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I like the idea of restoring old computers but I don't know. I also don't want to use loud potato computer that much.
At least they look cool.
>>0x000003
> imagine
"Honey, it still works. We can explore variations of y = x^2 to plot parabolas."
"It takes up all the space in the living room. You're getting that thing out of here today!"
"NOOOOOOOOO"
>>0x000004
> "Honey, it still works. We can explore variations of y = x^2 to plot parabolas."
> "It takes up all the space in the living room. You're getting that thing out of here today!"
> "NOOOOOOOOO"
this is exactly my mom whenever i bring home a new pc i find in the trash but still works
>>0x000005
> this is exactly my mom whenever i bring home a new pc i find in the trash but still works
ye haha, it happened to / happens to all of us.
I'd love to take the shell of an old CRT and put in a flat 4:3 monitor, build a modern PC in an matching case, get an old keyboard and mouse, and just have a deliciously retro battle station.
I've been using the same computer for 10 years (pic not related). It's one of those tempered glass cases that was popular in 2016. I've never dusted the inside of it once. It's bascially a dust cloud disaster zone in there. I'm afraid that if I opened it up, the eldritch horrors that would come out would occupy my house and never leave.
What is my point?
Having tempered glass and sleek black computers you can see inside to all the over designed parts... It's just a window into the dust horrors. Computers should be gray, the color of dust, and you should never see inside of them until you open them up.
The only reason to keep old computers is to run old software that doesn't work the same on modern machines. Otherwise, old computers are generally much less efficient, using way more energy to do far less
> only reason to keep old computers
there's a damned good reason if you're a kid and you never know if your computer breaks how will you get another one.
also keeping your own old computers and getting a bunch of other peoples old computers is different imo
but overall I agree, the fascination with old computers is really superficial. it would be different if people were restoring them for museum reasons, but it's more like teens just want to be cool using windows xp and having their whole family hacked because of it.
>>0x00000a
> there's a damned good reason if you're a kid and you never know if your computer breaks how will you get another one.
Easy. You fix the one you broke. This is a rite of passage for families who let their kids use computers
how old are we talking? i think to sate your appetite for it you can consider doing some dumpster diving
recently found a discarded 10th gen i7 laptop with some graphics card i forgot. almost perfect condition. another time found a whole pc with a 2070 gpu, just needed to swap out the processor.
call me a trash panda but shit pays off for real
>>0x00000c
> shit pays off for real
damn that's crazy.
Dumpster diving get a certain reputation because a lot of people that do it are tweakers pathologically gathering trash to take home. But if you're really just keeping an eye out for stuff of value, that's awesome.
>>0x00000c
I read your blog post on this subject and left a comment. I thought other people might like to read it as well since its on this subject.
https://chxshire22.com/blog/2025/things-have-souls/
btw cool site design (picrel)
>>0x00000e
> btw cool site design (picrel)
thanks!
also i got around to repairing an "older" laptop last night (pic related) - swapping the motherboard out. when it first broke down, the shop i went to told me it was a motherboard issue and wanted to charge $200-$300 (SGD) for it, which was ridiculous since the whole laptop costs around $180. so i bought a motherboard online for $40~ and did it myself.
turns out it was just the ram malfunctioning. wldve been nice to have had the brains to just swap the ram first and not trust people blindly lol.
anyway, i think older thinkpads are still really good, at least the ones with 6th gen processors and onwards. everything on them is a relatively easy fix. the one i was working on in the pic is an x270. this one isn't mine, but i've got an x270 of my own, and ive been using it for school and work and it handles everything well.
i assume OP meant OLD computers though like an ancient mac or commodore but im not entirely sure what they cld be used for today, but collecting them if you have the space can be interesting
>>0x00000f
yeah they probably don't have the know how to do what you're doing there.
Something I noticed among the neocities kids is they think it's really cool to use XP-era computers just for aesthetic reasons, but then when they actually pursue these machines, they wake up to the reality that it's not practical and they don't have the resources to learn to improve the machine even if they wanted to.
> OLD computers
I went to a computer show once where they had the extremely old ones, like so old I've never seen them in person ever, and they're fully restored and sparkling like in a movie. It's absolutely crazy and I'm glad someone does that because it was a worthy experience.
> turns out it was just the ram malfunctioning. wldve been nice to have had the brains to just swap the ram first and not trust people blindly lol.
This is just the type of wisdom you get with time I assume.
> thinkpads
I notice a lot of people use these that want a Linux laptop.
Personally, I hate working on small computers. My eye sight isn't good enough anymore and I'm terrible with tiny parts. I'm pretty good with software but not hardware so much. I have built a PC or two so I'm not ignorant but it's always in big, easy to work with cases. I get stressed out when the parts are tiny.
