CLCTN · TYPE MANIFEST · RETRO COMPUTER · SEPTEMBER 2026
64K · THE WORKSHOP
The first type that needs you more than you need it.
A record sitting in a sleeve for thirty years is a record. A machine sitting in a loft for thirty years is a box of leaking chemistry that used to be a machine. Retro computers are the first type where owning is a job, and where the collection's condition degrades on a clock whether anyone touches it or not. They are also the first type whose entire universe — every model ever sold — fits in the app bundle.
Written against vinyl.yml as the reference manifest, with wine.yml as the precedent for a type that moves with the calendar. Section 04 lists only the rows that differ.
01 · FOUR THINGS A MACHINE BREAKS
Two of these are new schema; two are things wine already asked for, which is the useful signal. A primitive that a second type wants was the right primitive.
{{ b.b }}
WHAT IT NEEDS
{{ b.needs }}
02 · THE SERVICE CLOCK — THE REASON TO BUILD THIS TYPE
Wine asked what should I open tonight. A machine asks the harder version: which of my forty computers is quietly destroying itself right now, and which one should I open this weekend? Nobody can hold that in their head, and the answer is almost never the machine you were thinking about.
Four consumables, four different lifespans, one derived state each. Slide the build year and the last service in Tweaks. Note what happens to a well-kept 1985 machine versus a never-opened 1992 one — the older machine is the safer one, which is the whole argument for the feature.
Amiga 500
Rev 6A board · PAL · {{ serviceLabel }}
{{ builtLabel }}
CONSUMABLE
ELAPSED AGAINST EXPECTED LIFE · THE TICK IS THE DUE DATE
STATE
THE MACHINE RIGHT NOW
{{ statusName }}
{{ statusNote }}
THE DERIVED FIELD
{{ derivedCode }}
03 · RETRO-COMPUTER.YML
Two keys are new to the schema, two are wine's keys reused, and the rest is existing primitives doing ordinary jobs. Marked up in section 06.
RESOURCES/TYPES/RETRO-COMPUTER.YML
TYPE 16
{{ manifestYaml }}
04 · VINYL → RETRO COMPUTER, WHERE THEY DIVERGE
Only the rows that differ. The deep parallel is worth naming first: both types split one product name into many collectable objects — vinyl on pressing, machines on board revision and region — and in both hobbies the split is the entire expertise.
KEY
VINYL
RETRO COMPUTER
WHY
{{ d.key }}
{{ d.vinyl }}
{{ d.rc }}
{{ d.why }}
05 · A MACHINE IS A SYSTEM, NOT AN OBJECT
Nobody owns a bare computer. They own a computer, a monitor, two drives, a RAM expansion inside the case, a mouse, and a shelf of software — and three of those are individually valuable, individually tradable, and individually collected. This is the first type whose objects contain other objects, and getting it wrong means either a collection of orphaned cables or a value figure that counts the same expansion twice.
THE CONSEQUENCE WORTH ARGUING ABOUT
Composition is a generic capability wearing a retro-computer costume. A camera has lenses, a synth has a flight case and an expansion card, a car has a set of original wheels in the garage. Build it here and four future types get it for nothing — but build it badly here and every one of them inherits the mistake. The narrow version is the safe one: a part belongs to exactly one parent, keeps its own value, and the parent shows a combined figure it never owns. No trees, no parts of parts, not yet.
06 · IDENTIFICATION — THE ONE TYPE THAT FITS IN THE BUNDLE
CAPTURE STRATEGY
Recognition against a closed set.
Vinyl matches against millions of releases and needs a network. Wine matches against nothing and falls back to transcription. Retro computers sit in the happy middle nobody expected: the number of home computer models ever mass-produced is in the low thousands — a finite, closed, historically complete list that stopped growing in about 1995.
That list ships in the bundle. Every machine also has a case silhouette designed to be recognisable from across a room — a wedge, a breadbin, a slab in a specific beige — which is close to the ideal input for on-device visual matching. Point the camera at a machine on a market table with no signal and get a name, a year and a price band.
The underside label carries the model and the serial, and most manufacturers encoded the manufacturing week and year into that serial. One photo of the bottom of a machine therefore yields the model, the region and the build date — which is exactly the three fields the service clock needs, and the only type where a photo can date the object itself.
07 · STILL OPEN