We sat down with the star of one of our favorite channels to go on a journey of discovery.
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LGR’s Clint Basinger plumbs the depths of retro-computing—and his YouTube comments
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Let me rephrase: the process of publishing videos to our youtube channel is entirely an API-driven one, controlled by the CNE CMS. I don't have login credentials for our youtube channel or any of the other video endpoints. That's what I mean when I said I don't have any way to fix this. I literally can't log in to do anything about it. I can pass feedback on to the group that runs the process
I'm a little reticent to further complicate the number of steps I need to go through to publish video stories to enable what is unfortunately a very edge use-case. As a workaround, let me offer this: every video that runs on the front page also shows up on https://video.meincmagazine.com with the CNE player. If you ever run into a video where the YT auto-captioning isn't meeting expectations, you can hit the video.meincmagazine.com URL and watch it there instead.
(Watching videos there will have the added benefit of allowing you to skip ads if you're a subscriber—another thing I can't do with the youtube embed.)
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Can we please not quote trolls trying to get a rise out of the Ars staff with such a out-of-left-field attempt?
Edit: With Moonshark's note on my previous post indicating the troll got "taken care of", I'll gladly continue with this LGR program, already in progress...
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Getting a like out of me and I haven't even watched it yet
I like 8-Bit Guy just a little more, because while LGR is great for learning about the commercial history of all these old machines, he gets down to the brass tacks on how those computers actually worked.
I feel like LGR is fun and entertaining, while I gain functional knowledge from 8-Bit Guy.
The great thing is you don't have to choose between them. It takes some digging since YouTube's algorithm is weird as heck, but there's *tons* of stuff on there that would never make it on broadcast television.
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Getting a like out of me and I haven't even watched it yet
I like 8-Bit Guy just a little more, because while LGR is great for learning about the commercial history of all these old machines, he gets down to the brass tacks on how those computers actually worked.
I feel like LGR is fun and entertaining, while I gain functional knowledge from 8-Bit Guy.
The great thing is you don't have to choose between them. It takes some digging since YouTube's algorithm is weird as heck, but there's *tons* of stuff on there that would never make it on broadcast television.
Don't I know it? My regular YT go-tos are LGR, Techmoan, Technology Connections, The 8-Bit Guy, Tavarish (and sister channel Wrench Every Day), Hoovie's Garage (and its "spinoffs" The Car Wizard and Velocity Garage [Johnny the Car Ninja]), WatchJRGo, Aging Wheels, DriveTribe (and sister channel FoodTribe), Garage 54, Adam Savage's Tested, and Steve Shives.
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That background pic brought back memories... TRS80 color computer from radio shack, my first.... Programming my own games and saving it to an audio cassette...
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i only have a few youtube channels that i frequent often, clints, civvie's (cause i like his reviews of old games) and a few muscle car channels that let me remember fondly on when i was still drag racing mopar back in the mid 80's. I've rebuilt 383's and 440's so much that i still dream about the process once in awhile (727's as well). Most of the stuff is either to immature or bunny trails to much. LGR is one of the good one's for sure.
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I would say the opposite
The 80s to early 90s born generation would love to have the voodoo card, to play with the best version of pentium 2 which we wished to have when we were younger.
There is no way most of us will spend the money, the effort to get it and install it. Even if we got one for free it would end up in storage box with old cellphone and spare USB cables.
But through lgr we can satisfy the crave for that old stuff.
And also learn a lot about the tech.
One of the strong points of Clints vidoes is that he knows his stuff and can communicate them without going into unnecessary details.
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Clint is a really funny guy. His occasional videos when he tries to use an ancient PC accessory (like a car cigarette lighter that can be installed in a floppy drive bay) are always worth watching. It's a great channel in general.
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It’s almost like every account it’s very limited to what the accountant experienced!
Damn you LGR for not being an historian!
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Thats the only thing that “kinds” of put me off about him. I feel that the old tech deserves a bit more “respect “.
But is minor and i still watch and enjoy his videos.
I do prefer the 8 bit guy, even though, he has left me with some cliffs hangers, like this one:
https://youtu.be/7h4tepFbMso
Anyways, sometimes, its hard to watch the nostalgic videos, since they remind me of how far from my reach those devices were on those days and never had one.
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The only problem I have with retro videos by everyone is that every time something is featured, prices shoot up dramatically. Wasn't too long ago when a Commodore 64 working could be had for well under $100 shipped, and now ones that need fixing are over $100.
Hell, I could sell my MT-32 units for a tidy profit these days (we're talking about a good 200%+ return).
I think even the prices of 486s and such have shot up as well.
Hell, I could sell my MT-32 units for a tidy profit these days (we're talking about a good 200%+ return).
I think even the prices of 486s and such have shot up as well.
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The biggest issue I have with retro computing content on YouTube is how much of it is dominated by white men. Women are basically unseen, as are PoC. When they do appear, as on Retro Recipes, it's a decidedly secondary role. I like Nybbles and Bytes for her wonderful C64 coding, but that's coding, not general retro. I don't think for one second it's purposeful, and it's not the fault of the great creators that do exist. There is, however, a silent problem in this area of content in general, and as an LGBTQ woman, it gets a little old watching white men dominate the content all the time.
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Techmoan is amazing, great content and great personality. While we're at it, My Life In Gaming and Modern Vintage Gamer are a must watch. Technology Connections is also one of my favourites, and he doesn't just do retro tech. VWestlife also has great low-key content that is often very different from the rest of the youtubers.
The current retro tech community is so amazing these days, it really has exploded these last few years.
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Ah, LGR. A soothing place of calm and peace and unnecessary retro tech - which is the best kind! I really do enjoy watching him explore tech that was my absolute desire to own back in the 90s when I was still at school and couldn't afford anything.
Modern tech is less exciting because I've basically got most of it. Although I anticipate maybe in the 2050s, assuming no apocalypse or other collapse has happened, that I might be nostalgic for things like the consoles and the old operating systems, because the UIs will likely have changed somewhat by then and even now it's always a pleasure to go back to something like Visual Basic 4 and wonder how people managed to be productive in it.
Modern tech is less exciting because I've basically got most of it. Although I anticipate maybe in the 2050s, assuming no apocalypse or other collapse has happened, that I might be nostalgic for things like the consoles and the old operating systems, because the UIs will likely have changed somewhat by then and even now it's always a pleasure to go back to something like Visual Basic 4 and wonder how people managed to be productive in it.
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LGR is just so wonderfully low-drama and soothing. We're of similar age and are nostalgic about the same era in computing. Though I respectfully have to disagree with his love of wood-grain finish.
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[trollhide=A secluded old dirt road leads up to Boot Hill]
[moonsharksays]Same hill for you, chief[/moonsharksays][/trollhide]
Classic ARSTechnica club shilling and brofisting. Yes that is a FU to ARSE.
[moonsharksays]Same hill for you, chief[/moonsharksays][/trollhide]
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That AT unboxing sure brought back some memories. I like that he's a fan of the Model Ms. (I have five of 'em sitting in storage in case this one -- born on "22FEB93" -- somehow meets an untimely end.)
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I assume you're referring to the 486s that haven't (yet) succumbed to electrolytic capacitor rot. I was pretty disappointed when I discovered that my old ALR 386 and Micronics motherboards, one of which I'd hoped to put back in service in a retro gaming box, were unusable because of that malady.
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I think it just comes down to a matter of numbers interested. The essential hurdles to cross are, is interested in the topic + has the money to collect the items + is able to make the videos (and everything that entails) + is willing to do so.
Even as a white male I only meet 2 or 3 of those 4 criteria. I lack the willingness to produce a video on a weekly basis and I suspect I lack the funds to do so anyway.
And as an example in the era both the hardware and I hail from (70s-80s), female interest in such equipment was nearly zero. Without a large enough interested group, the very small number of people interested in making such videos and able to do so draws from a very small pool indeed.
There might be a shift over time as more young women have never known a time before the internet and computers in the home.
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I severely downsized my collection of old computer "stuff" during our last move. LGR videos provide a little reminder of all the things I used to have sitting in the basement. (Oddly, I kept the QIC02 tape drives and some media.)
Probably of interest to anyone following LGR: YouTube also has a bunch of episodes of "Computer Chronicles" going back to the early '80s. That show was part of my Saturday morning TV regimen back then.
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It's admittedly more engineering-minded, but you should check out Fran Blanche's channel if you don't know it yet.
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I think that's fair. Semi-tangentially, though, I will also say that I think it's a blind spot LGR would agree with. At least, when the protests in the US were starting back in May / June, there was that period of time where kinda particularly with the tech enthusiasts I follow I was worried they were going to say something... objectionable. It was really heartening to see Clint and Tech Connections' Alec be vocal about their support for the protests. Both of them are also openly supportive of LGBT people, which... again, should be a low bar, but I'm happy that their enthusiastic personalities translate into being decent people "IRL."
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My favorite LGR videos are of his actual game reviews; particularly of the older variety. Recently, I've gone back to rewatch his Morrowind, Oblivion, and Quake reviews. There's a good amount of nostalgia there and Clint does those games justice. Feels like he is in his right element when he is critiquing games.
All the other stuff is just as nifty. I routinely enjoy the older tech videos and the unboxing because of the strange crap that Clint gets. Wonder what he actually does with most of it? Hopefully his house won't be features on an episode of Hoarders anytime soon.
All the other stuff is just as nifty. I routinely enjoy the older tech videos and the unboxing because of the strange crap that Clint gets. Wonder what he actually does with most of it? Hopefully his house won't be features on an episode of Hoarders anytime soon.
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I think the problem is historical, with the 80s and 90s systemic exclusion of women and PoC from computers, video games, and technology in general, both in terms of encouragement and in terms of access, that is rearing it's head now in terms of who is obsessed with retro tech enough to start a Youtube channel about it. Most of these retro channels are of people who lived through the eras they're discussing technology from, and had hands-on experiences and memories for a lot of it, if not necessarily everything they now cover. So they're coming from a place of nostalgia, and many seem like they were collecting and re-living some of this stuff before they even started a Youtube channel.
Take Clint's example of the "TI-99 playing Doom" video he made, where he needed an idea for a video, and he had literally just bought a TI-99 calculator at a thrift store, just because he thought it was neat, and initially didn't have any video ideas for. Women and PoC could certainly be interested in the history of tech, do the research, and present videos covering the history of tech, but they're going to be less likely to be of a certain age and era where they're going to buy a TI-99 calculator at a thrift store on a whim, or buy a new-old-stock 80s IBM PC just to have it.
Youtube certainly doesn't have any barriers to Women, PoC, ad/or LGBTQ from starting channels discussing retro tech or gaming, and they could toil away in obscurity until Youtube's algorithm grabs them and promotes them to people with similar interests. But I think there's just less of them out there with interest/nostalgia for this era, at least to the level of wanting to make their own Youtube channel dedicated to it.
There's some exceptions. The Crash Course Games series had Andre Meadows as host.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... JEOdobAplG
His personal "Black Nerd Comedy" channel though jumps around a lot of "nerdy" topics though, not just retro tech or gaming, although he did do a "90s vs Now" video that covered some old tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZrUTjwCMI
Crash Course's Computer Science had Carrie Anne Philbin as host:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9ulIgZBpdo
That course was more about computers and computer history in general though. Also, her personal "Geek Gurl Diaries" channel covers her various interests in Minecraft, Raspberry Pi, coding, etc, but I don't see a video on retro tech/gaming:
https://www.youtube.com/user/GeekGurlDiaries
I don't know for sure, but I suspect Crash Course may have been deliberately attempting to be more diverse when selecting courses for some of their topics.
I also found a "Youtube Original" series called "Retro tech" hosted by Marques Brownlee
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 10cRMpjgiY
There's iJustine, who covers tech and gaming, along with some other topics, but doesn't really delve into retro. She does pull our her original SNES in her SNES Classic video though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehdLNjD1x4E
There's also maybe other factors besides just level of interest though. It maybe helps if one lives in the suburbs, especially grew up in the suburbs, so there was space for old tech to be stored away instead of sold off/thrown out to make room for new tech. Many of these retro geeks look to have a dedicated room for their retro tech/games, maybe even a dedicated studio room, and surburban homes are more likely to be able to accomodate this. It likely also helps to have enough spare income to do all this collecting, which being a white male helps with, along with living in the suburbs (lower housing costs). There's also maybe the level of social shaming in regular life one may/may not experience with, say, having a room in your home dedicated to retro tech/games. I have no direct experience, but it seems like a woman might get a few more strange looks from her female friends for having such a level of interest, vs the reactions a man might get from a male friend, which likely varies from more accepting to even possibly jealousy.
As you wrote, none of this is the fault of Clint or the other popular retro tech/gaming Youtubers, who are merely sharing what they're interested in and receiving views from those that share their interests. It's more about the historic systemic discrimination in tech/gaming back when it was "new' and not retro, and how that translates to today.
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I love the history that LGR gives for some really odd obscure pieces of tech that were groundbreaking but didn't spark the public's imagination, or common everyday technology we take for granted today but that had a weird backstory that you had no idea about. Both types of stories, the history and the nuts and bolts, are enjoyable in their own way, and I don't think one is any better than the other. One of 8bit Guy's best series was the making of Planet X-2 and X-3, and that got really technical but it was also put into historical context of the two computer platforms that they were made for. If you watch the making of Planet X-2 alongside his historical retrospective of Commodore, it just makes it even better.Getting a like out of me and I haven't even watched it yet
I like 8-Bit Guy just a little more, because while LGR is great for learning about the commercial history of all these old machines, he gets down to the brass tacks on how those computers actually worked.
I feel like LGR is fun and entertaining, while I gain functional knowledge from 8-Bit Guy.
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OMG yes. I hate the YouTube effect. Shelby from TechTangents did a video on the Tandy WP-2 recently which is a totally worthless word processor that all it pretty much does is write letters and other documents, but now it's over $100. :facepalm:
MetalJesusRocks is so notorious for this that he and his crew have totally stopped mentioning prices now in their videos.
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One of my favorite retro computing Youtube pages is Adrian's Digital Basement https://www.youtube.com/user/craig1black . He's really good at restoring old damaged stuff, lots of Commodore and Apple gear.
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Oh boy.
Then make your own YouTube channel. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the YouTube channel.There's nothing stopping you from doing your own YouTube channel about stuff you love. The barrier to entry is ridiculously low, which is the whole value proposition of YouTube. LGR does a ton of content with PushingUpRoses who is a woman. There are plenty of other female gamer channels out there like SSSniperWolf, GirlfriendReviews, etc. Some of them even focus solely or mostly on retro games. iJustine is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, Apple-centric YouTubers. MKBHD is in a similar position: THE biggest general tech reviewer, and he's African-American. There's Flossy Carter, SoldierKnowsBest, Lamarr Wilson, UrAverageConsumer, and TechMeOut who are all also African-American. The last one is a woman. Kai from DigitalRevTV is the biggest pro-grade camera review YouTuber, and he's Asian. JimsReviewRoom and Dave Lee are both Asian-American and Asian-Canadian respectively.
This sounds a lot like a complaint from someone who hasn't spent much time on YouTube, or hasn't been paying attention. I'm only pointing out people of color because I'm a person of color myself. If I were LGBTQ, I'd be more aware of YouTubers who belong to those communities, but they must be out there. And unlike being part of a visible minority, all queer people don't wear it on their sleeve, because it may not be relevant to the content you do. Your skin color is not relevant to tech content, but it's hard to miss. I only learned VWestlife was gay because of a "It Gets Better" video he did that's completely out of place with his regular retro tech content.
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The guy talks about mostly PC stuff, which is what he used in the 90s. I don't see how you can claim he has a limited grasp of what it was like to use PCs in the 90s, when he's drawing almost entirely from personal experience. I recommend you watch his retrospective on the Need for Speed series. He tells some very personal stories that don't come across in his usual videos. This is actually personally my favourite LGR video because it's not just about tech, it's a lot about how video games made us feel emotionally as kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD4_BLk1AzE&t=1134s
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My favorite channel on Youtube.
Back in the late 80's and 90's, I was a perpetually broke 20 something and couldn't afford much of anything. I lusted over all these things, but only was able to actually buy a very few of them.
The 90's were a freak show of new ideas that somehow got funding to become products. No one really knew what would work out and what wouldn't. So many products were hyped up only to completely fail in the market. And then, something no one saw as a big new thing would take over. I loved it because you never knew what would come next.
Some of that inventiveness survives, but most of it died in the early 2000's. Thanks to Clint for showing off all those products I wanted to buy but never could.
Back in the late 80's and 90's, I was a perpetually broke 20 something and couldn't afford much of anything. I lusted over all these things, but only was able to actually buy a very few of them.
The 90's were a freak show of new ideas that somehow got funding to become products. No one really knew what would work out and what wouldn't. So many products were hyped up only to completely fail in the market. And then, something no one saw as a big new thing would take over. I loved it because you never knew what would come next.
Some of that inventiveness survives, but most of it died in the early 2000's. Thanks to Clint for showing off all those products I wanted to buy but never could.
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I'm a bit older than Clint (I'm 42), but the tech and gaming stuff he talks about in his retrospectives more or less mirrors my recollections of the time.
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Pretty much. Buying a game you've been drooling over for months in magazines just to find out your hardware couldn't play it happened to me many times. You'd just look at the box over and over again, read the manual cover to cover, memorizing it, maybe even sleeping with the box, then you finally buy a new graphics card. But can't get it to work and having to live with software rendering anyway?.. ugh! I'm sure those are scenarios that played out hundreds of thousands of times for 10-16 year old kids the world over.
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I think anyone's personal experience from the 80s/90s is going to be "limited" in the sense that they could've have personally owned/used ever piece of hardware, or played every game. And like hestermofet, I think some of Clint's personal experience is about things he didn't own back in the day, but desired, and he's now finally getting to experience. I get the impression Clint isn't doing "deep" research into every game/piece of hardware he reviews, so his videos are "limited" in that they're maybe not giving the "whole history" of the era, but he's still provides a valid and interesting viewpoint.
If you want a history of how games were developed, marketed, sold, and their cultural impact, Gaming Historian's videos are better for that. But they also tend to be long and take a lot of time to make, and don't include a guy geeking out while unboxing a new-in-box 1980's PC.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbvPS ... 21PG2k1UVg
Not every video/channel has to cater to everyone's tastes/preferences. That's what's great about Youtube: creators can find some success in videos that cater to a specific niche.
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Let me rephrase: the process of publishing videos to our youtube channel is entirely an API-driven one, controlled by the CNE CMS. I don't have login credentials for our youtube channel or any of the other video endpoints. That's what I mean when I said I don't have any way to fix this. I literally can't log in to do anything about it. I can pass feedback on to the group that runs the process
I'm a little reticent to further complicate the number of steps I need to go through to publish video stories to enable what is unfortunately a very edge use-case. As a workaround, let me offer this: every video that runs on the front page also shows up on https://video.meincmagazine.com with the CNE player. If you ever run into a video where the YT auto-captioning isn't meeting expectations, you can hit the video.meincmagazine.com URL and watch it there instead.
(Watching videos there will have the added benefit of allowing you to skip ads if you're a subscriber—another thing I can't do with the youtube embed.)
Understand the existing limitations. Definitely hope that feedback gets passed along. CNE isn't exactly a small corp. They should be able to manage.
I didn't make the original comment but I'm sure that I'm not the only D/deaf/Hard of Hearing person in your userbase (and yes captioning and good captioning at that definitely make a "material difference" when you're hearing through a cochlear implant).
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