@kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign

16-bit/early-32-bit was my favorite era. (Basically, the #68k era ;)

Computers were just becoming capable, but not too big for their britches.

@rl_dane @kabel42

Yeah, tbh, we really should have stopped at 32-bit

@kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign

I think computers were honestly better when they were limited to absolutely no more than 1GB RAM, no more than 256 colors, and no more than 1024x768 screen resolution.

1GB RAM: no LLMs
256 colors: no horrid low-contrast soupy interfaces
XGA Resolution: no horrid empty spaces and bloated interfaces

I keep wanting to make that as an OS 😄

(If only I had the skillz)

@kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign

> 256 Colours is very limited, but i'd like to see what software would be like if hardware stopped at 1G RAM and maybe 16bit colour :)

16bit color still has the problem of allowing for crappy low-contrast interfaces.
When using palette color, the interface itself must be designed to use as few colors as possible to leave more room for displaying images.

Also, with good dithering at XGA resolutions, depending on the image, it's really hard to tell 8-bit from truecolor

Source: used a computer that was limited to 8-bit color at XGA resolution for many years ;)

Actually, I kinda want to make a challenge on that. I wonder if I can come up with some test images for that. :D

> And 2 cores, I don't miss not being able to use the comupter while something is compiling

If you think you can't use your computer while it's compiling on only one core, then modern kernel schedulers are an abject failure.

I did all kinds of things on my computer while it was crunching away at stuff on Linux circa 2000, and it was more stable than today. :/

@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign
Ok, if you say 256 colors i think 256 colour VESA windows 9x :)

Cores:
I couldn't get a video to play more frames than it dropped while updateing my system in 2003 :)
You could solve that with hardware accelklerated video, but that would be a kind of second core? :)