No worries, I don’t think this is out of place. Funnily enough, I think this marks my first Lemmy comment lol.

I was born in the early 00s and I love retro computers. To be more specific:

• The practicality, or whether or not they can still be used today, e.g. permacomputing
• The art aspect, or how they’re relatively simple and transparent
• The challenge of squeezing an impressive program into constrained hardware, e.g. demoscene

The oldest computer I have as of writing is a Fujitsu-Siemens K Amilo 7600 from 2004. The laptop’s GPU lacks 3D acceleration via modern Linux/BSDs and struggles with period-accurate games, so I prefer to use it for studying and maybe a bit of ClassiCube and Quake 3. Most of my exposure to retro computers otherwise is via emulators like 86Box, MAME, and VICE.

Born in 89, so “old” compared to you, but I really want to get into Amigas. They’re slightly older than myself, but they were never sold in Brazil, not even as contraband.

I would try to get into PC-88/98 and Sharp X68000, but I can’t overcome the language barrier yet

Born 2005, I have a whole apple iie setup

I was born After 2000s and yeah I love Retro Computing! Before I really got into the Looks and aesthetics of Retro Computers Like the Commodore PET, so when I saw one in an Auction for surprisingly Little Money I took a Bid on it, thinking I’d get outbid anyway… I didn’t!

Once I had this Massive Historic Machine in front of me, my Passion was set in stone. I got into History Videos and Technical Analysis of Old Hardware and got a Small Collection together!

Due to Budgetary issues as of recent I’ve had to Cool on this Hobby of mine tho. Hope I get to expand my Collection with an Amiga or any of the Atari Systems later this year hopefully!

Born 2001, I work at a local charity shop that handles a lot of older tech. Usually nothing too fancy but I spend a lot of time testing older stuff that’s dropped off. I picked up an old Apple PowerBook a couple years back which was a lot of fun trying to get usable.

Nope, sadly most of these retro things are younger than me. 😆Guess that makes me retro too. Anyhow, always good to see younger generations enjoying the classics.

90’s kid and the earliest system I remember using is WinXP. Hate it now, but I love Win98FE, Win2K, Vista and, from the little I have used it, Macintosh 7. I still want to get a NEC PC-98, but any of the models are as expensive as a cheaper car. 🥹

Absolutely. I was born in 1996 but got into retro games in 2007 thanks to AVGN, after which retro computers came shortly after. I learned how to program in BASIC during covid and made a text adventure RPG that I then translated into Python to learn that language.

I still think BASIC is a great programming language to learn for a beginner. It gives you the blocks of what you’ll need to tackle a modern language rather than being overwhelmed.

can confirm there’s at least a few of us

I think there is a good number of people who are interested, it’s just harder to get involved in it as a hobby without having time/money to throw around.

Also this is my first post on Lemmy, so I’m sorry if this is out of place here.

Nope you’re good, and welcome :)

Older young person here, I very much enjoyed the vintage computer festival I recently attended. Definitely worth a visit if you can make it.

With that said I have mostly modern technology, except some audio stuff. I was impressed by the Atari and C64 exhibits at the VCF and might get into the “new” C64 stuff when they come out

Try out Desqview/X on that 486 if you get a chance!

1990, so not really ‘young’ anymore, but we’re compatriots in thinking computers older than us are cool. By the first time I touched a computer, the machines I like to tinker with now were very obsolete.

That first computer I touched, by the way? It was a 70s model Apple II.

I don’t know how young being born in 1996 is, but I definitely got into retro computing when I was in High School. Between watching JonTron, LGR, and a field trip to a retro computer museum with working computers, I fell in love. I ran DOSbox on my school laptop and FreeDOS off of a USB stick. My senior year, mostly playing solitare on Windows 3.1 through DOSBox on my windows 7 school laptop in class.

In terms of physical hardware, I have a Win98/XP KVM setup with a Trinitron monitor, which I love immensely, especially getting to using 3 1/2 floppy disks. Before I found out about KDE Plasma, I loved to do everything through the retro computers more than the modern ones.

Also check out protoweb. It brings the late 90s internet back to life on real hardware.

Although I have never used a commodore 64, now you got me wanting to buy one. I just need to find a way to fit it in with what I have.

Kinda sorta. I’m firmly in the millennial generation, so there aren’t as many computers older than me. But I can tell you about my dad bringing home a brand new 486 (25MHz) and temporarily setting it up for the first time on the kitchen table, before it was officially set up downstairs.

In high school I got a handful of leftover computers to play with. Some early Pentiums, a really weird 486 tablet (still have that in my crawlspace!), and stuff like that. Great to learn hardware on, do some homework in my room, listen to Winamp, etc.

Then college came and I had less time and space. Then I bought a home a couple years later (when they were all on sale!) and had a kid. Most of my time and money goes to those things.

But! I hate where technology is going now. I remember things being fun and innovative, rather than yet another thing weirdly integrated with an app on your phone (likely with a subscription 🙄 ). So I’ve spent some time restoring antique radios, and put together some fun projects I’ve found that use a 3D printer and Raspberry Pi, including a working mini computer that runs a Dosbox instance with my favorite games from that 486.

Tl;dr not that young by Lemmy standards, but I get it!