
I also wanted to have a go at programming for retro hardware or making homebrew for the gamegear but all this things take a lot of time and my job is good at making me feel dead most of the time.
That's cool! I love programming for old hardware lol. I'm porting Plan 9 to an SGI Indigo 2 rn! Homebrew for the game gear would go so hard too. Just looking online quickly it looks like it has a Z80 in it, which was/is very popular and has lots of good resources around for programmers so hopefully it won't be too hard to get started.
I know the feeling about the job. I have to work tomorrow xwx
So far I've seen homebrew made using the sega master system mode supported by the gamegear with some minimal tooling. Might start with that to understand how its put together and get something rendering or sounds playing.
Silicon graphics were the powerhouse PCs at one point weren't they? Used for like 3D rendering and such.
Do you follow LGR on YouTube? I like his videos for covering all random bits of retro hardware.
I have two old macs, one a working Mac SE with black and white screen that's pretty cool. Only problem is the floppy drive is long dead so getting any software onto it is very hard. There was some scsi to sd card thing that acts as a replacement for the HDD but I'd still need a floppy to install the OS on.
Hi there, sorry about the late response, I really had to get some sleep.
That's a good idea! I bet there's an emulator out there you can play with too.
Yess, they made some of the best Unix workstations of the 90s that were often used for 3d work but also really any high-performance computing work. I've wanted an SGI machine for a long time but it wasn't until recently that I got one for a price I can afford.
Yeah, I've seen some of his videos! They're fun but I don't watch him too often since he covers mostly old PC or gaming stuff. Also it makes me want the hardware he shows off too much lol.
That's awesome lol. The pre-Intel Apple hardware is so iconic. Sorry to hear about your floppy drive though. Any chance of fixing it or is the damage too much?
The macs weren't kept in good condition. Left in an attic and riddled with mould. Managed to clean a lot of it out but for some reason the floppy got it the worst. I may be able to be up an external floppy drive though but the risk with buying such old hardware is its sometimes DOA cos the seller doesn't have the means to test it anymore. It was hard enough to find working original ps2 controllers an external floppy will be a challenge.
Then i got to locate the damn software! I could write my own floppies but I don't have the fuzziest where to start. Those old macs need like very specific single track floppies or smthn.
I have very much enjoyed chatting with you. A me or me equivalent would definitely get along with you IRL. Feel free to DM me if you ever wanna talk about tech.
Ohh I'm sorry to hear they were kept in such poor condition. A lot of really cool hardware has suffered the same fate. I look at eBay or other similar places a lot for fun (rarely have the money to buy anything sadly) and the state of some of the listings there is just sad. Like rare hardware just covered in rust and dust cuz someone just stored it in a barn or something.
Yeahh, I've just made peace with the fact that I may have to spend a lot of time fixing whatever I buy at this point. But that can be fun too :3
Maybe instead of trying to find new floppy drives and stuff you could try transferring data over any serial ports on the machine or something. But I don't know too much about 68k Macs (but I do have a few PowerPC macs hehe).
I've enjoyed chatting with you too! If you want maybe we could exchange instant messenger contacts in DMs or something.