What the Retrochallenge means to me

I've been looking over the blogs from my fellow Winter Warm Up Retrochallengers now that January is over and I wanted to comment on their work and summarize what I've learned, enjoyed, and try to get at the meaning, for me anyway, of the retrochallenge.

2 words sum it up: motivation and advocacy.

Everybody has projects - not necessarily computer related, but things you've been meaning to do that just keep getting pushed back. But you need some motivation.

The Retrochallenge is a fun way to get you off your butt, put it in writing, committ to it in a way, and document your progress.

I've had the 6100mc idea in my head for a long time - the Windows Media Center PC and plenty of sites dealing with turning Mac Minis into media centers have always intrigued me - but the true instigator was seeing the aborted Apple set top boxes from the mid 90s - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Interactive_Television_Box - I remember seeing those abandonded units for sale on eBay a good 6 or 7 years ago. I wondered if it would be possible to retrofit a 6100 into the case and make a media center. So thanks Retrochallenge - I finally did it, without the retrofitting of course.

The second important component is advocacy. Old computers are still useful. What inspires us to be devoted to these vintage machines? I don't know. Do we have the same love for other technology in our lives? Not usually. "Oooh, I'm holding on to this old toaster now that we have the toaster oven - you never know when we might need it." Or "Well the user interface of the straight razor is so much better than my Gillete twin blade...ah, classic shaving at its best..."

Yes, the latest and greatest is cool. But is a new machine 5 or 10 times more productive than these machines we've used for a month? It's impossible to quantify but I would say no.

Luddite is still making music on a 30 year old machine. There is something insanely sweet about an Apple ][ cranking out In a Gadda Da Vida. I defy you to say otherwise!

CJ not just browsing the web on a 22 year old machine - but doing secure e-commerce to upgrade said machine. Amazing!

Sure you can get out your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 to play games - but won't you get your twitch fix itched all the same on an Atari 800 like Doctor Clu did? Or maybe even use your brain and your imagination to play a game like Jeremiah's Warlock Castle?

Yes, a Mac Mini running OS X attached to a giant HD Plasma TV rocks. But could it dial someone from your contact list and insult them with a wisecrack from the Talking Moose? My 6100mc can. Heck I could even setup a web server on the 6100mc with some CGI-Javascript-Applescript and offer a "dial-an-insult" service that would make Steve Wozniak proud.

Just before the Retrochallenge started, an auction on ebay for a pallette of 20 6100s went for $1. (shipping not included of course - it was pick up only. It was in the mid-west somewhere - if it had been on the east coast I would have gone for it.)

Not to pat myself on the back or anything, (OK I will) but what I've done is pretty amazing for any computer - much less for one that, in today's market, is worth all of 5 cents.

Along with advocacy come community and inspiration. We are like minded people who feed off each other and learn from one another's projects.

I'm proud of the fact that I got solid state media working on a vintage Mac - I was by no means the first - but it was something that was discussed but not actually acheived by readers of Low End Mac and members of the 68kmla. I would imagine it is the cheapest solution as well - $40 for the SCSI to IDE and $5 or so for the IDE-CF.
(And don't get me started on the fact that there are 2 different vendors offering CF solutions for Apple ]['s but for vintage Macs I had to resort to trial and error...)

I'm proud of the fact that two other retrochallengers told me I inspired them with the 6100mc.

I'm inspired by the fact that Luddite set out to make a shipping product and did so, and that last year's Retrochallenge winner, Aaron Hall, is still updating his Happyclock application - he just released a bug fix a couple weeks ago.

I'd like to follow in their footsteps and offer some of the scripts that do the bulk of the work for the 6100mc someday - right now they are pretty hard coded for my particular environment and would spaz if run on another machine. Poor programming discipline on my part - but I just wanted it to work first. And no Luddite - you aren't the only programmer that works backwards - I too concentrated on the interface before I worked on the back end.

So thanks everyone. I enjoyed reading your blogs and following your progress. Go Retro!