Mastodawn

Anyone have suggestions for YouTube channels where people are creating cool new stuff for old computers?

With notable exceptions, I'm less into "here's an $OldMachine, how cool!" and want more "here's a new thing I made for $OldMachine that makes it really useful or usable today."

EDIT: By the way, this can be hardware or software. New storage devices, expansion cards, network adapters and sound cards are just as interesting to me as new SDKs, new compilers that target old platforms, weird ports, and ancient driver mods.

#RetroComputing

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Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jan 13

@thelastpsion The sad fact of the matter is that most old computers should not be repurposed, because newer devices are available that are vastly more efficient uses of electricity.

A Raspberry Pi 5, for instance, is more powerful than a lot of older computers, but consumes a small fraction of the power.

The amount of electricity I would save in a single year of running a Pi 5 compared to most older machines of similar capability would pay for the Pi 5.

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Joaquín Cuéllar Jan 13

@gcvsa @thelastpsion I agree, but what in terms of electronic wastes?
Should we throw away a fully functional old device because is not the most energy efficient?
What cost has making a new raspberry pi 5? Resources, energy, recycling the old one...
I think is not too easy, and I think #permacomputing is about all this

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Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jan 13

@gentooza @thelastpsion Older devices should be recycled to whatever extent is possible.

What is the embodied environmental burden of a Raspberry Pi compared to the original embodied environmental burden of manufacturing a full-size PC? Obviously at least an order of magnitude less, and the longer you run that older machine that takes 25-50x as much electricity to run, the worse the imbalance gets.

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Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐

@gentooza Sitting right next to me is a 2003 Apple Power Macintosh G5, that I bought new over 20 years ago. It's still my digital audio workstation, because it still works for that purpose and I'm tied to PCI-X based audio hardware I can't transfer to a new machine.

It doesn't need to be "repurposed", because it's still serving its original purpose. I put a new clock battery in it, the WiFi no longer connects to modern routers, it can't even run a modern web browser. Logic Pro 7 still runs.