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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

> started finding creative solutions for reusing old tech

As a general rule old tech is far more power hungry (per unit of work) than new tech. Sure my old Atari computer used very few watts compared to my modern 50 core server (I'm not sure what GPU), but the modern server can do a lot more per watt.

> developing less new stuff, and just slowed down the economy for a simpler life.

To each their own - I would find that world boring. I enjoy camping for a weekend, but I'm very glad to get back to modern civilization and there are plenty more luxuries that I want in development.

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I laugh every time I see the power adapter for the Colecovision console [1]. I suspect that my laptop could emulate ten Colecovision consoles using less power than running a single real Colecovision.

[1] https://p.kagi.com/proxy/jaJn771.jpg?c=LeUEJczBkA3eiHIb6Q3EK... It doesn't quite come across in the picture but this adapter is gigantic.

your link doesn't work, and I never seen a Colecovion in person (at least not that I remember).

I'd guess the Colecovion has a linear power supply which is known to be very large for the power delivered, and very inefficient. A quick search says the power supply was 28.5 watts. I'm typing this on a laptop with a 15 watt power supply (pinebook pro - about as low power as you can get in a laptop); connected to a USB hub with a 20 watt power supply!. My work laptop has a 240 watt power supply. I'm not sure what laptop you have, but I'd guess it can draw more power than a Colecovision if you worked it - but also that if all you were doing was running 10 Colecovion emulators it would draw less power.

We also should mention that our laptops have a screen built in and counted as part of the power consumption. The Colecovion expected to be connected to a power hungry CRT television.

Hmm. The link worked fine for me in an incognito Window, so I assumed it didn't require any sign-in. Oh well; you're encouraged to find a YouTube video or something showing it.

Laptop is a Thinkpad P16s AMD Gen 2 (name rolls right off the tongue). I don't actually know what the power draw is, but it's plugged into a 100W power supply right now via USB-C.

> The link worked fine for me in an incognito Window, so I assumed it didn't require any sign-in.

I tried it and it redirected to the imgur.com front page. And I am logged into a paid kagi account. I guess the URLs are per-user.

Yeah I realized that later.

Regardless, it's not hard to find; if you go on YouTube people show off the colecovision adapter. I think even the Angry Video Game Nerd mentioned it in his video on the Colecovision.

> To each their own - I would find that world boring. I enjoy camping for a weekend, but I'm very glad to get back to modern civilization and there are plenty more luxuries that I want in development.

My point entirely is that people shouldn't have everything that they want if the creation of that thing is unsustainable.

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