The transistor — need I say more?

Let’s give a big round of applause to the electronic component that made our current computer revolution possible: the transistor. Here’s an advertisement from RCA touting the benefits of solid state transistor technology from a time when it was still novel. 55 years later, we’d be cramming 300 million of these onto a single piece of silicon smaller than a penny. And Microsoft Word still runs slowly.

Discussion topic of the week: What was your first computer’s CPU clock speed?

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If you’re a regular reader of VC&G, you know the important role that clearance isles have played in my adventures as a video game collector. Silly as it may seem, collecting vintage computers and classic game systems starts now, in the present. Wise choices can be made as to what will become rare and collectible in the future, and collectors should seize the opportunity to purchase such items while they’re still available through regular retail channels.

Case in point: Thanks to Blu-Ray’s conquest over HD-DVD in the hi-def format wars, Microsoft’s HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 is now $50 (US) new at Best Buy and Circuit City. Best Buy even has a free HD-DVD movie rebate program that makes the deal much sweeter [expired] If you’re feeling lucky, wait a few months and they may dump them for even less. Otherwise, go for it now. If you’ve got the cash, buy a second and keep it mint in the box.

Did you know the platters in most hard disk drives these days are made of glass? Neither did I, until last week…

What ever happened to good ‘ole fashioned aluminum discs? Thanks to a particularly rash and forceful extrication technique, I managed to spray bits of shattered, data-covered glass over half of my garage. Luckily, the pieces weren’t very sharp, as manufacturers apparently mix in some ceramic for good measure.

In case you were wondering about the whole scene to begin with, here’s the scoop: The drive was bad. I was after the wonderful, super-powerful neodymium magnets that reside within every modern hard drive (they’re part of the drive’s voice coil actuator assembly). I had previously given my entire hard disk magnet collection to my dad for use in his seismograph dampening system (doh!), so, naturally, I wanted some more. In the end, I got them — along with a room full of glass, a pretty picture, and a story to tell the grandkids.

I know this site is called Vintage Computing and Gaming, but what this site is really about is celebrating the history of computers and video games. I’m interested in the history of computers and video games over all time: past, present, and future. What is current now will soon be in the past, and part of history. Those of us who ponder the history of video games can’t help thinking ahead and wondering what will come next. Well, one can’t get a glimpse of the future of an industry without knowing its past. That’s why amateur enthusiast-historians like myself are here.

It has been said many times that the video game market has grown up with the gamers who purchase and play the games themselves. For example, take “Gamer X,” born in 1975, who played his first video game console, an Atari 2600, at age 3. Then maybe he moved on to a Commodore 64 around age 8, switching later to a NES at age 12, then a SNES at age 16. By the time he hit 1995 and the launch of the PlayStation in the US, that gamer was 20-years-old. That 20-year-old was probably no longer content to play the same video games he did at 3 and 8, although he probably still loved them for nostalgic reasons. No, that person was at a completely different stage in his life with different dreams and a new worldview. As Gamer X grew up, video game complexity and maturity grew up with him, matching him almost perfectly along the way. He had Atari 2600 games with the simplicity for a toddler to pick up and play, NES games with more depth and imagination for adolescents and early teens, then the SNES with its more violent fighting games and deeper and more emotionally rewarding RPGs for mid- to late-teenagers. Then along came Sony. With the launch of the first PlayStation, Sony was the first company to aggressively go after the late-teen and early-adult gamer market. This was a huge surprise to the whole world of “older folks” (i.e. Baby Boomers and above) at the time, because until then, everybody thought video games were strictly for kids. Why did they think they were for kids? Because kids were young, flexible, and open-minded enough to embrace video games when they came into their own.

At this point, we’re due for a stop off at the present. Even today, in 2005, with the average video game player being 30-years-old (also see this), and — surprise — with Gamer X at 30, video games as an entertainment medium are still being misunderstood by the generations that have come before it. But this behavior is not new; other forms of popular entertainment have experienced similar growing trends…and growing pains. The rock and roll record-smashing of the 1950s and 60s was similar to what’s going on today with social conservatives and alarmist politicians pointing their pens at violent and sexual video games. Remember Elvis? Neither do I — I’m only 24. But I’ve read some books and I know that when he first shook his hips on TV, the whole world of over-40-year-olds thought teenagers everywhere would instantly collapse into massive inter-racial orgies, never to recover. It’s been the same story with every generational gap and entertainment medium since the dawn of time. You can look back in the history of TV, music (rap and jazz are good examples in addition to rock & roll), movies, theater, books, paintings, and poetry, and you’ll see the same trend as you do with video games today. It’s the same old story: the older generation in power just doesn’t understand, and frightened governments everywhere, knowing magically what’s best for people under 30, want to make state-parenting de rigueur.

Well, guess what? Gamer X isn’t going to stop growing, aging, and maturing. By the time people who grew up with video games take positions of authority, the current controversies over games as an entertainment medium will, for the most part, cease (to be replaced by some other concern, no doubt). Rock and roll music, once shunned, misunderstood, and censored by the WWII generation, has grown up with the Baby Boomers until we regularly see 60-year-old rockers like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones drawing crowds of thousands.

Now, back to the present for a moment. At 30, Gamer X is currently enjoying PlayStation 2 games, with ever-growing depth and maturity. But soon (if he doesn’t already), he’ll have his own wife, kids, and family, and his priorities will change again. What happens when Gamer X reaches 40? At 40 years of age, I bet he’ll probably still want to play video games. But will Gamer X be content to run around and shoot hookers, kill virtual people, and steal their cars like he does today in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? Or will he want something different? He’ll probably work hard all day and come home exhausted — to a wife to attend to, kids to play with, and bills to pay. Will he have time to play that 100-hour RPG any more? Or does he want something more casual and less involved? Maybe he wants to tend a farm. Maybe he wants to sculpt clouds and float casually through the air. Or maybe he craves more driving simulators for his pending mid-life crisis. And what if he doesn’t have time to master the super-sophisticated, glowing, 20-button control pad that is being peddled to teenagers of the day? Maybe he wants to simply wave his hands in the air (like with the upcoming Nintendo Revolution controller, perhaps), and control things more intuitively. Well, I don’t think Gamer X will have to worry, because I firmly believe that the video game industry will grow with him to meet his changing needs and desires along the way.

But why stop at 40? Eventually there will be video game systems and content suitable-for and tailored-to a market of 50-, 60-, 70-year-old gamers and beyond (Gardening simulators, anyone? ). In 2055, when Gamer X is 80, there will be millions of people his age that have grown up with interactive digital entertainment as a way of life. They will want new games to play, and digital entertainment companies, eager for their Social Security dollars (if SS hasn’t collapsed by then), will provide them. This will give the phrase “gaming grandma” a whole new meaning.

Finally, our short story of Gamer X’s gaming life ends one day in 2082, when he is 107 years old. There, in a richly decorated room (with Star Wars posters and antique Spawn action figures), he lies on a bed, jerking, moving, and definitely occupied with something. Concerned, his 10-year-old great-grandson enters and poses a simple question:

“What are you playing grandpa?”

“Heaven 2.0, son. Now leave me alone, I’m busy!”

Computer hard disks weren’t always as reliable as they are now. From 1992 up until about five years ago, it seemed that I had a drive crash on me at least once every two years (Hmm.. they ceased right about the time I stopped buying OEM Western Digital drives from a questionable source). A total drive meltdown was always a terrible event, but it was still no where near as catastrophic as it would be now. You see, back then, the data on my computer was usually just stuff I had downloaded from BBSes or the Internet, maybe some text and Word files, and a few games. But these days, people keep their entire lives on their computers, including home movies, digital family snapshots, personal correspondence (in the form of emails), and gigantic music collections. Not to mention that more original creative work than ever is being done on computers these days — musicians record directly to them, photographers process their pictures on them, illustrators draw and paint with them, and writers write with them. This creative data is unique and irreplaceable — you can’t just download it again if you lose it, making a data backup plan absolutely essential for the modern computer user. Of course, I’m sure most people don’t back up their stuff, and computer users everywhere lose valuable data on a daily basis. Considering the importance of the personal data on PCs these days, I find it absurd that computer manufacturers don’t include some sort of redundant disk protection by default in every PC sold (or at least the build-to-order option). As RAID controllers get more economical thanks to the widespread adoption of the Serial ATA standard, such a scenario will become more realistic. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that in five years, redundant data protection of some kind will be a standard feature on all consumer PCs. From now on (starting with my last two computers), I’ll never build another computer again without at least RAID level 1 (data mirroring) protection. I also do daily backups to an external hard drive on my three main computers for an extra level of safety.

But my backup regimen isn’t really what I want to talk about today. No, it was my complete lack of one that we’ll focus on for the moment. Back when I lost my hard drives, I usually lost most or all the files on them as well. This functioned as sort of a “natural reset” (a big crunch, if you will) that set me back and forced me to clean up and start over. But once those natural resets stopped happening, things started building up. Data clutter reared its ugly head, and now data management and organization of all my files, including thousands upon thousands of legacy files, has gained incredible importance. Of course, it takes a lot of time to organize this data, but once you have it sorted out, it’s settled! Or is it? You still have to keep organizing every file you create, or else you will have a big mess on your hands, which I suspect is quite common among computer users. With larger capacity hard drives becoming ever cheaper for the foreseeable future, there will never be any need for the data pack rat to throw anything away. And with no natural resets, there will be no force making them throw anything away. At what point do I say enough is enough and trash MS Works files of 6th grade school papers? I just can’t bring myself to do it. At what point do I trash my collection of thousands of low-resolution, low-color images of old computers I downloaded off the web in 1996? I can’t bring myself to do it. I still have copies of DOS programs sitting around that I used in 1992. I have all my primitive MS Paintbrush computer artwork done in the mid-90s. I have archived HTML web pages that interested me in 1997. I have…lots of stuff. I’m swimming in it, and now with every new computer I buy, it’s hard to keep straight which file is where on my constellation of networked machines (which, I might add, keep my house quite toasty in the winter…whether I like it or not). I suppose I should centralize the data the best I can into a single, hyper-backed-up file server. I already have a similar server for most of my old files, but they aren’t actively backed up at the moment, and it adds extra cost to set that up. Either way, until I commit the money to it or — God forbid — “nature” takes its course and thrashes one of my drives, I’ll still be swimming in a digital sea of dusty — but priceless — data.