As a systems analyst/programmer with 40+ years of experience, I have lived by the mantra that "technology doesn't get old - its users do", and that "every computer that was ever built is still just as useful as the very first moment it was ever powered on - all it needs is a user". These are radical maxims, its true - flying in the face of consumption culture - but it has resulted in another phenomenon, especially true now in the age of AI/ML: old computers can always become more useful through optimization.
A case in point, one of my favourite systems is the Oric-1/Atmos computer - an also-ran 8-bit system from the heigh days of personal computing, before the IBM PC took off. It is now possible, with AI/ML, to write extremely optimized software for this platform which really push its limits into new, creative territory.
As AI/ML make proton-/electron-basedknowledge less intangible, the actual atoms are useful again.
It is the physicality of the device, not the knowledge about it, which matters now.
I operate on an extremely elevated awareness of the idea of optimizing the bloat out of these older systems, using AI/ML tooling. Things are getting less and less sub-optimal, in the 'older technology hardware' department - we are able to really optimize software for these systems, now.
I think anyone with an interest in computing, should have a few retro computers in their collection - and they should be running modern software on it. Old computers do not die - their users do. There will always be a user for a computer, old or new. The distinction is entirely arbitrary, human.
It was donated to my collection after the tablet was integrated .. but of course, the membership and fuel-tracking capabilities of the club are now radically degraded, nobody can get the web page working any more, no data is being recorded by the club, and the whole thing was a fiasco.
That Atmos is still quite useful for that function. It still works, just as reliably as it has, for 40 years. The only reason it was taken out of service was because the consumer-/consumption- culture was applied to it - it was not 'new', it was 'old', it therefore needed to be replaced with 'something modern'. Indeed, if the utility question was asked properly - as you have done - the machine would still be there, functioning just as well as it had for decades.
Its not a hobby. Its a bet that, in the future, 'old computers' will find new uses. Every single one of the systems in my collection can find new users. The users just have to discard the consumer-/consumption neurosis which afflicts everyone ruled by the "new bar of soap" conundrum.
>But there's nothing noble about using AI and expensive modern GPUs to get 5% more juice out of old hardware.
I disagree with you completely, but then I focus on the user, not the use. There's a distinct difference. It is entirely noble to use a computing system for which there is absolutely no possibility that it be subverted for displaying ads or piping the data through an unknown third-party entity, for example, to maintain a private membership database and associated data logging ..
I do not want to see advancements made by a technology I truly despise. I'd rather see less impressive, handmade projects (therefore, more impressive) rather than slop.
Feel free to kick my ass.