Old Hardware

Last weekend I had a bit of a discussion with a younger family member who is very much into technology and all the bits a pieces that come with it - specifically he's into older "vintage" tech. However for him "vintage" is stuff that I worked on earlier in my career, or spent my childhood cutting my teeth on.

Anyhow he managed to get his hands on a 2000's era laptop computer - specifically a Centrino based device that would have been considered resonable before Intel kicked off the release of the dual and quad core CPU's that would then become the default for the next decade. The problem with this device - it wouldn't boot properly. Initially it looked like the device had a dead disk, but after digging into it a bit it looks like the problem may be that the power supply he's got to run the thing just doesn't have the juice needed to get the device up and running. 

He was disappointed because he was specifically looking forward to playing some older games on this thing. 

Now there are some really good vintage games that are definitely worth playing, some of these are things that I would consider classic masterpieces and there are others that have not aged as well. 

This is something that he's brought up before, at point point I know he was really wanting to get hands on a SNES and a copy of Earthbound to play on the "original" hardware. Now, given the cost of a "original" copy of Earthbound;

And the cost of a working "original" SENES I really have to question if playing the game on original hardware is worth it any more. 

The only thing that I can agree with is that you should probably be using a SNES controller - or a good reproduction like the ones that you get from 8bitdo and others. Even a cheap one would probably work since the original ones, while good, were not that much better built than the USB knockoffs that you can get these days from Amazon. Having something that feels the same in the hand is something that makes the experience of playing the game complete. 

And the thing is that Nintendo knows that people still play this game - it's on the SNES library on the Nintendo Switch as a game that you can play so there's no need to resort to piracy to play the game. Nintendo also convienently sells a set of SNES controllers for the Switch, and even though they aren't cheap they are still cheaper than a copy of Earthbound.

Between DosBOX, PCEM, RetroArch, and other tools that exist in the world there are really few, if any, games that you can't play on a modern computer. And, now that USB versions of most of the popular controllers in the world exist it becomes hard to suggest pursuing original hardware to play these games on. Emulation avoids all the hassles that the vintage hardware brings with it - problems with bad capacitors, problems with broken cables, and brittle plastic that breaks as soon as you look at it. 

As much as I have nostalgia for the now vintage hardware that I sued to work with I don't miss having to manually set jumpers and other configuration options to make a sound card work. 

After talking to the family member about if they should spend another 50-100$ on a laptop that should have been in a recycling bin a decade ago I suggested that if they are only looking for a way to play old games that virtualization should be the way that they approach the problem. Hopefully they will go through the process of learning that and pick some skills that can be used in other places aside from just playing games.