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AmpleApricots
GEOS, nigga. Fully featured contemporary OS for Commodore machines. If you have a C128 and a way to load floppy images you can leap into the 1980s and run a word processor on your machine. (Was available for both C64 and 128, but if you have a 128 use that version)
Freezer carts advertised that you could "freeze" a GEOS instance, save that to floppy, then run that everytime instead of waiting for it to load. I'm not sure how well that would work since I've just used carts via emulator to freeze tapes, then output those to .WAV and from there to a C64.
We take a look at GEOS, a graphical operating system for the Commodore 64.You can read more about GEOS here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operat...
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I presume if you had JiffyDOS the floppy loading would be a lot less slow. There *is* a GEOS web browser which was what I was talking about.
In the C64 you have complete DMA via expansion port. You can basically instantly dump programs/an memory "image" into the memory of the unit, doesn't even take a hot second, yes on real hardware, or also read it. This is what these freezer modules basically did. I'm not really up on what's new with the c64 on the hobbyist front but I bet such modules exist new too and would be easier to make nowadays than ever before. The SuperCPU wasn't ever redone? I still have an 1541 Ultimate II, which also doubles as RAM expansion and could do such dumps. A default C64 is a bit slow for GEOS IMHO. Word processing barely could keep up with the speed of my typing.
My idea of actually using such an old computer in current year is based on the assumption that I don't want to only have a terminal for some ARM linux box because if I did that I might as well just connect the keyboard and screen directly to it and skip the middleman, so to speak. It's more about actually using software existing for the system and potentially writing new one for it while sometimes making use of the more powerful unix shell system. I personally don't think I could go much lower than an beefy 8-bitter like the Z180 or 16 bit and that's what I wanted to express. I think my preference would be the Amiga because the 68k is a reasonably powerful CPU, both the chipset and the OS were way ahead of their time and are still pleasant enough for modern sensibilities (silky smooth multitasking, especially if you put in enough FastRAM which is easy these days, lots of development tools) and there's also a lot of good application software for this system that'd still be comfortable to use today and as a killer feature many of these applications are very scriptable via AREXX and could be directly intertwined with the linux system. Same to a lesser degree (from my personal perspective) would go for the Mac. The 286 would just have it's raw power (although not much better than the 68k, really depends on the rating) and hardware extensibility and big software library going for it, DOS can be simple enough and has lots of software and good games but is also kind of a PITA if you want to develop. For terminal emulation you can get software for the Amiga which can even emulate TEK graphical terminals and for the internet you'd probably have to rely on console based stuff like lynx ran on the linux box, which works good enough with some mostly text-based websites, or you could go explore the Gopherspace which had a bit of a resurgence while still enjoying all the security and speed benefits a modern ARM linux system with recent kernel brings. I have such an A600 and to give an example, Cataclysm: DDA (dwarf fortress of zombie survival games) is kinda playable via serial, although the A600 is taxed when redrawing the screen because it's basically all the weaknesses of that system at once. As said earlier the serial port kinda sucks and the bandwidth for graphics isn't amazing in original/enhanced chipset Amigas and there's no special text modes.
An AGA based Amiga with fitting font, color depth and custom resolution would fare very well with everything text and graphics if you're into making pixel art or something and also has a few nice to use "office" like programs. This would already be a 32-bit system though. Such a system if a little expanded could also emulate every 68k Mac very well and run 68k Mac software. My A2000 has an 060 Accelerator and a graphics card and runs System 7 and some Mac software faster and better than the 040 Mac I have, you can also switch back and forth between AmigaOS and System 7 and both run concurrently, bit like a VM feel-wise. Even without graphics card with the AGA chipset and fast enough CPU you'd get a pretty decent emulated 68k Mac computer which would expand your software palette by quite a bit.
So yeah, I think the Amiga would be most versatile in such a scenario. It's just a thought experiment of course and you'd have to be a very dedicated autist to really live like this. There's also a lot of more exotic hardware for the old chipset Amiga like 24 bit framebuffers for true color picture editing (using the Amigas video capabilities to overlay a picture) or PC-emulation hardware (286s that get stuck into the 68k socket, 8088 as Trapdoor expansion) and while I have such hardware (even have some video toasters and an mpeg decoder card for VideoCDs) and like to play around with it, that stuff was mostly from a weird experimental time or for long forgotten usage scenarios and isn't all that practical or useful today.
Most of them (if their internals are accessible) are fine and easy enough to keep running even if kinda outdated technology wise, the only power supplies I wouldn't use anymore today are some PC ones from the 90s where everyone tried to build them as cheaply as possible, a few of them I'd even consider dangerous.
Then eventually they all decided to rip off that one layout with the two heatsinks and all the cabling in the lower right corner and that one is ok if the manufacturer didn't cheap out too much on the components, that is. My A2000's supply is a rare treat as it was manufactured in W. Germany (the W. was still important then) and still has a nice, heavy, fat iron core transformer wrapped in oil-impregnated paper which gives all those 1s and 0s a nice, warm nostalgic sound and deep bassy feeling. I'm kidding of course but you don't see that stuff anymore these days (or really after 1990) and there's no way I'm gonna rip that out as long as it's working fine and frankly if well maintained it should outlive me. The X2 cap was directly integrated into the power plug and not easy to find the proper replacement for but all that stuff was already overhauled by me a while ago. The power supply in an Amiga 2000 also supplies a highly stable and reliable 50 Hz tick signal derived from the frequency of the power net which gives a more accurate vsync and makes the timers of the CIAs more accurate too. The system can also generate these timings internally, it's just not as accurate. (nowadays you don't need this and this was mostly helpful if you needed to genlock for video stuff, the Amiga 2000 was fundementally built around analog video signal stuff and it shows a lot)
I'm not sure what the story for these power supplies is. Commodore Braunschweig here in Germany had it's own Amiga 2000 board design that was a bit fancier (4 layers instead of 2) and derived from the A1000 contrary to the common A2000 board you see around these days which is closer to the A500. I have two of these boards but I'm actually not sure if they were ever actually sold.
EDIT: tl;dr, old man writes lots of text about old electronics. I actually cut down the text a bit.
