On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 2:33:28 AM UTC+10, Zbig wrote:
Actually, as I remember the 80s, that retro-technology wasn't about unification we can see today — but exactly the opposite: it was
constant confrontation and comparison of various ideas, solutions,
hardware platforms etc. We didn't have that powerful machines on
our desks, but actually that times somehow were much more interesting regarding home/personal computer market. Today it's just „PC or Mac?".
So if you mean kind of unification, it's already done: Raspberry Pi and
its „derivatives” (all that Banana Pi, Orange Pi, BeagleBone etc.). Quite
nice and capable pieces of hardware. And not expensive!
On the opposite side we can see fine things like Colour Maximite (and
its whole family).
You wrote formerly about FPGA? There's MEGA65 ready to buy (but expensive).
Just another project as far as retro goes. The whole VM thing is about a common unified software publication architecture, option. People use whatever. MSDOS is technically retro too, even in a hypervisor with ability share resources copy and paste
etc. Retro is more about the feel, games and what could have been done. It's more like the home computer day and earlier for me, of which the Commodore Amiga 1200 and Risc OS machines were peaks. If people want something else, they can.
It's also about a modern version, learning from the lessons of the past. Which software support and publication costs were a big part. You can say it's an upgraded alternative to sone form of advanced basic not requiring a set resolution.
I didn't know that PI or FPGA were representations of what you could have done with Forth processors in retro times. PI itself is not really more retro than what I was looking at, but certainly different from what could have been done at the time, and
with forth processors and the best low footprint graphics technology. If we look at variety, very little variety existed in most of the market, mainly Commodore 64 as a publication platform in the US, as people voted with their feet, but it didn't mean
those machines were not retro.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)