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    Tag proposal: retrocomputing ☶ meta
    authored by adamshaylor avatar adamshaylor (hidden by 8 users) | 18 comments

In spite of the ubiquity of ferrets like me who are perpetually fascinated by shiny novelties, the retrocomputing community is still alive and kicking, especially here on Lobsters. Observing the steady stream of these posts that have continued more-or-less unabated since I joined three years ago, I would like to (re-)propose a retrocomputing tag. Its description might read something like:

Reproductions, emulators, and other revivals of historic technologies

Some recent-ish candidate posts:

I’m sure there are others I’ve lost track of. Additional examples would be welcome.

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      luke8086 avatar luke8086 edited

      Yes, please! Perhaps even full retrocomputing to make it unambiguous?

      Another recent post from me, where historical didn’t quite fit - https://lobste.rs/s/lll2ce/retronews_tui_browser_for_hn_lobsters

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        adamshaylor avatar adamshaylor

        Agreed and updated accordingly.

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        epilys avatar epilys

        Mildly on-topic, there’s a link aggregator for retrocomputing content called two stop bits: https://twostopbits.com/news

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          snej avatar snej

          Please create this tag, so I can block it.

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            adamshaylor avatar adamshaylor

            Call me a hypocrite, but this is my motivation as well. I like to listen to people playing music written by and on instruments built by dead people. I find it strangely ennobling. Others find it tedious. “Tedious” also describes my feeling about revisiting C64 BASIC, the minutiae of operating systems from the ’90s, or any activity involving a soldering iron, all of which I have tried and mostly failed at. I get that retrocomputing is a thing. I respect that lots of people enjoy it. I will even admit that some old ways are the best. But it’s not really for me, either.

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              icefox avatar icefox

              Don’t feel like a hypocrite, this is explicitly one of the reasons for the tags!

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                Hellion avatar Hellion

                I wish there was a way to separate between “look at this thing i built” and “look at this thing i consumed”.

                “Networking in C64 OS” and “Minimal 64x4” are interesting to me because they’re people making things using a pretty primitive set of technologies - simple enough that you can understand what’s going on and also educational.

                On the other hand, I have zero interest in someone writing up how they consumed tools or embraced nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake “Windows 3.11 on QEMU” or “Windows 98 Defrag Simulator”

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                  abeyer avatar abeyer

                  Sure, don’t disagree, but it’s generally pretty clear from the title/context which you’re seeing so easy enough to just not click.

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                  alper avatar alper

                  or any activity involving a soldering iron, all of which I have tried and mostly failed at

                  I’ve been fine at soldering but it just doesn’t click for me at all and I have no desire to pour thousands of hours into this.

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                drs avatar drs

                We do have historical for this. I know the words have different meanings though.

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                  adamshaylor avatar adamshaylor

                  Indeed, the description for historical is:

                  History and retrospectives (not for things that happen to be old)

                  Note that most of the examples are not tagged historical. There is occasionally overlap, but mostly not. The proposed tag is about building new things with historic technologies rather than describing who built the historic technologies and how.

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                  pushcx avatar pushcx Sysop

                  I’ve added the retrocomputing tag and tagged these stories.

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                    ngp avatar ngp

                    Yeah, I think a retro or retrocomputing tag (as someone else in this thread brought up) would be great.

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                      superdurszlak avatar superdurszlak edited

                      That’d be one of my top tags to subscribe to.

                      There’s a ton of cool retro stuff that doesn’t necessarily involve reviving dusty 40yo computer systems or running Commodore64 on emulators. Which also are cool on their own. Still, you don’t really have to be into strictly old stuff to be into retro stuff

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                        JordiGH avatar JordiGH

                        I am going to post so much NES retrogaming stuff under this tag if it gets approved.

                        I’ve already posted some.

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                          bert avatar bert

                          Yes, please! Spoken as a retrocomputing fan - it would be fun to look at a view of all the retrocomputing posts.

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                            kevinc avatar kevinc edited

                            This is a good idea. I think we should be open to amending the description or name if articles are given this tag when their topic is not exactly retro, as in, reviving old things in the present. For example I’d say an article about new software for the C64 is retro, but an article about how its synthesizer worked is historical and not particularly retro.

                            However, since the point of tags is to let users hide articles, if everyone who would hide one of these articles would hide the other, maybe this isn’t a useful distinction to draw.

                            1. janus avatar janus

                              [Comment removed by author]

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                                drp avatar drp

                                Strong yes - we need more about recent and not-so-recent computing.