| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
CHips
Joined: 01 May 2016
Posts: 834
Location: Switzerland
|
 Posted: Tue May 17, 2016 12:37 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| c3h5 wrote: | Interesting, for some reason I thought I was on the younger end of the forum members. For those younger than I (36)
1) What got you started with collecting?
2) Do you have any chips older than yourself? |
First of all, I can say I am about as old as Pentium II...
How did I start? Some years ago, I found an old Pentium III computer which was thrown away, and took it to my home. Then I turned it on and it worked! As a rather ecological person, I was wondering how can we throw away something that perfectly works... And since this, I started to interest myself for old computers: when I had time, I was looking for old systems in bins or from people who give them or sell them for very cheap.
Then, as time passed, my room was filled by more and more computers. I wanted to study them, and test them. What is the oldest system still decently usable nowadays? Can I install Windows 7 or the latest Debian on a 486? How this 486, which was the top tech 25 years ago, is now an extremely slow brick that can only run Windows 2000 or Damn Small Linux? And I also started to study their history. It is a beautiful hobby for me, and interesting to see the evolution: from hundreds of bytes of memory to gigabytes, from 2300 transistors to billions! I want to know what were computers like before... How it became today... And how it will be 25 years in the future...
Months ago, I stated my military service (obligatory here...), but that at least earns me a lot of money for a simple high school graduate. So I could afford to buy new things in EBay that I cannot find here, and this is the moment I really began collecting. I mainly collect CPUs but not only, also RAMs and some other stuffs.
Many of chips I own are well older than me. A 4004 is more than 2 times older than me...
Also, I interest myself in the new technologies too. But these modern CPUs don't have the charm older have... A simple green plastic and metal grey heat cap...
For me, chips (and old hardware in general) is a hobby for which every geek (or simply everyone who like computer science) should interest in. And for this reason, I don't think we are approaching to an end of CPU and other old hardware collecting. There will always be people who want to interest in collecting such stuff. In the future, it will not be because they grew with vintage chips, but maybe because they want to see how the past was like before.
_________________
Stelo.xyz Museum (CPU Collection and more)
Last edited by CHips on Mon Jan 20, 2020 4:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
alvaro84
Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 80
Location: Fehérvárcsurgó, Hungary
|
| Posted: Tue May 17, 2016 1:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| CHips wrote: | | But these modern CPUs don't have the charm older have... A simple green plastic and metal grey heat cap... |
I sadly agree. I have a nice bunch of socket 478/775/754/939/AM2 processors and they look awfully boring 
Just compare a dozen, same looking LGA775 pieces to a Cyrix 486DLC, a gold cap Pentium, a nice K6, a little purple IIT 387, a huge imposing Pentium Pro, a clumsy sexy 64-pin 68000, a purple cap Cyrix MII, a tiny ceramic 286, a fullmetal mobile PII module, a golden UltraSparc or Alpha with heatsink mounting screws or a luxurious looking IBM PPC-601 with its blue holographic rays (still on my wanted list). They're all pieces of fully functional art.
But a week or so ago I obtained my youngest CPU, a Sandy Bridge i3-2100. It's almost like a 775, but at least it has interesting looking metal pads on the PCB next to the cap and a great array of tiny SMDs on the bottom. I think there's a little hope  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001 phpBB Group
|
