8088

[Hoser Rob]

As a ham radio op I find restoring and using (certain) ancient hardware
to be an enjoyable excursion.

I can see that for ham radio, it's also fairly common with hifi gear. But of course 70s hifi gear is a lot more comparable to today's than a 70s computer. Not to mention useable.

I still have an original IBM 8086 system in the attic somewhere.
I think it was upgraded to 640k ram, has a green monochrome monitor.
Even that lowly critter was a boon to business when introduced. Word especially, but Lotus, et al
People accomplished a lot with that limited hardware and they were glad--even boasting--to have such
computer power at their fingertips....

The 80s was when many small to medium size businesses got into computers and office automation for the first time. There's a big, big difference between doing stuff with paper and pen and an adding machine and doing it on a computer.

For example, I knew a couple of accountants back then who were pretty early adopters. They went straight from a ledger book with a pen and adding machine to an IBM PC. Even with the specs at the time ... one of those guys didn't even have a hard drive ... all of a sudden they could do the amount of work they did in a week before in an afternoon.

Nothing since in the computer world has come remotely close to this sort of increase in productivity. It's like when the telegraph was invented. Before that the fastest way to send messages was by train, which also meant a horse too. Communications have never been sped up that much since.

That's when there was real money in the computer business. Not just speculation and paper valuations.

[all41]

As a ham radio op I find restoring and using (certain) ancient hardware
to be an enjoyable excursion.

I can see that for ham radio, it's also fairly common with hifi gear.

I'm into that as well. You can smell 6L6's

[Hoser Rob]

As a ham radio op I find restoring and using (certain) ancient hardware
to be an enjoyable excursion.

I can see that for ham radio, it's also fairly common with hifi gear.

I'm into that as well. You can smell 6L6's

Mmmm, tubes. My stereo amp now is actually class D, which sounds remarkably like tubes because of the high output impedance. The slight variation in response you get makes it slightly warmer sounding.

I think most hifi tube amps nowadays use 6L6s or EL84s because that's what guitar amps use most often. Usually the only reason that electric guitarists use solid state amps is because they can't afford a tube amp.