Matias Saibene
Development hell
Retro tech? Now THIS is cool retro tech. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, restores ancient machines to full working order. Here they have a fully operational IBM 1401 from 1959 and they figured out how to run Fortran on it, which it was never designed to do. This thing is a giant, breathing, chattering beast and these guys put so much love into it.
The IBM 1401 compiles and runs FORTRAN II - YouTube
And here they restored a 1959 DEC PDP-1:
Lyle Bickley explains the PDP-1 (and we play the original Spacewar!) - YouTube
What a wonder, just look at those rolls of magnetic tape, they are impressive when they move, it seems that this thing was thinking, it seems magic. I love old computers even though I only know them on the Internet or encyclopedias, I never had the opportunity to see one in real life, but I see them as extremely engaging, or intriguing. That moving magnetic tape... today's computers could bring that, even if it's a decoration, I do not know, they give me an image of activity (or being processing something) that the current computers can not give me (except a little bit the Linux console and the few commands that I use).
The first time I saw magnetic tape running, it was in this video. Is magic.
The first time I saw an old computer, it was in the documentary about Pixar where UNIVAC was shown for a few seconds.
Look at these old commercial, to this day I find it impressive.
Look at the typography, it looks like science fiction.