Retro Computers
I have been collecting retro computers for the last few years, mostly replacing devices that I have owned since the early 2000’s that I have gotten rid of for various reasons. I spent a lot of time moving around the province of Ontario between 2004 and 2013 for school and for work, so I never really had a permanent place to store things. I also got into the habit of traveling light, as there is nothing worse than dragging things around that you don’t really need. If I wanted to upgrade a device or replace it I would do that, but I would very rarely keep the old device.
I’m not sure what you would consider to be a retro or vintage computer, but I consider anything to be retro if it meets the following conditions:
- It is over 10 years old.
- It is not supported by the manufacturer with firmware or security updates.
- It does not support modern applications.
- It is not capable of running a modern operating system (from the vendor, not hacked to work by the community).
- It has been declared obsolete and no longer supported by the vendor.
I will also talk about some devices that I have obtained that I was interested in at the time, but not able to get for various reasons.
I realize that there are a lot of people who already do this and make a lot of great content about it. LGR certainly comes to mind, as he regularly posts content about retro computers (and a lot of other things) on his YouTube channel. Other channels like Adrian’s Digital Basement, Jan Beta and The 8-Bit Guy are also good resources for this type of content.
This is more of a documentation process for me, mostly just going over the device, and how I used it. I’ll save the more in-depth analysis to the experts and the people who are more dedicated to this.
In this picture are the following computers from top to bottom:
- ASUS Eee PC (Type 701SD)
- Acer Aspire One (Type D255-1268)
- Apple iBook (July 2005 Model)
- IBM ThinkPad 380ED (Type 2635)
- Dell Inspiron 1420 (Model PP26L)
- IBM ThinkPad T61 (Type 7659)
- IBM ThinkPad T22 (Type 2647)
- IBM ThinkPad R51 (Type 2883)
I will post some content about these computers when I have time to do so, and detail anything that I needed to do to get them working with their original operating systems. Some of these computers are quite old and may require component replacements, which I will definitely go into details on.