I'm definitely not arguing there aren't people collecting these iconic old computers - just the mismatch between how many people have used computers daily for 20/30 years now and how few people seem to collect them. In my small-sized city in a small country there are maybe 25 car clubs I could be part of, specialist garages for just about every brand of car - even really niche shops that just do custom re-upholstery only for certain brands etc. Whereas for computers there's just a handful of people using the local auction and classified sites.

I think the reason you cite for the mismatch is the strongest one. If you're into collecting 80's BMWs you can still easily drive with a club including newer cars every weekend on the same roads, use the same petrol, easily get plugs, belts other parts etc. But an 80's PC is much more "stuck in time" and you need to be quite knowledgeable to maintain and enjoy in the same way.

2-3 years ago I found my mom's old clamshell G3 iBook in her garage (from around 2000). Surprisingly it still booted up and worked great. I wanted to do some writing that trip and instead of using my own laptop which was full of distractions, I opted to use Word on the iBook. Which was also fun.

I saved my work as a text file on a USB stick, which was no problem bringing over to my modern Mac.

It's gonna be interesting to see how well old USB ports will be supported in the long term with everyone rushing for thin machines with USB-C (sure you could buy a hub).

Back in 2000 my first laptop had a serial port and i bought a Wacom serial based tablet for it. A couple of years later that was gone and i had to buy a USB Wacom (that still works with win10 on modern machines!!). So for some other HW project i had to find a USB-Serial converter, so the question will be, are we really supporting the same old standards if we're forced to chase dongles?

Meanwhile, on a system from the 80s, you wouldn't have a word processor, you wouldn't have support for any of the filesystems supported by modern OSes (well, maybe FAT?), and you wouldn't have USB anyway. Heck, you'd need either a serial port or a floppy drive on a modern computer in order to even have a chance of transferring data between them.

You wouldn't have a word processor? There's lots of word processors for CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari, Tandy TRS-80, Tandy CoCo, not to mention proprietary machines like the Tandy 100/102/200 portables. A USB-Serial adapter works just fine. Or you can get a bluetooth or wifi modem that connects your old machine to the net.

Where do you propose to get a copy of WordStar in 2020, pray tell?

Umm...just download it? https://winworldpc.com/product/wordstar/ Sure you need to transfer the files over, but that's quick work with a cheap serial to USB adapter or a USB floppy drive if the target machine has 3.5" drive

For all those classic vintage computers there is someone selling a flash drive or similar mod that mimics a SCSI hard drive or floppy drive, etc.

You could hook up a Mac to the internet in 1985-ish, transferring files using telnet.

Mac OS still ships with BinHex (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BinHex), I think, so for Macs, that might already be the simplest way to exchange data between an early Mac and a modern machine (even if you have a floppy drive, does it read Mac disks?)

Edit: maybe my memory is of, and it was direct dial-up to another machine, not across the internet. NCSA Telnet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet) supported TCP/IP before the OS did (yes, that was possible. I don’t know whether you still could do that on a modern system), though, so who knows?

> supported TCP/IP before the OS did (yes, that was possible. I don’t know whether you still could do that on a modern system), though, so who knows?

In general you can. If the OS lets you open raw sockets, you can implement TCP and all yourself in userspace. Although in those days, I'm guessing it was actually implementing the entire AT modem stack too, and just driving the modem directly via a serial port.

> You could hook up a Mac to the internet in 1985-ish, transferring files using telnet.

I'm sure you could. In 1985-ish.

How much of the required hardware still exists? How much of the required software can you find? Is that software (or another version of it) also compatible with your modern computer? etc.

wordstar released in '78 and was insanely popular until the 90s when ms-word mostly took over.

Also WordPerfect for DOS! We had an old XT that was "my" computer, and I did a lot of homework on it. Pretty sure it was WP5.1, which would have come out in '89, which matches the timeline pretty well (I think we got that computer around '92 or so).

And these days no one would have the slightest clue how to use it if they could even find it.

And Xywrite in between. It was great (and still is).

At least in Germany, I think you can absolutely compare the usage of retro computers to the usage of retro cars. Noone uses their retro car for day-to-day business. They maybe use it to drive out on a warm summer day, but not to go to work. Just like how you'd use a retro computer in your spare time to enjoy some classic games and not to post on Hacker News or get actual work done.

Technically, sure, you can use your retro car every day. But most people don't, probably because it would be less practical and also lower the value of the car over time.

I think one of the reasons the retro car thing is so huge in the USA is that the cars STILL EXIST on the road - there are (poor) people using ancient cars as daily drivers, so when the desire comes to find a retro vehicle, they're out there and available and cheap.

Not so much with old computers - NOBODY, not even the poor in the USA, are trying to make do with a 8086 as a daily computer. Phones and better computers are simply too cheap and available.

Are car licenses (whatever you want to call it) more lax in the US? In the UK it is more expensive running old cars because there's an annual "Ministry of Transport test" (which is broadly just referred to as "MOT") with really strict regulations. If your car fails it then it's not road legal.

I remember from my trips to America that even some of the well maintained cars there wouldn't have been legal in the UK. For example some didn't have orange indicators, instead using the red break lights as an indicator.

Most states actually make it CHEAPER to use an older car - for example, California does NOT require smog checks on cars made before 1975.

A very few states have a more stringent "inspection" but it mainly checks that the car has working lights and brakes - nothing like an actual costly check.

The USA doesn't even mandate daytime running lights as far as I know.

Some states also have 'classic' registration which (in WI at least) is paid once and lasts as long as you own the vehicle. It's more expensive up front than a regular yearly registration, but once it's done it's done. It also carries additional restrictions befitting the intended operation of a 'classic' (e.g., owner must also have a regularly registered vehicle, not allowed to drive in January, hauling restrictions if it's a truck) which make it cheaper only as a second vehicle.

The rules are designed to apply to vehicles being preserved, and are a help to hobbyists who can afford to own two or more cars. They seem to be designed - for better or worse - to exclude people who happen to rely on an older car as their only vehicle.

For classic cars the UK is similar: anything over 40 years old is exempt from the annual MOT inspection.

Aside from that, the license tax is often scaled to the vehicle value.

A new $25k sedan here (Arizona) costs like $350 or so per year to license, but a 40-year-old one worth $700 scrap value costs like $30.

Depends on the state. And even depends where in the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...

For example, I’m from Illinois, and you only have to have an emissions test in the Chicago and East St. Louis regions. I grew up near Peoria, where you can seemingly drive whatever disgusting uranium-and-coal-fired jalopy you want.

It depends on the state, some do annual emissions and/or safety inspections and require failed vehicles to get fixed. But a lot will just let you drive nearly anything.

Depends in the state and county. Some require both an emissions and safety check, but the safety is far less strict than the MOT. Some only require emissions testing. In some cases no testing is required at all, e.g. niche vehicles like motorcycles and conversion kits for SxS ATVs.

Exactly this. It's better to think of said hardware as toys and not tools.