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[florianix]

Originally Posted by Scatty

Which is probably the point of all problems - "hard"ware. There's been non-public development and testing of new form(s) of completely different, to what is officially available today, branch of computer(s) for quite some years now. Half-organic, biologically based processing to be more precise. But it's very hard to find anything on that in any news and it will probably still take many and many more years before it could even be considered widely available. If, and when it will, that might be turning point in backwards compatibility which we are experiencing with today's conventional hardware, not counting some of the other advantages it would have.

Those technologies have only been very basic research topics that are far from leaving some research labs, and I really doubt that most of them ever will.

Most of them are more usefull to e.g. print circuits on a price-tag very cheap, but less for improving computing power.

The technologies that will increase computing-power/speed in the mid term will probably be the next steps in semiconductor processes (maybe GaN, which is now already commercially available for very high speed transistors).

In fact, it doesn't really matter *which* HW-technolgy a computer is based on (there already were mechanical, electro-mechanical, tube, transistor based technologies of what is more or less still the same logical implementation of a computer).

About accuracy: Modern computers already can already do calculations with unlimited accuracy (just a matter of computing power), and even standard single or double precision outperform any analog computer by far.
Thats the reason why those are obsolete since many decades (and never will come back).

I see fuzzy-logic, neural networks (and many other things that were/are considered "revolutionary" for some years) as software-topics. Just about algorithms, not hardware...

However, amazing how this thread turned from ancient computers to future technology...

[florianix]

Originally Posted by Japo

Backwards compatibility was the one and only reason, weighting against a number of opposite considerations, that caused the industry to choose the AMD x64 architecture instead of the now extinct Itanium pushed by Intel. If the industry had been neutral towards backwards compatibility, not to mention if it had wanted to curtail it, the result would have been just the opposite.

The fact that Intel always put priority on backwards compatibility was one of the main reasons that their architecture got the established industry standard.
In the end I can only say it was the right decision.... We maybe saw some better architectures, but they are dead now and that was finally worse for their users.
In my opinion this was very helpfull in the end as we now have a situation where most computers share a common architecture (and compatibility).
Of course they even kept backwards compatibility where it was completely ridiculous and nobody ever needed it (thinking about the famous A20-Gate...).

[Eagle of Fire]

Of course they even kept backwards compatibility where it was completely ridiculous and nobody ever needed it (thinking about the famous A20-Gate...).

Yeah but how could they defeat the Terminators without those obsolete computers? Viva el compatibility!

[florianix]

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

Yeah but how could they defeat the Terminators without those obsolete computers? Viva el compatibility!

Sorry... I absolutely don't get it...

Who do you mean by "terminators"?
And "obsolete computers" are the ones including the strange structures keeping it backwards compatible?

Probably I don't have my brain in gear.

Anyway... thinking about my argument about the A20 gate again... it was terribly wrong... In fact its needed to be able to boot DOS on modern computers... (might the DOSbox evangelists forgive me that comment)

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by florianix

And "obsolete computers" are the ones including the strange structures keeping it backwards compatible?

No. "Obsolete" as in "no longer in use".

Probably I don't have my brain in gear.

Probably.

Who do you mean by "terminators"?

Near-indestructible killer robots, optionally coated in cloned human tissue, created to systematically wipe out every human being.

[florianix]

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

No. "Obsolete" as in "no longer in use".

Probably.
Near-indestructible killer robots, optionally coated in cloned human tissue, created to systematically wipe out every human being.

Will get some coffee for my ancient, to get my obsolete brain in order.
[waiting for that joke to work and to die laughing (much) later... ]

[saibot216]

My family still has our old Dell Windows 95.

[KrazeeXXL]

I still have a fully operational Pentium 200 MMX standing around here but didn't use it for years. But it's there so if I ever feel a huge retro-urge...

normally it's sufficiently treated with a good portion of Dosbox but you never know

[Scatty]

You'd still have some trouble running Quake 1 in DosBox The Dos version that is. On that Pentium II it would run like a charm though. Or take Warhammer - Shadow of the Horned Rat. It doesn't run so well in modern Windows, but if you take a (quite hard to find as rare) Dos version of it, DosBox could barely handle it. Just some examples.

[KrazeeXXL]

haha Quake 1. remember that one. Good old Matrox Mystique times

but not that much later I used the mouse to play shooters and it wasn't really possible to play Quake1 this way. It was a good game though but the controls would be a bit too much retro for me. you know, aim up with pageup-key or what I used these days... - kinda mission impossibru now - was even awful to play this way back then

Quake 2 is another story

but damn, now I have to find out if that old rig is still running xD

edit: typo