Thread by @gravislizard

did i post about why my interest in vintage computers has waned?

idk. i can't find it easily

i found out that vintage computers hold very little interest to me unless i can execute premade programs on them, and easily. here is why

these computers (c64, apple ii, zx spectrum, msx, etc.) were all intended to be programmed by their users. the reason you did that in 1983 is because you couldn't afford, or nobody made, the thing that you wanted. also, nerds had more downtime.

there was no internet. no wikipedia. there was the library, and friends if you had them, and then there was your bedroom and your computer

that's how i was when i was 12-16, when i did the massive bulk of what little learning about coding i've done

the internet in 2001 was far less of a timesink than it is now, so i had time to program. i had time for the agonizing misery of programming, and it wasn't even that bad in 2001. i mean, i was using dated tools, but I had, you know. a hard drive.

the tools on 80s computers were dismal. even the PC was not great. the c64 was worse. the commands were archaic, the keyboard unpleasant, and everything deadly, horribly slow. absolute unfettered boredom for hours and hours a day, for days, is the only way to get anything done

it's 2018. i'm anxious 24/7. how could i possibly convince myself to spend time learning the gutwrenchingly awful dialect of c64 basic (hope you like a GOSUB every three lines) on a tiny screen with no editing tools (can't shift-select or copy-paste) to make... what?

so i convinced myself to stop buying new bitty boxes because they're just going to sit and gather dust except when i'm playing games on them. and fuck, loading the games sucks too. it's slow, and miserable, and the results are not terribly worth it.

I own like 30 tapes for my Spectrum and I think I've played them all and god, a FEW are OK, but it's not worth the 30 minutes of setting the damn thing up for a game I'm going to give up on *rapidly* (no saves, horrible controls, etc - it tries the patience)

I guess I'm posting this because

man, it's so easy to fall into obsessions with this shit. I wanted these machines for reasons I didn't fully examine, and now that I have had them for a while I accept the cold reality of what they Are.

They existed solely to be a stopgap for bored nerds without access to computers like colleges had, and there's no gap in my life they fill except an aesthetic one. They look great, but why own a bunch of ornaments?

I had a fantasy about writing my own games to take advantage of the fascinating visual aesthetic. But writing games for these is stupefyingly hard, and I realize I do not have the energy and time for it. I fell into a Nerd Fantasy Snare, a thing we do to ourselves a lot.

I'm like $3k into all these machines and the support hardware I needed to make them go and I'm not sure what to do with them now. The games are all already on youtube etc. and I have little to say about them.

If there's application software for the spectrum and amstrad I'm not sure where to get it and I bet almost all of it depends on things I'm not willing to do, like hook up a tape recorder or printer.

Utility software isn't worth much unless you can load and save data, or print hard copy, and on platforms with no native floppy drive, that's going to be a huge pain in the ass. Printer output would just be plain ASCII. I could print a file from notepad.

i was playing MSX games last night and like
i have 1000 roms to play on my real MSX but flipping through them takes like over a minute each time. i spent most of my time last night trying to figure out what i was loading, trying to load it, having it fail, etc

maybe all this shit isn't worth it and i'm not having a great time. maybe i got out of it what i wanted? i've now seen these ancient computers operate. i got to see it in crisp RGB on The Good TV, and now like. maybe i'm just Done.

sometimes i complain about how ADHD makes us just lose interest in a project involuntarily. there's truth to that, but sometimes it's really just ADHD going "look, dipshit, that is a 200 hour project. NO. YOU DO NOT WANT IT THAT MUCH. priority ZERO."

I could write a game for the zx spectrum. you know why i'm not? because that means drawing character sprites on a piece of grid paper with X and Y hex coords. and that's very cool, and it's not me.

The only stuff I'm going to put time into is stuff that's going to pay off. Exploring DOS software has done that. I found programs that I honestly felt *energized* by exploring.

I know the platform; it's second nature to me. so the whole barrier of "I don't even know reflexively how to use the storage media" comes down, and that means I can maneuver around weird programs and their quirks. i can do something with it, something satisfying, productive.

I'm also trying to figure out if I should give up on the massive collection of floppy disks I have. Yes, I Can put together a toolchain to rip them all. Do I want to? Am I going to actually get through them all? If I don't, I'm not going to upload any of it. And if I do, so what?

Almost none of this is commercial software. It's home copied disks. It's interesting *to me, maybe, personally* but I don't think archiving it makes *sense*

i have like half my closet taken up with these, and then another third taken up by CDs, and a CD wallet with like 200 discs in it. What is my game plan? why am I doing this? who is it for and where does it end?

there's at least like several weeks of ripping here. I'm not doing that. It's not happening. So now what? Getting rid of any of this is not just giving up, it's never knowing - never knowing what was on them and what I might have seen or preserved, I guess. It's hoarding.

I bought a case of 200? floppies with ancient Mac Illustrator art on them. I have to rip them in my real, ancient, misbehaving Mac. I want the result but I don't want the immense amount of work that's going to take. I can neither throw them out or do anything with them.

My ever-supportive girlfriend has suggested that we have a Ripping Party where she and I and maybe someone else sit and rip all this stuff. i don't want to! i don't want to waste a day with friends on that! i particularly don't want to hit 10PM and realize it's *only half done*

so again
why am i writing all this
because i keep biting off more than I can chew and I see other people doing it too and it's making me and them miserable

the reality is that I've been a child about all this stuff, i've said "just" too much. i know how much effort i'm willing to put into programming and I still bought things that were useless unless I did programming that i *knew* i wouldn't do.

there's a lot of neat shit on ebay and if i don't buy it it'll go in the trash. well i'm not jason scott. i'm incapable of the kind of dedication he has. i know now because i have tried and found i am not up to it. i have asked "should I change, then" and the answer was "nah"

i could reinvent myself but i'm.... not. sitting in a room for eight hours ripping and scanning disks is not the life i want. i need to not get starry-eyed looking at the achievements of people I find admirable. he can do it - maybe you can do it - but i'm not him or you.

that just leaves me wondering... what do i do now that I'm in this deep? i can't throw all this out now that i have it.

one option is I accept that I fucked up, acknowledge that it was a mistake, nod wisely, then force myself to do what i planned anyway and just resolve to never do it again