RacoonRider wrote:

By the way, I actually find myself and other retro hardware aficionados more competent hardware-wise than most of the people whos job was to build computers back in the day. They were restricted by company policies, lack of internet, etc. I know a guy didn't know there were Tualatin Pentiums, he thought that intel jumped from Coppermine straight to P4 and Tualatin CPUs were but odd-ball Celerons meant to suck last remaingng $ from obsolete Socket370 platform. Guess why? They never bought a P3 Tully! Not to mention AMD, which corporate clients generally ignored.

Strangely, I have had some of the same people asking/commenting about/on hardware from the late 90's.
There was this guy, who did not know that V2 can be set up as SLI. He thought the connector was for testing purpouse only.
Yeah... A lot of people just use DosBox, because they want to play the game, and don't give a shit on the hardware.
Oh the horror, when I see people replying that "Why not just use DosBox" when I in reality are asking if they have hardware
that they do not use and are about to throw out. And well... Typically Danish... Always presuming more horsepower equals more joy.

People just do not understand the joy we get from old hardware (no matter what the reason are), and presume that emulation is the answer to all.
Don't try to understand me, just let me do my thing, is my typically answer to that.

I originally posted something on this topic in a FB group I belong to but its relevant to this topic so I'll condense and repost it

"Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir here but...I'm one of those guys that has far to many computers. I have a computer for every era and many times more then one. its cumbersome, archaic and takes up far to much space. When people see my collection I get mixed views. some people think its great but many others just scratch their heads, ask "why?" and then tell me to "just use DOSBox". the funny thing is This doesn't seem to happen to other collectors of antiques or outdated technology. Vinyl record collectors, restorers of old automobiles or even video game console collectors as far as I know do not contend with this kind of attitude on such a regular basis. I'm sure a guy restoring an old model T in his garage isn't always told by his peers to "just get a Civic". maybe its cliche to say it but I guess in the end a lot of people just "don't get it". A model T and a Honda Civic both do the same thing, they get you from point A to point B. Truth be told though a Civic will probably get you there faster, more reliably and far more comfortably with nice temperature control, radio and new suspension but theres something it cant do and neither can DOSbox and that is create the feeling of accomplishment and nostalgia, it cant create that intangible connection to the past. There's nothing that quite takes me back then going into the computer corner at night, firing up the 4.77mhz XT and playing some Wizardry. Sure some concessions are made in the name of convenience. I use a CF card hard drive and the Wizardry archives versions to play reliably off the hard drive but overall the experience is in tact, at least visually. I lose the sounds of the floppy drive spinning up whenever a monster is encounters but I feel this is an acceptable and reasonable sacrifice. sitting there with that beige block in front of me staring into the CGA monitor and experiencing the delay between screens as the 4.77mhz 8088 draws each screen. For a few hours I'm 10 again. No bills, no job, just me and my game and that feeling is absolutely priceless. It's also a feeling I could never get sitting at my Windows 7 machine looking at a widescreen LCD monitor and running DOSBox.

It's not so much people have ever told me not to collect say, retro pc's it's that they just don't understand why I would if Dosbox. exists. Ironically these same people have all kind of old retro game consoles. In another twist of irony its mostly the people I actually end up buying these machines off of that have no idea why I would be shelling over $20 for their 80's or 90's "piece of trash" that they put on Craigslist. One guy I ended up going into a full blown conversation with for almost an hour about why I collect old PC's. He obviously wasn't a PC guy but even he asked me why I don't just emulate or use a virtual machine. He didn't seem to get it until I made the vinyl analogy then it was like a light went on. he ended up just giving me the g3 Imac and telling me to enjoy it."

It's all been said before but I agree
I enjoy the process of restoring something.
I enjoy finally owning hardware I always wanted at a fraction of the cost.
New PC's/Emulators just don't have the character/sole yet of old hardware
Plus an extra bonus is I like jumping straight to the best. Hindsite is 20/20 and no real need to experiment. say a certain video card doesn't like certain systems or games? doesn't matter it's already documented and better alternates suggested. Not like currant systems where its constant upgrades (although this has slowed down in recent years)

Actually, I started collecting old game consoles and games for them.. To be honest, I've been thinning out the herd so to speak by narrowing down the entire collection to old the games/ specific systems I play.

The retro PC thing is a lot more compelling as I have to actually make the hardware work before I can play the games, midi files, etc. It's added a dimension that I didn't have just collecting N64 or SNES, or SEGA stuff.

It's similar to what others have already said, to me it's not just about using the rigs, it's even more about actually building it.
I've even built computers I barely ever used after the project was finished.

It's also part curiosity, thinking how a build is best balanced, what parts to use and what software, what compromises I decide to make.

Whenever I climb up into my attic, I still get that "wow!"-feeling, I still think it's awesome. Even though I don't actually build computers these days, I still like having the means available at my fingertips (provided the parts haven't spontaneously died in the mean time).

I still think it's awesome. Yes, it takes up a lot of space, but most of it is confined to the attic and I got plenty of room and don't actually need more room, so I'm content 😀

If you find it fun and enjoyable, then why the hell not? It's your life, do as you please with it 😀

It's kinda like electronic 3D-lego with no rules whatsoever except for the limits of your imagination (and perhaps your wallet 😜 )

There aren't too many games that won't run in DOSBox or with some effort on a modern system. However, there are enough that owning a legacy PC still makes sense. Sometimes, the old games just play better on the hardware they were designed for. GLIDE is a good example of this, but I don't maintain a DOS legacy PC because there just isn't much point. DOSBox compatibility is so good that the real hardware is just completely unnecessary anymore.

Like some others, I have way too many legacy systems that I've put together over the past decade. At some point, I got a bit carried away with this hobby. I've actually been thinking of giving away a few of my systems.

Phil had a really great idea about building one PC to rule them all. Personally, I think that DOSBox makes pre-Win9x support unnecesary so I would choose something like this instead:

Slot 1 Intel
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP Primary Graphics
SB AWE64

A system like that would cover all bases for any games that won't run in DOSBox or on another modern system. The Slot 1 motherboard gives you good flexibility in CPU choices as well. It's a cheap and easy build too.

Edit: I also keep my legacy PCs around for my legacy CH Products HOTAS. Gameport stuff just hasn't been supported in over a decade, so if you like it you need a legacy PC to use it.

I'm actually building a pentium 4 right now with an agp GeForce4 mx460 & pci voodoo3 3000, so I can get both glide and decent performance on non-glide early 00s games (I think the mx460 should be easily double the performance of the v3 and have more modern features like 32bit color?).

I think this should cover me till about ~2003-2004 era games, and is about as fast of a win98 build as you can get. Both of these cards are also passive cooled, and I plan on running a mobile pentium 4-m in speedstep mode (undervolted @ 1.2ghz), so I should get decent power consumption / noise.

There are win98 drivers up to the series 6 GeForce cards but I suspect any games where that would make a difference would work fine on win7 and modern machines.

soviet conscript wrote:

*snip*

That was really well written, and has been my experience so far as well!

Tetrium wrote:

It's similar to what others have already said, to me it's not just about using the rigs, it's even more about actually building it. I've even built computers I barely ever used after the project was finished.

So true.

maybe it's like working on old cars. Years spent fiddling, researching, planning, building and correcting - for something you might take out on the road for a quick spin only every once in a while on a sunny day..

Oldbitcollector wrote:

hey there are guys who build model air-planes, then after they are built, they put them on display and buy another kit. No one questions that.. 😀 (or maybe they do... 😀

🤣. it's a hobby, just like aeromodelismo, and you can even play games on them, so it's win-win.

Well,I love old hardware, it's just my personal hobby...
But, I don't want to end up with 10 old computers, just to emulate a perfect status of each year of games, so I ended up with two old computers, 1st, a commodore 64, the second one, a 1998 machine.
The first one, I think I did a bad move, I got a NTSC model, where 60% of the games only run in PAL models 🙁, plus there're almost none itens for it, I only have the C64 and that's it, no media to transfer data, just like the old days... (I wish I had some SD2IEC, but the cost to get it is too high D: )

And then, it came the second computer, it was a 64mb Pentium mmx, and I had Lucky with the motherboard, I just wanted a socket 7 with agp support, and I ended up with a via mvp3, 1mb l2 cache, agp 2x and support to edo and sdram *__*, I upgraded it to 128mb sdram and an ati radeon 7200, but the driver was too slow for a Pentium mmx, so I was forced to get another gpu, the best/cheaper gpu that I found was the voodoo 3 agp, and it worked fine (I wanted an agp gpu, also, I didn't wanted a voodoo 2 or 1, because there wasnt any of these selling here and I would need another gpu for 2D).
And then the sound card, it was a funny search, I wanted an isa sound card, but I wanted the BEST one, but, limited to what's being sold here. I almost bought an sound blaster awe64, but one day I found a weird card that I never heard about it, the game theater 64, from the reviews, it was even better than a awe64, there was full ms-dos support, 40mips processor xD, 4mb onboard and expandable to 16mb edo memory...

Doing a resume: I ended up with a K6-III+ 400MHz, 128mb ram, new modified bios, 80gb HDD, voodoo 3, 14" monitor, game theater 64 and a cool generic at case with a power on off swith and the processor clock led.

This adventure also gave me alot of knowledge about how to apply a termal paste, make a computer from zero, replace a hardware chip (bios) and even making a usb cable adaptor to give energy the processor led the required energy (the motherboard unfortunately has no support to processor led 🙁

Me? Testing. It's fun making game assets and then seeing them looking proper on a Voodoo or a PCX2. It's a magical feeling.

tametick wrote:

Anyone else questioning the point of retrorigs?

Heck no! I just got into this hobby a month or two ago and I'm really enjoying it. My only regret is not getting into it sooner. It seems like hardware and software was a lot cheaper a few years ago.

Yeah I have begun to question the whole thing too, I mean I like doing it but it really serves no point and looking at piles of disused computers in my storage room makes me very unhappy. I'm starting to sell off my really old 1980's computers because I (having been born in 1990) don't feel the same fondness for them that I feel for my 1990's Packard Bells and other machines. Also the 80's computers tend to be the ones dominating all the space. 🤣 (Although now the Macintoshes are starting to get there too.)

Also the rise in popularity and thereby prices is really starting to turn me off the whole thing, I don't want to sound hipsterish but now that it's a recognized popular hobby to collect old games, computers and consoles I really don't care for it anymore. Some younger kids I know that have now gotten into the hobby spend ridiculous amounts of time in the local thrift stores and junk drop offs, I simply cannot compete so I am choosing not to and instead just walk away from it. Now that doesn't mean I'm getting rid of everything, quite the contrary I am still going to hold onto my 90's machines like I said before but I'm definitely shrinking my collection down and I'm probably going to stop buying new hardware and games.

The upshot of this is I'll have money for things that matter like putting a muffler on my car. 😜

tametick wrote:

"Anyone else questioning the point of retrorigs?"

no.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Also the rise in popularity and thereby prices is really starting to turn me off the whole thing, I don't want to sound hipsterish but now that it's a recognized popular hobby to collect old games, computers and consoles I really don't care for it anymore.

It may have become a bit of a fad, but as soon as those who aren't true believers realise they aren't willing to put in the time and effort, this will leave the genuine enthusiasts. Hopefully then process will crash again until the next time it becomes popular. It just means a hiatus from buying stuff for those in it for the long game.

Only problem is that more and more items are going to the recyclers every day which is only making them now scarce. What this means is that we have to get smarter about how we source stuff - buying on eBay should be a last gasp option.

Well there's new retro gear being added to the market all the time: every year new hardware becomes >10 years old (or whatever your definition for retro is) :p

In a decade your modern PC will be a retro system 😀

Not me. The primary use of my P3 DOS6/WIN98 system is older racing games that won't play (well) on the dedicated PC I have for sim racing. That PC has three monitors and a 900° force feedback steering wheel. I am also thinking about building a decent WinXP system to handle some of the racing titles that are from the 1998-2004 era. Viper Racing is a specific example; it will no longer run on the current system due to the GTX 980 having 4GB VRAM.

tametick wrote:

Well there's new retro gear being added to the market all the time: every year new hardware becomes >10 years old (or whatever your definition for retro is) :p

In a decade your modern PC will be a retro system 😀

I guess I'm taking mainly pre- Pentium era because not all homes had computers back then (not that all do now but you know what I mean). In 1990 a 16MHz system was entry level and by 1999 we had 1GHz PIIIs. I don't believe any decade will match the 90s for diversity of component manufacturers, variety of hardware options (ISA, EISA, MCA, VLB, PCI) or sheer progress. And don't forget all the proprietary technologies because these are the kinds of things that will be lost to time unless people take an interest.

I think in a decade people will look at early android/ios the same way, these are still advancing rapidly