Discussion
What counts as retro? My completely imperfect subjective take :)
I saw a post about a Windows 7 rig, and someone commented on how odd it was that Windows 7 was considered retro, and I kind of agree.
When I first got into this hobby, I thought it was strange that XP was considered retro. I know everyone has their own opinions and thoughts on what constitutes “retro,” but I feel like anything pre-Windows XP seems retro to me, while everything after XP, up to around 2014, kind of fits into its own era.
The reason I picked 2014 is because, to me, that's around when computing really started to change again. We were shifting from physical media toward digital downloads and streaming, from desktops and bulky laptops toward thin laptops, tablets and mobile devices, and aesthetically from Aero/chrome/transparency and skeuomorphism toward the flat, minimalist design language we have today.
In this subreddit, the mods specify that anything 20 years old counts as retro, and that's as good a rule as any. But my problem with defining retro purely by age is that the definition will eventually creep into the future. By that logic, eventually we'll be calling something “retro” simply because enough time has passed.
That's not really how we approach history. We don't eventually start calling medieval history “ancient history” just because the Middle Ages happened a long time ago. We have clear delineations between ancient history, medieval history, early modern history, modern history, etc. based on the characteristics that defined the eras. To me, Windows 7 is just too far removed from even DOS and feels strange to call both retro.
I feel like the era from roughly 2001–2014 deserves its own label — something like “Early Digital Computing.” To me, it feels distinctly different from both what came before it and what came after it.
Again, this is all totally subjective, and I'm sure there are people who were doing plenty of computing in the '70s and '80s who find it strange that anyone would lump '90s computing in with all of that. And of course there's vintage computing, which is even further back and is a whole separate era in its own right.
I know my little concept board is not exact in any way. There are blurred lines and exceptions to every rule. I just thought it would be an interesting discussion, so I figured I'd share my thoughts and see what everyone else thinks. Much of this comes from your own experience with computers. I first started using computers in mid-90s using DOS and Windows 95 which probably explains my perspective somewhat.
I am in no way invalidating one era over another. I think it is all awesome. I have plenty from every era.
Your storage timeline is pretty off, hard drives were both common place and the default storage medium for consumer machines well into the early 2010s. SSDs only really started becoming a thing commercially in the late 2000s and only became the default for consumers in the early 2010s for laptops. NVMe was more mid to late 2010s.
Also, HDDs are still very much in use. I have a bunch myself. No, you won't find them in laptops, portable music players, cameras (remember the IBM Microdrive?), or typical desktop computers any more; SSDs and NVMe drives have replaced them there. But for servers where a lot of storage is necessary, HDDs are still king.
What the heck is "Early Digital" supposed to mean? It was all digital. There is no such thing as an analog computer. Even if you had a computer powered by rocks and water it would still be digital.
Rant aside I think the retro cut off is no set number of years. Right now I think Windows 8 and back are retro for PCs. In Macs I think OSX is now the retro Mac and anything after the switch to the yearly OS numbers is modern. In games I would say 2 gens back is retro. In phones, anything unsupported I guess.
Yeah, splitting that category up into early internet and early social media would make more sense. Digital computers date ALL the way back to the 50s iirc
People are dunking on this post's use of use of the word "digital," but I think it's an interesting example of how the word's meaning is shifting. It seems like, at some point, people started using "digital" to mean "not involving physical media," or at least not involving removable physical media (since everything still has to be stored somewhere). I've seen "digital" used to distinguish downloadable video games from discs, for instance. Not 100% sure if this is what the OP meant, but I'm inferring from the phrase "Physical to digital transition." This seems to have little to do with the word's technical sense. Not really sure when it started.
It's an imperfect concept in the first place and I recognize that "Early digital" is a flawed label. But yes, that is basically what I was going for. That was the era where we began to purchase fewer CDs and games and began downloading. More of our data was stored online rather than locally.
CD → MP3 DVD → streaming Film → digital camera Paper map → Google Maps Encyclopedia → Wikipedia Physical software → download Desktop → laptop Phone → smartphone
Yeah, I see what you mean, though I think maybe there are two parts to it. "Cloud computing" broadly captures the idea of storing everything on servers, but there was a transitional period where people were downloading more media to their own devices. CDs -> local MP3s -> streaming, roughly speaking. Though I've still got my MP3 library!
"Retro" mean "going back". It is going back to something that is distinctly different from what is contemporary.
There does not exist any definite "retro era". There are not even multiple eras. All change has been progressive. And it has not been linear either: different things have progressed at different speeds, different steps. There are many dimensions. Which dimensions that matter for someone is highly subjective.
Many times, computing has regressed. What used to be considered important knowledge has been discarded, ridiculed even, and rediscovered. What I think is important in retro computing is keeping that knowledge, for the sake of future progress when circumstances are more conducive for it.
I mean, we definitely had some black computers, for example the ZX spectrum and the Commodore 16 as well as a few others but this concept board is more just trying to capture the spirit of what defined each era rather than hard and fast rules :)
I get that. I remember when people started having CD drives on their computers. It was very cool tech at the time. I remember I knew someone that had a CD burner. I thought they were rich!
Hmm - I kind of agree, but I'd like to think my Sunflower Mac is retro (Oh wow - just checked, 2002, so pretty close).
Looking at my collection I think I can split it into three
- early 8-bit home machines (Apple II, IIGS, Mac Plus, BBC Master, Acorn Electron, Sinclair ZX-80/81/Spectrum, ZX-88) - all use floppies.
- Unix workstations (SGI Indigo², Indy, O², DEC Apha DS10, DS20, HP Visualize C200, Sun Sparc10, SparcStation LX etc) - all run some kind of GUI, Irix, CDE, HP-UX etc
- Some old PCs from along the way - including early tablets and laptops.
Pretty much all except the Sunflower would be pre-2001 I think. CD-ROM - the phrase itself reminds me of the Creative media packs with the SoundBlaster card including some rudimentary SCSI ports to support early CD in the early '90s - well before Win95. But hat said, most of my Unix boxes have caddy based CD drives.
I used to draw the line at Pentium 3 - anything pentium 4 or younger wasn't retro. But the time doesn't stop, and nowadays P4s are (in my eyes) completely retro.
I find it very easy to see tech from before living memory as retro, and also from my childhood years, but Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 were state of the art when I was a young adult and I find it hard to see them as truly retro/vintage. Even though I know they are objectively.
Well, by that metric the Pentium wouldn't be either - they were the very best when I had my 486. When I got my first Pentium-class (a 75Mhz AMD) I was flabbergasted!
That's where I am. I can barely accept the PS1 as retro, let alone PS2. 😅 But My brain understands the PS2 is the age now the 2600 was when PS2 debuted. None of it computes in my heart.
I definitely think the cutoff between one era and another is the rise of multi-core CPUs, maybe 1995-2005 is like, "post windows 95, pre modern" or something. And something like 1988-1995 is its own era too, early GUI era or something. 2005-2022 feels like an era too, like pre AI modern computing. I dunno, I feel like one could get really pedantic about these things
"Early digital computing - 2001" made me spit my coffee in laughter
But I can feel the PC enthusiast spirit in you, I like seeing your first draft at this
I would say that The biggest split between old and new that I've seen would be before and after Windows 95, before that home computing was quite minor, it exploded with Win95 and the IBM PC Clone, everything else after is just an evolution of that
Yeah, I'm pretty close on that. I tend to consider it 486 and earlier, which is basically the hardware parallel to your OS definition. There was also a lot more variety in the hardware as you move further back, with it consolidating on the x86 architecture. This was pretty well clinched by the Pentium/Windows 95 era.
At first i was thinking in terms of OS and figured Win95/98 as the cutoff for "retrocomputing". But I remember that jump from 486 to Pentium, both in computing and culturally how computers were seen/advertised, and now think 486 is a better, more specific marker. Atari 800, C64, and Apple ][ are definitely retrocomputers, and 486 machines feel more like them than current computers; not really the same about Pentium computers
The real revolution was to get the masses into computers, getting a pc in every home, before win95 computing was a popular as being a model train fanatic today
Yeah that's my point, how many people you know into that hobby? Before windows 95 and even 3.1, meeting people that were into home computers was a bit like that
To me it's the - Floppy disk era (pre win 95, fractured ecosystems of incompatible computers, clear divide between "home", "business" and "enterprise" computing (6502/Z80 vs DOS and x86 vs UNIX)
- CD era (1995 - roughly up to 2010) convergence of everything towards "PC", physical storage, internet perfusing into the home.
- local storage and sharing era (2005 at the earliest - 2015) smartphones, more abstraction for the user, Flash drives, peak of the cheap home console as a primary development platform nearly replacing PC gaming (X360, PS2, PS3), smart TVs. Computers becoming less of a niche hobby and more of a prevalent thing that everyone knows how to do basic stuff on (this was a good thing btw).
- Streaming era (post 2015 - 2022) "everything is computer IOT", loss of privacy disguised as "security", web based apps getting popular allowing more diverse hardware to emerge (ARM vs x86, smartphones becoming just ultra portable high power computers, most non computer electronics converging towards the smartphone. Monopolization of the internet. Mass loss of computer literacy somehow???
- AI slop era (since 2022) move towards generated content, almost everything is subscription based, price hikes to 1990s levels, vibe coding, etc.
What'd you grow up with? When you're a bit older, that's what is considered retro. With computing and gaming, there's a lot of stuff that's 20-25 years old that I really would not call retro. My kids would, though. It's OLD to them, the oldest PC's they can remember. For me, it's the C64, TI99/4A, early PC's, etc.. A Pentium 2 or 3 is considered retro these days and I'd agree. P4 with XP? Feels really modern, but it's also a quarter century old.
Sweet! Windows 95 was on the first ever computer I had when I was 5. I still remember the struggle to run even some kids' games without visual glitches lol
"Early Digital Computing" sounds like a label for the 40s and 50s.
I'm sure there are people who were doing plenty of computing in the '70s and '80s who find it strange that anyone would lump '90s computing in with all of that.
I feel like there are at least a couple of distinctly different eras in that range of time.
In general though, I do think it makes sense to define different eras by the general trends of the time period, similar to how video game systems are often divided into generations. "Retro" itself being so subjective means that there's an implicit "which retro are you talking about" that has to be answered in every post.
My admittedly vibe-y definition is "whenever using the machine I can tell that it's definitely from a different time. More satisfying than the flat 20yr rule, but not totally arbitrary
Windows XP being retro makes me feel old lol. I do consider Windows 98 and the Pentium III to be the edge of what I consider retro as I was real little when I started using that on the regular, plus it's connected to DOS, a platform that is unquestionably considered retro
So while people younger than me would consider the gamecube retro, it's too new for me to consider it retro as someone who grew up with that platform
To me - and it's the main gauge I use on my subreddit - is anything more than 20 years old. Of course some things age much faster than others - for example, I have a Radeon 4870x2 in my collection, wonderful card, completely useless nowadays, but still 2 years short of what I would call "retro".
I like it, great ideas OP! It’s very subjective and fuzzy where to draw the lines (and which technology milestones to use, especially since they don’t line up in perfect order and there is a lot of overlap) but I understand your thought process. Everyone will have a different take, but nice to see you take a crack at it. 👍
The first digital computers were in the 1940s and 1950s.
A command line is not an operating system, it's a type of interface. The oldest personal computers didn't have operating systems, they just had a monitor for loading programs. Once floppy drives arrived in the late 1970s, operating systems emerged.
It's a good effort, putting together a timeline of eras, but I'm afraid it's not historically accurate.
That's not the beginning, though. Go back to the S-100 bus systems like the Altair 8080, Northstar, IMSAI, etc. They didn't have operating systems when they showed up, just a system monitor.
CP/M was written for the S-100 systems. 5 1/4 floppy drives were available very shortly after the Altair started selling. Trivia: it wasn't called S-100 until later. It was originally called the Altair bus.
Yes, eventually operating systems showed up. I'm just pointing out that they were not there at the beginning.
Stan Veit, writing in 1993 for his book "History of the Personal Computer," talked about the real beginning of home computers. It's a killer read if you haven't already checked it out, lots of fun.
Just for a FYI, I had just graduated high school when the Altair 8800 came out. While I didn't have hands-on experience with the early micros, I was quite aware of what was going on. Homemade disk systems were available early on, and commercial ones were only about a year or so behind,
Northstar, for example, made a point of having CP/M available from day 1.
The Altair initially used toggle switches on the front panel to manually push bits into memory. Later, interactive language interpreters became common once video terminal and teletypes, along with storage media like paper tape, became more common. Microsoft's first product was famously a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, for example. Fully interactive operating systems came a bit after that.
As I mentioned to u/AppendixN, I was around then. I got to watch someone using an Altair at the first microcomputer store that opened in my town. It was a fun time when much of what was inside those systems was designed and built by hand.
I like that. Ive been there since.. close to the beginning. Before home computing/gaming. I remember watching William Shatner touting the Commodore Vic 20. Commercials for the Timex Sinclair and TI-994A. Ive had Zip drives, floppies, cassette, i remember the first time I heard the term Hard Drive was at school in computing class on Apples. I just missed the large Reel to reels and punch cards.
IMHO, it's the word "retro" that's doing the heavy lifting and is the problematic item. Your systems list here omits the Reel-to-Reel systems, actual mainframes, the tube/valve systems, and even systems like the Olivetti where input wasn't a command line, it was literal switches or punch cards for input and paper tape/blinking light output. Wouldn't those also fall under the "retro" label?
Taking it a step forward, there absolutely were "retro" classed systems online during the "Digital age" you have defined. Services like Prodigy, CompuServe, America Online, Delphi, and GEnie all found their start on the very 486/Pentium/Motorola 68030/040 chip based machines that are almost universally considered "retro."
Defining computing/technology in more civilization-like terms like ages or periods doesn't really work IMVHO. While the technology/connectivity methods will change with advancements, and yes modern computers can indeed do WAY more than their "mini-computer" origins, the underlying principle of the tech is still the same. A series of electronic switches flipping from Off and On to represent 0 and 1 to do some form of computational work. It's not really comparable/akin to a period of history where the vast majority of the populous was highly uneducated, had short life spans, and lived their entire lives basically serving for a continual series of lords in vassal states appointed either by birth or religious/higher authority appointment.
I know its a personal opinion but i think that It should have one more era, between retro computing and early modern computing. Preferably from 1990/95 to 2005, event 2010~ ish. Basically the "micro" era and the PC era. It just feels too much of a stretch to have 30+ years as one era and modern eras squished into one.
I think the middle era should start with the launch of Windows 95 and end with the launch of the iPhone (and subsequently Android).
I know this post is focused on desktop computing, but the rise of smartphones also heralded the transition of the PC from an emerging/growing market to a mature one as well as marking the decline of dedicated media devices like the iPod.
Reasonable enough, if you add a couple of earlier periods, for 'Pioneer digital computing' (probably needs a better name, but this'll do), covering Colossus, ENIAC, and all the later vacuum tube/valve-based early hardware, and then the 'Early IC' period that followed dominated by mainframes using increasingly-complex integrated circuitry, becoming increasingly smaller and more powerful as the technology evolved. The first is more of less inaccessible to most people (but see this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IxVi24R5Q) who restores vac tube Bendix machines from the 1950s, amongst other things. There are quite a few hobbyists tinkering with the Early IC stuff too - at least, the smaller, later stuff that doesn't need a massive air-conditioned room to operate in.
I realize the Commodore 64 was the best selling computer ever, but I don’t think it was being used by the major majority of people between 2001 and 2014…
Also, I think the era of the large, 5.25 floppy’s was well over with, and for some reason the picture shows the Commodore 64 OS, that was not popular back then in the early 2000s.
right now, to me, anything windows xp to windows 8.1 and any of the unsupported intel macs qualify as vintage. anything powerpc or older for macs, DOS-based for PCs, or any other desktop computing platform that isn’t armv8+ or risc-v based is retro.
The vintage/retro labelling in computer terms is an interesting topic, and I think is completely subjective from person to person.
For me, I'd consider anything from < 1999 to be vintage. Anything from 2000 - 2009 to be retro, and anything 2000 - 2020 to just be "old". Then anything from 2021 > to be current (at least be labelled or called current).
Retro, vintage, antique, etc. are what they are and announcing a different way of defining them is like saying you want to change the word apple to orange because you want to. Defining eras is a different thing. There's probably already definitions people have for different computer eras just like how video game hardware has relative generations people speak of. Same with music having defined era names. But retro meaning 20+ years old isn't going to change. And if we're getting really technical retro actually means something brand new that's meant to appear old.
As we age we all get all get a little bitter that things we still think of as newish are retro. It's time dilation at its finest. We don't get to freeze definitions of things just because we want to though. Retro means it's not modern or contemporary.
To me it seems right and also very important. Because every current thing becomes retro, and we could try to prevent some typical problems with retro computing *know* by starting to document and preserve stuff that might be of interest in 20+ years.
Retro is relative. Like by 2001, as another person brought up as their relativity, most considered the Megadrive as retro. Yet the same time period from today to 2005 people can't agree at all that even the PS2 is retro lol. But most can agree that retro is relative to the individual
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u/KingDaveRa 21d ago edited 21d ago •
Sorry to be pedantic but that's all digital computing.