Vintage Tech YouTuber's Discussion Panel | VCFMW 19 (2024)

[@mogwaay]

Just started watching, great lineup, but can I just say Jim Leonard is a fabulous host and compare, excellent at corraling the guests and pitching the questions, an underrated art, bravo!

[@VCFMW]

Thank you! Jim has had some practice with the previous 3 panels, which has helped.

[@oliverw.douglas285]

This was my 2nd year attending & selling at VCFMW. While I'm usually tied to the tables, for both item sales, & talking to some interesting folks, I would like to attend one of these talks. Both the questions & the answers to them were very good. The level of knowledge & experience, as well the variety perspective from these panels, is both positive & refreshing. Thanks for taking the time to record this session. :)

[@chrisr2941]

Good evening and thanks for another great VCF! I made it to the convention this year and i must say it was a WAY better experience than last year! I had a lot of fun and even scored a couple monitors to complete my IBM PS/2 set. So excited! I also made a donation to help you guys keep going, thank you so much for putting this on!

[@VCFMW]

Thank you for attending, and also for the donation!

[@UnixGoldBoy]

Nice clear audio and great panel!

[@VCFMW]

Thank you! We capture the panel, moderator, audience, and Q&A in different tracks so that we can mix them better in post.

[@ianpolpo]

Great set of questions from Jim Leonard and quite a few interesting ones from the audience, resulting in some wonderful discussion by the panelists!

[@vcv6560]

I've attended several of these round tables at VCF the last few years.This was certainly one of the best.The engagement from the audience particularly interesting.

[@RyanMercer]

🤘

[@awilliams1701]

When I was a kid I got into programming because it sounded cool. And I started to learn and understand it. Eventually I created something new and it was this amazing feeling to see something I made come to life. It's a rare feeling I've chased many times, but now that I do it for a living it's a lot harder to get that feeling because I do this kind of thing every day. But I've had many "impossible" projects given to me and when I finish them I do get that feeling. Even if the end result isn't something I care about. That's what got me into computing.

[@brianlhughes]

My computer "movie" was Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970. it was scary!

[@VCFMW]

Yeah, that movie is legit terrifying.

[@TheSulross]

Yeah, that made an impression on me too as a kid. But Hal in 2000 A Space Oddessy was one cool computer AI super villain. However, the very best film portrayal of personal computing geekdom is hands down War Games - and was fine story telling entertainment to boot.

[@shireoryx6153]

Taylor nailed it about being able to control stuff on TV ❤

[@jacoblister]

Got to VCFSW this year, so cool to see the same faces

[@clouddnjshdjdndhd]

Amazing panel!!

[@67amiga]

I still use dot matrix printers on my job every day. I am an electronics tech, and we use Automatic Test Stations (ATS) for verification of all of our repairs. We have dot matrix printers that were manufactured from the 1990s all the way to brand new ones. We have upgraded some of our systems to laser printers, but at least half of our systems still use dot matrix printers, and there are no plans to change that.

[@happycube]

BTW, the same writers worked on WarGames and Sneakers (the director had a cowriting credit on the latter, just to be pedantic :) )

[@robertcartier5088]

Changing tech... I was sitting in a boardroom, listening to a cellular service provider rep teaching us about the newest smart-phone features... this was around 2008. I was sitting there, minding my own business, and some of my colleagues started making fun of my 2005 Motorola flip-phone, which I proudly set on the table in front of me... I said, "Oh, yeah?!" and proceeded to thrown my phone across the room, rolling up to and hitting a wall, which rendered the whole room silent -- surely they thought I had lost my mind. I slowly got up, walked over to the apparently dismantled phone, popped the battery back in, turned it back on, and said, "Try that with your lame-ass iPhones!" When they dismissively countered with claims that theirs could surf the web, I showed them that the Opera browser app on my V300 could do that too! ;-]

[@kingforaday8725]

That last question struck very close to home, as in ground zero!!!! I collect/repair vintage consumer electronics. VCRS, receivers, turntables, stereo systems, 8 track, LPs, gaming consoles, and computers. Like he said I repair and clean up something and it goes on a shelf. Although I have learned to store items in a box if Im not displaying it. Friends and family frequently ask "what are you gonna do with this stuff?" My patent answer is "sell it" "SOMEDAY"!! followed by ya want it?, you can have it. No takers.

[@RetroTechChris]

Yea, that last question was a microcosm on life and the hobby for sure! So glad the audience member asked it.

[@Renville80]

On the question of 'stock or tricked out', there should have been an additional choice: bug fixes only? Veronica has a point regarding captioning... I guess it must be Adrian's Canadian accent or something, but on almost every intro to his videos, it comes out as "Adrienne's"...and on the topic of dot matrix printers, at my work, we have a few "in-circuit" test machines we use for the assemblies we build, and each one has a "cash register style" dot matrix printer that puts the failure data on 4" wide register tape.

[@misterbungle3251]

Last question guy sounds like John Goodman.

[@DrGonzo-1337]

LOL, I had that same thought when I heard him!

[@65scribe]

Same here!

[@awilliams1701]

My C64 is mostly stock, but it has a GAL PLA (which is technically period correct), it has the VIC2 squared mod so you can use PAL or NTSC. And I use an ultimate 2+ cartridge. I hate floppies. It's convenient. At the end of the day it's usable and it offers the stock experience but with modern conveniences.

[@kingofl337]

What about Doogie Howser, M.D. for computers in media?

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Absolutely Paintshop Pro! Me too! 😁

[@artisticgoose2609]

First Question! : Hackers!

[@robertcartier5088]

First memorable exposure to computers in media? Other than the usual for my generation -- Star Trek TOS(TV 1966-69), I would have to say, "2001: A Space Odyssey"(1968), "Colossus: The Forbin Project"(1970), and later, "Space: 1999"(TV 1975-76)... I never noticed before but all these titles have a colon in them! ...Coincidence? ;-]

[@elishariedlinger559]

Just to set the record straight. You CAN move the task bar on Windows 11 just like Windows 10 and Windows 8 and Windows 7, etc.

[@VeronicaExplains]

Can you move it to the top of the screen without some sort of registry hack? I haven't been able to figure that out the few times I've used it.

[@elishariedlinger559]

​@@VeronicaExplains Yes. First, right-click on the bar and make sure you uncheck the "Lock the taskbar" checkbox, if checked. Then click on the taskbar in a location where there are no icons or running programs. Drag it to the top of the screen. I just did it on my computer so I know it works. I believe it works on all Windows versions, all the way back to Windows XP. But I know for sure it works on all versions from Windows 7 and newer.

[@VeronicaExplains]

@@elishariedlinger559 Even Windows 11?

[@elishariedlinger559]

​@@VeronicaExplains I only have Windows 10 because my laptop won't work with Windows 11. However, I setup a VMware and then looked into this and it seems that Microsoft removed this feature in Windows 11 (for some unknown reason). A feature they had for over 2 decades they decided to kill. You have to use a 3rd party program to get the task bar to move to the top.

[@andrewdunbar828]

I'm too retro to say "gaming". Back in the day we used to "play games" (-:

[@Heike--]

I liked how we just played games. "gamer" wasn't your whole life and whole identity. If you liked Star Trek, that was it. You didn't learn Klingon or have a cosplay wedding where everyone is carrying a batleth.

[@michaelstoliker971]

I would love to be on this panel because these are the discussions I want to have about retro computers. I'm an Atari fan and stuff I most want from my Ataris are the things Atari promised and never delivered! That I what I get most excited about when I go on AtariAge and find someone is building an Atari 1450XL from scratch. Or an Atari 1090XL expansion box and cards for it. I've bought the 1090 box and the 80-column card and the CP/M card, because the system I most wanted back in the day was an Apple II. These products if they had been released back in the day would have brought the Atari to parity with the Apple II. The 65C816 chip would have brought parity with the Apple IIGS. I wanted the the Atari line to grow year over year and all we got were broken promises and the cuckoo's nest invasion of the Tramiels.

[@MakersEase]

I am rocking a pixel 4 also.. Does everything I need.

[@retrobitstv]

Represent!

[@awilliams1701]

My nest thermostat's battery is dying. It's not technically user replaceable. I saw a video on it. You can do it, but the risk of it never working again is very high. So I just bought a new one. The new 4th gen. All they have to do is put in a battery door. And it would be fine. But they didn't. So I wish minor maintenance issues like that were still possible today. And yeah I can replace the battery now if I want in the old one if something happened to the new one with little risk.

[@awilliams1701]

technically 1 person didn't design any 8 bit computer. Every component was designed by different people. It would be accurate to say that Woz assembled those components in a specific way, but he had nothing to do with things like the 6502 for example.

[@andrewdunbar828]

I hear Andy Hu!

[@poofygoof]

1:24:00 there are vestigial registry entries for moving the taskbar location in win11, but the selection code that brings up a menu when you select an icon is NOT location aware, and if you put the taskbar at the top of the screen, the menus open off-screen. I was expecting to be able to use a similar layout from win8.2, but nope, it regressed. win11 seems horribly incomplete, like an early beta that has common use cases mostly working, but is lacking full validation and any sort of polish. everything after the XP to 7 jump seems like it has benefitted microsoft more than me.

[@vcv6560]

@30 mins. What did we want back in the day? The same thing we want now, everything! 😂

[@jmboyd78]

Excellent panel, thank you all!

[@winstonsmith478]

New "retro" software and hardware should simply be called "neo-retro."

[@crash0317]

That seems to be the new prefix for new old stuff.

[@awilliams1701]

So I had a C64 and when the last PSU died and we couldn't get anymore I was depressed about it. My parents got rid of it and it made me mad. I'm like I can fix that some day. Ironically in 2019 I bought a C64 that was "as is" and it's big problem was the lack of PSU......well also MT ram failed.....and eventually the cartridge port. But it's all fixed. So yeah.....why did we have to get rid of it?

[@keyvanmehrbakhsh4069]

I think about the new tech getting homogenized is about somehow the world thought that the idea is equal to danger and the world thought that there would be another thing as living apart from the idea .the common human judgment errors leads to make new stuff boring because they hide the ideas behind them .

[@awilliams1701]

I love windows 7. Windows 10 isn't too bad. Most of my complaints on windows 11 are fixed, but 10 is still better. But it's like.....I need something that works. I don't want to have to recompile the kernel or any of that BS. And I love the compatibility. Even as bad as windows 11 was, it can still run just about anything. You can't do that on linux, which is a nightmare to use. And you can't do that on a mac.

[@awilliams1701]

what's my favorite printer? My Prusa Mk4 (soon to be MK4S). lol It's a 3d printer. I don't use 2d printers anymore. lol

[@awilliams1701]

triplicate? Are you kidding me? I used to work for a school that did that crap. Page 1 looks great. Page 2 looks ok. Page 3? It looks like shit. It's barely legible. Nope! Nope! Nope! If I did have to 2d print, I'd rather print 3 copies on my laser.

[@superstar64]

Windows XP

[@TheRealRaddicalReggie-o9l]

Ive heard of 3 of them….

[@budgetkeyboardist]

"Video Transcriber" used to be a job that someone got paid for. It's interesting to hear an artist badmouth AI art and then talk about how cool AI Transcription is. Maybe AI is OK when it's taking someone else's job, but not our own? I struggle with the same thing as a musical artist. I use AI drums but I complain when people like AI generated music. (AI music is just as crappy as AI art). The easy answer is that AI can't do art and music as well as artists and musicians. Yet. But even if it ever exceeds us somehow, we will still make art and music because we love it. We just won't make money at it. But I'm already not making money, so there's that...

[@awilliams1701]

I've never had a "good deal", but I did have a bad one. My current computer was in 2021 when it was impossible to buy parts. My geforce 3070 required me to buy a motherboard I didn't want. To this day I've never used it. And I bought a ryzen 3600x as a placeholder for my 5900x. So yeah that's quite a bit of money wasted on this computer. Close to $500.

[@kjrchannel1480]

I hope all of them never think they know everything. KZbin can give people a false sense of being a celebrity.

[@DKbananas]

Was a nerd🧐

[@awilliams1701]

as someone who hates macs, I can definitely agree I dont' like windows 11 because it tries too much to be like a mac. I did everything I can at work to make it look more like windows 10. lol

[@awilliams1701]

oh you can definitely move it. I moved it from the center to the left side. It was the first thing I did. One thing I hated about it was that you couldn't disable the small icon grouping thing introduced in windows XP that I've disabled since XP. So when I got upgraded from 21H2 to 23H2 and you can disable it, it's like.....OMG YES!

[@awilliams1701]

oh......the whole task bar? Nope that belongs on the bottom.

[@PE4Doers]

It's great to see my 'heart throb' Kate Fox (and her buddy) again 🥰

[@bonemar66]

Computers in movies are often hit or miss. War Games gets it. Omega Strain I think mostly gets it. Then there's Star Trek. Sure Scotty is the GOAT engineer, but he tries to talk to a 1985 Mac, and then bends credibility when he hen pecks the keyboard and opens 6 windows, some filled with advanced calculus and metallurgy, and eventually comes up with an animated molecular schematic for a transparent metal capable of holding two whales using 1" thick 8'x12' panels. Usually TV shows and movies show people logging into a hyper secure machine, trying dozens of combos and getting full access in 10 seconds. Maybe they throw in a diskette or plug in a flash drive, but often it's just them typing on a keyboard. Deus ex machina: we need that insider data or the movie's plot doesn't advance. Or those movies like Hackers or the Matrix or even Ready Player One that show computers as hippie graphics you fly through. Hey, if you're slinging bee-ess, go big.

[@awilliams1701]

using linux is ALWAYS torture. LMAO

[@DrGonzo-1337]

Great panel, but slippery slope on AI. Found it amusing that 8-Bit guy was chastized for taking money away from artists, by a person saying how great it is at doing captions. To heck with transcriptionists, I guess. 🤪

[@RetroTechChris]

Yea... the logic of "do it without AI, even if it is 50 times slower" seemed to be a bit of a paradox for a panel about tech, even if it is old tech. I do get the sentiment though, and the sensitivity that people have surrounding AI.

[@wesley00042]

You do understand the difference between art and transcription, right?

[@Carlos-zl2nu]

It’s really hard to learn the difference between “AI” and machine learning, I guess some of the audience is real dumb.

[@RetroTechChris]

@@Carlos-zl2nu or maybe could use a gentle nudge of education rather than a condescending comment from someone on the Internet?

[@Carlos-zl2nu]

@@RetroTechChris oh Chris stop it! Where are we the parliament?! Let Gonzo learn a bit. Let I’m feel the idiocy of his comment. Let him feel in his gut the bliss of understanding that a great panel, a great talk, can have such dunces in the audience. Join him in the shame Chris, it will do you good too. Oh and by the way: also learn the meaning of the word “paradox”, you’re using it wrong.

[@GenciOsmanie]

Hernandez Deborah Clark Sarah Lee Paul

[@JamesBondJr]

look at these guys trying to sell us the 3do lmao super Nintendo lol ........😋

[@awilliams1701]

My intel core i7-2600 was my main computer for 10 years. I do have a laptop that's older that still works, but it was never my main computer. Although technically I use my work computer more than my main computer. That was a xeon from the intel 4th core i series generation and it was my main computer for 10 years as well. It just got replaced with one of the explodey intel chips. lol Ironically that old dell made me jellous. It was better than anything I had even the graphics. The new dell? nope! it's junk. I looked up the hardware. I'm like.....dell wanted $200 for this graphics card? Are you kidding me? lol My Ryzen 5900 decimates that intel chip. My geforce 3070 decimates the graphics.

[@awilliams1701]

for my phone I had a note 9. The only reason I upgraded is because my job requires a phone that gets updates. The note 9 doesn't get updates anymore. If I didn't have the requirement I would still be using it. The only thing my pixel 7 pro does better is pictures. Otherwise it feels more or less the same.

[@awilliams1701]

I've disagreed with adrian before and I will again. My current computer vs my 10 year old computer? It's leaps and bounds faster. My 10 year old computer couldn't render my enterprise model in blender on the GPU because of vram limitations. The CPU took 1 hour to generate the image in 1080. My current computer can render it in 4k in about 5 minutes. And honestly GPU or CPU makes little difference. I'd call that a significant improvement in speed.

[@tapetwo7115]

Why does everyone dress like they are homeless. I just can’t take any of it serious I’m sorry 😂

[@ray_mck]

I love watching Veronica's channel, and I understand where she's coming from when she admonished David for using AI to generate some artwork to save the expense of hiring an artist. However, when she answered that she uses AI to generate subtitles.... which saves the expense of hiring someone to do it (yes, it's a service that's available for hire) ... it made me giggle. :)

[@wesley00042]

There's a big difference between art and transcription.

[@Carlos-zl2nu]

It’s really hard to learn the difference between “AI” and machine learning, It’s easier to giggle I guess.

[@Carlos-zl2nu]

Adding some learning to the insult @ray_mck, sorry for the bluntness. If you want to know more about the difference between using an LLM (stolen content) and machine learning (algorithms that analyse your voice to produce a subtitle) Angela Collier's "AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway" (youtube) it`s an excellent primer. I assume the panel and most of the audience know the difference and I think it's extremely brave of her to criticize (politely admonish and not as I did) who uses content created by "AI", especially by influencers who should know better. As for not hiring someone for doing your subtitles instead of using an algorithm: well... that's an economical decision Ray. The decision not to use content produced by an LLM is an ethical decision. Difference. There is one. Huge.

[@ray_mck]

It seems you folks missed the point I was making.

[@RayEttler]

a bad case of restless legs syndrome on the left. very annoying couldn't keep watching. nothing personal if course. just get tables next time.

[@r.j.etrogames]

Get some masking tape. Or better yet, literally listen to it as a podcast.

[@RayEttler]

@@r.j.etrogames you don't know right away who's talking if you don't watch

[@VCFMW]

We are indebted to all of our panelists for providing meaningful contributions to the conversation, even if they're not used to public speaking and may be nervous on stage. Also, we intentionally stopped using tables in 2023 because we wanted to promote a more casual, open atmosphere.

[@Okurka.]

Poor audience are forced to look up David's shorts.

[@r.j.etrogames]

@@VCFMW It was an excellent panel, and unlike some I was able to watch the whole thing without complaining.