cat /dev/aki

It seems weird, right? But I have good reasons for this. The first one being, a lot of said retrotech people are focused on the macs and the IBM clones and other consumer devices and microcomputers, and that's fine! I understand why, but I personally don't get the appeal, which is not anyone's fault.

Personally, I'm more of a minicomputer / big-iron type girl, I like machines that take up large chunks of space and are monsters to power and run, along with their peripherals ( I'm particularly fond of 9-track tape :3 ), so that puts me apart from a huge chunk of the community at large in the first place. The second being, I don't mind fixing/changing things, unless i'm expected to work on a museum quality specimen, I have no qualms with replacing chunks of the thing that break as needed with modern replacements. I don't feel the need to keep things "100% original" like, yeah, I'm not going to go and add RGB to a PDP-11 or anything, but first and foremost want to use the things, if that means making a new board for something, i'm not going to try to match the components so it's period correct, i'm going to make sure it's functionally equivalent, and possibly better using the modern tools and chips we have now.

I see a large chunk of the community focusing on keeping things as they are, historically and period accurate, and that's fine, if that's what makes them happy, they can do it, I won't complain. But I don't find much in common with any of them for that reason, there is a very small common ground we have, and that's "retro-tech" but the type and style are vastly different, so I can't help but feel out of place, but, in the end, that's okay, we are all in a hobby because we enjoy it and want to share it with others, and because my interests in it are fairly arcane, I get to share the wonders with others who are interested but don't know about some of this stuff, and that's a good thing.