Comment by segfaultbuserr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by segfaultbuserr | Hacker News Reader

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> the SB 1.0 has a big place in history but that's due more to market share than technical excellence or uniqueness compared to, say, the C64's SID chip, or even a true contemporary like the Gravis Ultrasound.

Cultural value is as important as technical advancement, at least in the long run. I think you could agree with me.

A notable cliche is still VHS. In the 80s, it was a far-from-optimal video system, but recently it has became a symbol of the 80s. Another example is the proliferation of home computers in the 80s, while many were groundbreaking, we also had some that were closer to a market bubble than a technical accomplishment, and were known as "Trash 80s" but now it's still something different.

And thanks for your additional commentary on soundchips.

Cultural value is as important as technical advancement, at least in the long run. I think you could agree with me.

True but, EG, resurrecting the old 360KB 5.25-inch floppies tech used on the '80s era IBM PCs is probably not worth revisiting.

> resurrecting the old 360KB 5.25-inch floppies tech

Sure, practicability is important as well. The primary reason that nobody is resurrecting 5.25-inch floppies, is simply due to its impracticability. I think many people in the retrocomputing community would like to make a retrocomputer with these crunching floppies, but the supply chain has already vanished, it's also extremely difficult (if not impossible) to make a 5.25-inch floppy drive independently, as it involves custom mechanical moving parts. It's better to use the time to, let's say, a homemade video game cartridge.

Many retrocomputing hobbyists make a liberal use of modern peripherals such as CF cards.

it's also extremely difficult (if not impossible) to make a 5.25-inch floppy drive independently, as it involves custom mechanical moving parts

The tolerances are not that high and the physical specifications are available from ECMA; most of the mechanical parts would not be difficult for a machinist, it's the heads which are the most difficult. The intersection of machinists and retrocomputing hobbyists is probably not that large, and 5.25" drives are still not really rare enough to attempt remanufacturing.

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