So museums pop up with exhibits that, to many of us, look way too familiar. "And it would probably be an incredible challenge to use a PalmPilot or Apple Newton in the 21st century." Analog phone networks were turned off years ago, so a classic Motorola brick phone simply won't work," Grahame says. "The trouble with vintage computers, phones and PDAs is that they don't age well. If it works, it pales in comparison to today's models.
In the end, though, retro tech is retro for a reason. "During the classes," Hagenmaier says of the GT program, "students talk about, 'Why isn't this connected to the Internet? What can I do with this computer if it's not connected to the Internet?'" That's the whole idea behind GT's retroTECH.Īll of that's important because, as fast as things move now, it's easy to forget how things used to be. And, in fact, hands-on experience with tech can lead to a greater understanding of what was, what's now and what's coming up. "Never underestimate the appeal of motors, gears and complicated clockwork mechanisms," Grahame says.
Some people are into retro tech, certainly, for the fiddling capabilities. And we feel emotionally connected to hardware, software, even digital files. "But with the passage of time, everything seems to take on this materiality - even if it is digital - and a sort of emotional substance. We write emails today and they don't feel as special as letters we might have written in a previous century," says Hagenmaier. "Even something like considering the first email you sent. Who remembers floppy disks? Cassette tapes? And that retro yearning doesn't have to be limited to something tangible. Who can forget the first time you laid hands on an iPod? All of us remember our first cell phone. Tinkering with old computers and learning from them is important, no doubt, but the emotional and nostalgic pull that old tech has can't be discounted. "But to the students, they look very old. They just look like what my family had when I was growing up," says Wendy Hagenmaier, a digital collections archivist at Tech. I look at the computers and think they don't look particularly old or rare or special. "It's interesting when the students come in.
Center stage in the lab are several vintage working computers, including a 1994 Macintosh Performa 550. More than 200 Tech students have used retroTECH in classes since August, when it opened, giving them a feel for where technology has been and how it's progressed.
#Mac perofrma 550 emulator movie#
If you're under the age of about 40, a record player or movie camera is a fascinating opportunity to step into an alternate technology universe where analog reigned supreme."Īt Georgia Tech, the curiosity aspect leads directly to learning. The first is nostalgia - the chance to revisit their first computer or the camera that their parents used on family trips," James Grahame, who runs the website Retro Thing, says in an email. "There are two main motivations for getting into vintage technology. At Georgia Tech, one of the country's leading technology and computer engineering schools, librarians are busy building a division they're calling retroTECH, where students can get their hands on old computers and computer games to see what makes, or made, them cool. This Performa has been discontinued on April 1, 1996.Retro technology spurs enough ooohs and ahhhs and flat-out wonder that it has its own museums - mostly computer museums, like the ones here and here and here. The new Performa 550 features a 33 MHz Motorola 68030 processor, Motorola 68882 FPU coprocessor, 14″ Color CRT display, 4 MB of RAM, 160 MB hard drive, 2x CD-ROM drive, and 1.44 MB floppy drive. The computer has been introduced on Octoand its price started at $2000.
#Mac perofrma 550 emulator series#
The Macintosh Performa 550 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple from 1993 to 1996 as part of the Macintosh Performa series of Macintosh computers.
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