The Big Generation X Nostalgia Thread

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I played with a friend's amiga a bit in the late 80s. They were so cool at the time. The video abilities were way above everyone else. Apple acts like they invented the GUI but much of their early ideas were cribbed from Amiga. Then under funded Amiga tripped up and higher spending companies passed it.
 
I had a C64 until finally I needed to go to college. The. I took one of my dad's hand me down PCs and cobbled together a working computer. C64 and Vic-20s were my childhood. One friend has an Amiga and those games were so pretty. But I was heading to PC land as the Amiga arrived.
 
Stan said:
I played with a friend's amiga a bit in the late 80s. They were so cool at the time. The video abilities were way above everyone else. Apple acts like they invented the GUI but much of their early ideas were cribbed from Amiga. Then under funded Amiga tripped up and higher spending companies passed it.
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The also cribbed a LOT from the Xerox Star workstation.
 
Yeti Spaghetti said:
The Commodore 64 was my everything for several years in the late 80s/early 90s, before I got an Amiga 500 and thought I was the coolest thing around:


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Stan said:
I played with a friend's amiga a bit in the late 80s. They were so cool at the time. The video abilities were way above everyone else. Apple acts like they invented the GUI but much of their early ideas were cribbed from Amiga. Then under funded Amiga tripped up and higher spending companies passed it.
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Bunch said:
I had a C64 until finally I needed to go to college. The. I took one of my dad's hand me down PCs and cobbled together a working computer. C64 and Vic-20s were my childhood. One friend has an Amiga and those games were so pretty. But I was heading to PC land as the Amiga arrived.
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I was a BBC child and did an evaluation about 1990 or so when I needed to upgrade my computer. In the end the PC won out as you could just get 386's at a more-or-less affordable price. I considered an Archimedes A400, a Mac plus, an Amiga (unfortunately the 68030 models hadn't come out yet) and a PC. Sadly, the PC was by far the most boring of the bunch but it was ultimately the right choice.

Sometimes I consider a nostalgic soiree into some sort of retro computer - but it comes down ultimately to 'can't be arsed.' I'm too tied to Microsoft to get away from Windows as I mostly work with SQL Server for a living. A SGI Octane might be fun, but it's ultimately not a terribly useful computer unless you have some legacy software or hardware that needs it.

At one point I bought my dad an Acorn RISC PC as a toy, and he got a fair bit of mileage out of tinkering with it. We consider it a success as it apparently perked him up quite a bit. He was quite down after the 2006 grass fires as most of his stuff got burnt. I was considering getting him an Octane and some video hardware to go with it, but he was getting very ill then and died about 4 years ago.
 
Nobby-W said:
I was a BBC child and did an evaluation about 1990 or so when I needed to upgrade my computer. In the end the PC won out as you could just get 386's at a more-or-less affordable price. I considered an Archimedes A400, a Mac plus, an Amiga (unfortunately the 68030 models hadn't come out yet) and a PC. Sadly, the PC was by far the most boring of the bunch but it was ultimately the right choice.

Sometimes I consider a nostalgic soiree into some sort of retro computer - but it comes down ultimately to 'can't be arsed.' I'm too tied to Microsoft to get away from Windows as I mostly work with SQL Server for a living. A SGI Octane might be fun, but it's ultimately not a terribly useful computer unless you have some legacy software or hardware that needs it.

At one point I bought my dad an Acorn RISC PC as a toy, and he got a fair bit of mileage out of tinkering with it. We consider it a success as it apparently perked him up quite a bit. He was quite down after the 2006 grass fires as most of his stuff got burnt. I was considering getting him an Octane and some video hardware to go with it, but he was getting very ill then and died about 4 years ago.
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I solved that itch with emulators. I played Phantasie on a C64 emulator and it was everything I remembered and more.

By the time Amiga rolled around like you I did the calculations and tied my horse to Intel. My dad had a copy of Windows 2(which I believe came in a 286 and 386 flavor) which I think I ran on a 386sx(?). It was horribly slow. Back to DOS until I got a 486 or a pentium knock off. This was sort of the high point for me of interest in picking PC components.
 
Bunch said:
I solved that itch with emulators. I played Phantasie on a C64 emulator and it was everything I remembered and more.

By the time Amiga rolled around like you I did the calculations and tied my horse to Intel. My dad had a copy of Windows 2(which I believe came in a 286 and 386 flavor) which I think I ran on a 386sx(?). It was horribly slow. Back to DOS until I got a 486 or a pentium knock off. This was sort of the high point for me of interest in picking PC components.
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It was worth while as I could run Pagemaker, Corel Draw and AutoCAD on it and I pimped it out with 4MB of RAM and then eventually a 300GB ESDI disk salvaged on an old Sun workstation. Then I got a Mac IIci, which turned out to be a dead end, and got hold of a higher spec motherboard with a 20MhZ CPU and 8MB of RAM, plus a Tseng Labs graphics card.

Then, around 1995 I got a 17" monitor at an auction and much faster PC with a 100MHz 486 CPU. That machine was actually fairly quick. It would run Pagemaker 5, Corel Draw 5, Photoshop 2.5, AutoCAD 12 and a bunch of other software very nicely. It was actually quite a fast machine, very much the last hurrah of 16 bit windows, and had enough disk space to dual boot Linux.

Building a PC was interesting between about 1985-2000. I had some fun making a quiet, small-footprint PC when I first came to the UK, but since then I've largely bought either secondhand HP workstations or Thinkpads and then just pimping them to spec. Generally one doesn't actually need cutting edge CPU speed, and by and large CPU speed hasn't been a big deal since the Athlon first came out.

Funnily enough I don't really miss any games from the 8-bit era, although I spent hours playing them. I do have fond memories of the '90s with Doom, Descent, Warcraft, Civ, Heretic and various others.
 
Nobby-W said:
It was worth while as I could run Pagemaker, Corel Draw and AutoCAD on it and I pimped it out with 4MB of RAM and then eventually a 300GB ESDI disk salvaged on an old Sun workstation. Then I got a Mac IIci, which turned out to be a dead end, and got hold of a higher spec motherboard with a 20MhZ CPU and 8MB of RAM, plus a Tseng Labs graphics card.

Then, around 1995 I got a 17" monitor at an auction and much faster PC with a 100MHz 486 CPU. That machine was actually fairly quick. It would run Pagemaker 5, Corel Draw 5, Photoshop 2.5, AutoCAD 12 and a bunch of other software very nicely. It was actually quite a fast machine, very much the last hurrah of 16 bit windows, and had enough disk space to dual boot Linux.

Building a PC was interesting between about 1985-2000. I had some fun making a quiet, small-footprint PC when I first came to the UK, but since then I've largely bought either secondhand HP workstations or Thinkpads and then just pimping them to spec. Generally one doesn't actually need cutting edge CPU speed, and by and large CPU speed hasn't been a big deal since the Athlon first came out.

Funnily enough I don't really miss any games from the 8-bit era, although I spent hours playing them. I do have fond memories of the '90s with Doom, Descent, Warcraft, Civ, Heretic and various others.
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Same trajectory here. The last PC I built that I was excited about was a small form factor PC. It was that fun combo of speed and size and random bits I'd researched to get the most for the least out of. After that I was more into rock mounted systems. I'd acquired a floor to ceiling rack for my home(stored in the bedroom/office of my small apartment).

I'm not sure I've ever actually just bought a PC premade. Only laptops. Even as I've gotten older and lost the thrill of building I still get annoyed at the price to buy the components I tend to want. I've usually been able to scavenge enough from the existing system that I'd have to overpay for what I need in a new system.

Some of it is I also don't really want to get so far behind learning about it that it becomes too hard to catch up. Atrophy is no fun.
 
Bunch said:
Same trajectory here. The last PC I built that I was excited about was a small form factor PC. It was that fun combo of speed and size and random bits I'd researched to get the most for the least out of. After that I was more into rock mounted systems. I'd acquired a floor to ceiling rack for my home(stored in the bedroom/office of my small apartment).

I'm not sure I've ever actually just bought a PC premade. Only laptops. Even as I've gotten older and lost the thrill of building I still get annoyed at the price to buy the components I tend to want. I've usually been able to scavenge enough from the existing system that I'd have to overpay for what I need in a new system.

Some of it is I also don't really want to get so far behind learning about it that it becomes too hard to catch up. Atrophy is no fun.
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I did find that NVMe drives were a bit of a learning process when I got my kit last year. The P52s is still randomly blue screening so I'm trying some different memory and next stop will be getting another secondhand one and transferring the bling to it. Fortunately I've still got my desktop machine (which is not supported by Windows 11 so I'll eventually have to swizzle it out). I can't say I've actually realised any cost savings at this point - except they would have been significantly more expensive to buy new from the vendor in the configuration.
 
Allow me to translate the above Attic Greek. I started off flahderiha, but then i added some whatsits and my thingums went malarky. Then, I bought some canoodles and and a half loaf of that other thing and my stuff was much stuffier.
 
Fenris-77 said:
Allow me to translate the above Attic Greek. I started off flahderiha, but then i added some whatsits and my thingums went malarky. Then, I bought some canoodles and and a half loaf of that other thing and my stuff was much stuffier.
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I would have thought more mezzanine than attic.
 
EmperorNorton said:
I get strangely nostalgiac for old candies that aren't made anymore. Remember Bonkers. I'm sure they aren't actually as good as I remember them being as a kid... but man I remember them being great.
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Yeah, I assume Jello pudding pops couldn't be as great as I remember, but boy I wish I could find out.
 
TristramEvans said:
Yeah, I assume Jello pudding pops couldn't be as great as I remember, but boy I wish I could find out.
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Let me go check moms freezer...


I remember Koogle peanut butter being surgery awesomeness. Wonder if it still would be.
 
spittingimage said:
Sugar in peanut butter. Heresy of the worst kind!

(Seriously. Sugar?)
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I think so. I'm pretty sure it was the sort of thing no parent would feed a child now but was ultra cool in the late 70s early 80s.
 
There were these little pizza things. They were like little mini-bite-sized-pizzas. They'd be arranged on foil trays. You'd pop 'em in a toaster oven. As far as I know they didn't survive and weren't adapted to the mainstreaming of microwaves.

They looked a lot like modern bagel bites, but were not the same. They were regular frozen pizza crust.

There were also some little mini-taco things that were packaged similarly. Some of the Old El Paso TV dinners came with those little tacos too.

I miss 'em. I haven't had either of them in probably 40 years.

Oh, and I miss those mix and bake instant cakes. They came with some cake mix and a little cardboard mixing/baking pan and a frosting packet. You'd mix that junk up in some milk, pop it in the toaster oven, and when it came out slather the frosting on it. I remember those got a microwave version sometime in the mid-80s but I don't think they did well because I haven't seen them in ages.
 
spittingimage said:
Sugar in peanut butter. Heresy of the worst kind!

(Seriously. Sugar?)
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Spellslinging Sellsword said:
Sugar is in most American peanut butter. Pretty much any peanut butter that you don't have to stir before using.
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I got some Skippy peanut butter from Costco once, and oh my, was it sweet. It was an .. experience. The Poms don't put this much sugar in their peanut butter either. However, on tasting Merkin peanut butter I can now see why peanut butter and jam sandwiches are a thing there.

Fun fact: The entire civilised world regards America as mad when they talk about PBJ sandwiches.

Fun fact 2: Skippy is a brand name for corn flakes in New Zealand, originally named for a brand tie-in with an Australian television show featuring the eponymous kangaroo.

Fun fact 3: The outfit that makes Skippy corn flakes also makes Marmite, although it tastes perceptibly different from the Pommy Marmite. After the 2010 Christchurch earthquake, the factory was out of commission for quite a while, leading to the great Marmite crisis. They also make peanut butter, but they do that in a factory in Australia that wasn't affected by the earthquake.
 
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Yep, never been a fan of sugar sweetened nut butters. Ugh. I do eat a quite a bit of almond, pistachio and some peanut butter but it's all natural. Get that healthier protein etc where you can.
 
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