Shadzilla wrote on 2024-02-15, 08:41:Spoken like a true enthusiast! […]
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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-15, 02:25:
Is there any reason to not just keep all three systems?
Spoken like a true enthusiast!
If there's one thing I've learned after trying to get hold of old parts again, it's don't get rid of anything. Ever. Well maybe not quite that extreme. But the point is, having spare parts can come in handy, and getting these parts again down the road if you need them or change your mind is only going to become harder.
So if you have the space, keep all the things!
Or, at least, trying to assess the retro potential of something before tossing it. I've gotten rid of a lot of hardware over the years, and most of it... I don't regret that much... but there are certainly a few things that I now kick myself for having gotten rid of. Even little things like, say, PATA cables and optical drives.
The thing about PC world is that it's not very clear contemporaneously what the 'last' generation to do some valuable retro thing is. Did anybody care in 2003 when buying it or in 2008 when tossing it whether sound card X had good DOS support and sound card Y was a paperweight in DOS? Probably not... and then you come here and start having regrets.
(Or, you could be like my friend who had a last-generation 1GHz PowerBook G4, an LGA775 i865 board, though not one of the best ones, and an Ivy Bridge desktop. The first two got tossed well over a decade ago; as for his Ivy Bridge desktop, well, I bought it from him to turn into a dual boot retro XP system 😀).
Certainly, to get back to the OP's quandry, I think getting rid of anything pre-C2D, or at least pre-P4, is risky. Shrinking supply of Pentium MMX and Pentium III parts...