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Comment by bensyverson | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic. To me, this is one of the greatest side-effects of agentic coding; adding new functionality to vintage, abandoned or obsolete hardware. It gives me hope for a solarpunk future where e-waste gets a more functional second life.

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So, making obsolete hardware relevant by using the technology that's accelerating their "irrelevanceness" ?

Can hardware became more obsolete?

Yes. Discrete 74 series TTL logic ICs were quite obsolete; CMOS versions replaced them. But now with new generations that are not level-compatible with the TTL versions, the TTL versions are even more obsolete.

To me it proves that a technology can be understood and implemented by one person.

Life isn't black & white

How is AI making old hardware obsolete faster?

If anything it's the opposite (by making new hardware unaffordable)

Prices for retro hardware are going up due to hoarders & sometimes social effect, too.

You are aware that there's a huge retrocomputing community around the world that with hearts and passion preserves old machines and software?

Being part of it myself, I think I've heard of it.

But I fail to understand how using the very thing that's shortening hardware life nowadays is "passionate". Different values I presume.

There's no acceleration here. Vintage Macs are 100% obsolete. They can't get any more obsolete than that. They can, however, become MORE relevant for hobbyists through the development of new software for them.

What could be better than that?

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