I've stopped paying for new stuff once the cost of marginal expansion became too unreasonable for the marginal fun I would get out of it. That said, I have about 100+ CPUs, 100+ sound cards, 100+ video cards and likely 40+ motherboards so I am set for life 🤣

doublebuffer wrote on 2023-07-20, 12:59:

I'm new to this hobby and this is kinda harshly put but do you ever get a feeling that you're paying too much for what is essentially worthless junk?

No. I'm very patient and take low risks. Generally buy stuff at around 10-20% of their market price if they are in working or likely easily fixable condition and even less if it's questionable so it's not a huge loss if they are broken. That gives me a lot of desired hardware I bought in the 5-20€ range (Voodoo 1-2, SB32, SB2.0 Pro, Vortex2, GF256, Radeon DDR, etc). Downside is that it's unlikely I'll ever have some of the most valuable stuff like a Voodoo5 or a GUS unless by a huge stroke of luck it's part of a random build I buy for the case.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 10:29:

I'm very patient and take low risks. Generally buy stuff at around 10-20% of their market price if they are in working or likely easily fixable condition and even less if it's questionable so it's not a huge loss if they are broken. That gives me a lot of desired hardware I bought in the 5-20€ range (Voodoo 1-2, SB32, SB2.0 Pro, Vortex2, GF256, Radeon DDR, etc).

Same for me.

It also helps to shop locally instead of using eBay. Over the last couple of years, I was able to score a bunch of great deals by browsing local classifieds. If you're lucky, you may find an "old computer" for sale with some highly sought after components inside. That's how I got my Aureal Vortex 2.

Capcholo wrote on 2023-07-21, 07:00:

The bs reasoning that collectors somehow ruin a hobby come up on here like every week. They're just mad that people are not hand […]
Show full quote

The bs reasoning that collectors somehow ruin a hobby come up on here like every week. They're just mad that people are not handing out these for free or peanuts now so the good times of the 2000s are over. Those weren't "deals", people just wanted to get others to free up their basement from stuff that was a waste of space for them, without the hassle of throwing everything in the trash. Some people picked up on that, built a hobby around it and it was The Golden Age for them. Then as more people joined they got severe competition. That's when these people started screaming bloody hell because the thing they got free before suddenly got a price tag.
The very same thing happens in every hobby. That pos old car is worthless and dangerous so it's going to the junkyard. But someone's dad's uncle had that car growing up so now it's a treasure that needs parts. Too bad everyone else already trashed their cars so there are almost no spares available and the ones that are still around got to... cOllEcToRs!!! Devils. Those devils aren't even willing to sell their parts for peanuts! Superdevil born. Origin story.
Same with coin collecting. Someone got there first, supply got low, things got expensive. That 15th century golden piece went for $25000??? How dare you!!
Every.Single.Hobby.
Don't even get me started on money. Someone else has more disposable cash so now he's the ultradevil for buying something he'd like to possess? Like it's his fault he has access to better opportunities or lives in a country with more supply. Some of you people don't even realize just how cheap these things are on the other side of this globe, the things you buy for $100 they still get for $10 or free. The World isn't just a single country on Earth, you know.
I know, it sucks that you need to blow your monthly budget on something but what do you expect? Want The Golden Age back when people just handed you stuff? It's gone, friend. Not really, it just switched to more recent stuff nobody wants, like 200x era and newer. Some guy in 2060 is going to be pissed that the Celeron 336 they had as a kid now costs $50! DAM collectors! And Youtube+++, because someone never even invested in this whole thing now decided to start hoarding Celeron 336 processors just because old man Linus told him about it. A likely occurance. Or just the fact that other people joined the competition and you don't get free stuff anymore? The circle is closed.
Every week this topic.

Exactly my thoughts on that 😀

Capcholo wrote on 2023-07-21, 07:00:

The bs reasoning that collectors somehow ruin a hobby come up on here like every week. They're just mad that people are not hand […]
Show full quote

The bs reasoning that collectors somehow ruin a hobby come up on here like every week. They're just mad that people are not handing out these for free or peanuts now so the good times of the 2000s are over. Those weren't "deals", people just wanted to get others to free up their basement from stuff that was a waste of space for them, without the hassle of throwing everything in the trash. Some people picked up on that, built a hobby around it and it was The Golden Age for them. Then as more people joined they got severe competition. That's when these people started screaming bloody hell because the thing they got free before suddenly got a price tag.
The very same thing happens in every hobby. That pos old car is worthless and dangerous so it's going to the junkyard. But someone's dad's uncle had that car growing up so now it's a treasure that needs parts. Too bad everyone else already trashed their cars so there are almost no spares available and the ones that are still around got to... cOllEcToRs!!! Devils. Those devils aren't even willing to sell their parts for peanuts! Superdevil born. Origin story.
Same with coin collecting. Someone got there first, supply got low, things got expensive. That 15th century golden piece went for $25000??? How dare you!!
Every.Single.Hobby.
Don't even get me started on money. Someone else has more disposable cash so now he's the ultradevil for buying something he'd like to possess? Like it's his fault he has access to better opportunities or lives in a country with more supply. Some of you people don't even realize just how cheap these things are on the other side of this globe, the things you buy for $100 they still get for $10 or free. The World isn't just a single country on Earth, you know.
I know, it sucks that you need to blow your monthly budget on something but what do you expect? Want The Golden Age back when people just handed you stuff? It's gone, friend. Not really, it just switched to more recent stuff nobody wants, like 200x era and newer. Some guy in 2060 is going to be pissed that the Celeron 336 they had as a kid now costs $50! DAM collectors! And Youtube+++, because someone never even invested in this whole thing now decided to start hoarding Celeron 336 processors just because old man Linus told him about it. A likely occurance. Or just the fact that other people joined the competition and you don't get free stuff anymore? The circle is closed.
Every week this topic.

This gentleman right here, if you have the money go for it, instead emulate.
I do it for games and to record all of them on original hardware as a mean to document how old games behaved on original hardware and also as a personal diary of what I play day to day.

I pay what I feel I want to pay for something and if it's junk to other people I really don't care, I personally was once lectured on the joy of cigars and ultra expensive alcohol and I just couldn't care less, that was junk to me and way more harmful for one's personal health but I still wish for people to enjoy their hobbies.

Just enjoy what you can, it's a blessing just to have something you love in your life.

iraito wrote on 2023-07-21, 12:04:

I pay what I feel I want to pay for something and if it's junk to other people I really don't care, I personally was once lectured on the joy of cigars and ultra expensive alcohol and I just couldn't care less, that was junk to me and way more harmful for one's personal health but I still wish for people to enjoy their hobbies.

Just enjoy what you can, it's a blessing just to have something you love in your life.

That's so well said.

Brb, now convinced me to get that non-booting but posting "junk" PII for 30, probably just has one damaged component. Do I need it? No. Does it make me feel good when I get it running after a decades of neglect? Yes, very. No further rationalization needed, but could not get even a bottle of decent single malt whisky for that money.

Capcholo wrote on 2023-07-21, 07:00:

Some guy in 2060 is going to be pissed that the Celeron 336 they had as a kid now costs $50! DAM collectors! And Youtube+++, because someone never even invested in this whole thing now decided to start hoarding Celeron 336 processors just because old man Linus told him about it. A likely occurance. Or just the fact that other people joined the competition and you don't get free stuff anymore? The circle is closed.
Every week this topic.

Nah. Games as a service pretty much kills retro hardware collecting past a certain point. That's already in progress with the rule of digital distribution in the past 10 years rendering game libraries near useless on hardware and unsupported OS from the era the game comes from even if the game doesn't get updated (like Saints Row IV: Re-elected). Steam just pulls the plug on Windows 7 and 8 with the end of this year.

And nowdays we are transitioning into gaming becoming a subscription service. Then in 10 or so years gaming will start becoming a streaming service.

So you won't have much to run past your Windows 7 era hardware aside of whatever came to GoG.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 13:52:

Nah. Games as a service pretty much kills retro hardware collecting past a certain point.

That would also mean that collecting things is for the sake of using that thing and not something more simplistic: to get every piece of a certain series of something which is a very valid reason. We are back to collecting coins again, there are even books with premade space for every type of coins of a certain era in it. Hell, most of us had a sticker album with fighter jets, sports cars or dinosaurs and you had to collect them all. Kids with only a handful of stickers missing were the cool kids among the collectors and we spent serious cash on those stickers that you had to buy in a closed bag and get lucky to get the ones that you didn't have before. I still have those sticker albums and I still buy a missing sticker 30 years later if I ever see one for sale. Bought 70 stickers to find 3 that were missing in my ancient collection and it was awesome, even though it's completely useless now and doesn't have any meaning to anyone else but me.
Believe me, someone is going to start collecting all Ryzen-series CPUs in the very near future when they go out of fashion and it will mean just as much to them as it means a collection of AMD K5 processors to older people now.
But for the sake of the argument let's say that it's true and collecting post-7 hardware isn't going to happen and it mostly gets recycled. Btw people already predicted this happening with the hated P4 and people are still collecting them, especially the most exotic ones. We are talking about roughly 14-20 years old stuff so it's not that old at all compared to stuff from the 80's when it was a privilege to own a computer. How does this change when hardware that runs these games are basically the same, a big box of computer with the same basic and very collectible components?
I see one way of this slowing down: if manufacturers stopped releasing different models of computers every month and the whole World started producing a single model of 100% intergated box that's only purpose is to fetch data from company servers like a 70's terminal. But where is the profit in that? Companies want you to change you hardware often so they make different models you can choose from based on your income level. That generates revenue, funds R&D and helps pumping out more models of hardware for the masses. That hardware will become collectible eventually even if the service it runs is long gone. They'll build emulators or use pirated versions as they did before. Now that I mentioned people collect 70's terminals too even though their room sized mainframes are long gone now and mostly destroyed. So pre 80's hardware was like post 2020 hardware, all based on a remote service the public didn't have access to. So how does this change the hardware usage or collection habits of today's enthusiastists?

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-07-20, 18:02:

With the current prices, I don't think I would have ever gotten into the hobby.

I read that pretty often in such discussions, but I don't subscribe to this opinion.
Assuming we're not talking about the hobby of collecting 3dfx-hardware but building retro computers to play games from the 90's, then this is not expensive at all.
It seems that many only consider the prices of valuable hardware or the 'buy now'-prices on ebay. But it's easy to build a totally usable retro machine without having the feeling of 'paying too much'.

Capcholo wrote on 2023-07-21, 14:49:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 13:52:

Nah. Games as a service pretty much kills retro hardware collecting past a certain point.

That would also mean that collecting things is for the sake of using that thing and not something more simplistic: to get every piece of a certain series

Sure. But you have to agree, there is not much else to do with stickers and sports/pokémon/whatever cards than putting them in an album and sometimes browse through them. I still have my Dragon Ball cards back from elementary school Retro hardware however has a "practical" utility. Running retro software. A lot of us are in this hobby to do exactly that for one reason or another. I know I'd own absolutely zero retro hardware if I couldn't play my collection of retro games on them.

A couple of days ago I got myself a copy of Call of Duty: World at War. The disc was in great condition at a first glance, but it had a nasty scratch on second.

It came from someone's collection who claimed didn't do anything with it since he got it except displaying it on a shelf. It's still good for that, but with that scratch the game wouldn't install and it's worthless to me, so I returned it. Same way some people are perfectly fine with faulty/dead old hardware if it completes their collection in a display case, most of us however want working ones to use them every now and then.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 13:52:

Nah. Games as a service pretty much kills retro hardware collecting past a certain point. That's already in progress with the rule of digital distribution in the past 10 years rendering game libraries near useless on hardware and unsupported OS from the era the game comes from even if the game doesn't get updated (like Saints Row IV: Re-elected). Steam just pulls the plug on Windows 7 and 8 with the end of this year.

And nowdays we are transitioning into gaming becoming a subscription service. Then in 10 or so years gaming will start becoming a streaming service.

So you won't have much to run past your Windows 7 era hardware aside of whatever came to GoG.

i've been awaiting it too, games that are online and constantly updated - actually morphing into different games slowly - are a reality now

its the idea of games as a kind of streaming service that isn't there yet as you say (well, it is for browser games...)

should that happen and there be no alternative then the game, like an exclusively streaming show that cannot be recorded, ceases to be collectable or even playable once it stops streaming. and there will be no resistance to this idea, it'll just happen

add that AI may personalise games on the fly and be behind much of the dynamic content of a game then even the same game wont be the same game, like i said in some other post there will be less and less shared experience

but collections, even if the subject is at an end, will continue - people collect all kinds of things like stamps, phone cards and other items that no longer exist (or dont exist very much anyway).

HanSolo wrote on 2023-07-21, 14:50:

I read that pretty often in such discussions, but I don't subscribe to this opinion.
Assuming we're not talking about the hobby of collecting 3dfx-hardware but building retro computers to play games from the 90's, then this is not expensive at all.
It seems that many only consider the prices of valuable hardware or the 'buy now'-prices on ebay. But it's easy to build a totally usable retro machine without having the feeling of 'paying too much'.

Well, I was talking about myself and my own interests. "Building a usable machine to play old games" was never part of it really, as I've been able to do that since 2001-2002 when I got an MMX-200 Gateway PC as a "dedicated MS-DOS PC". That thing wasn't even 5 years old and it was retired from my brother's workplace, so I got it for free. And it still lives to this day, even though I don't use it much as I have more interesting options for that now.

What I am saying is that if I got interested in tinkering with old PC hardware today and the only option within my price range was some Socket 478 thing or equivalent I'd just say "nah". Much like why I don't get into Amiga stuff despite finding it interesting, it's just out of what I consider acceptable, so I don't buy it. Simple as that.

Also, with many new people getting into the hobby there are also many getting out, they have barely any interest anymore and they see their collection or whatever as some kind of retirement fund so they push for prices to get higher and higher. Which is fine for them, but I try not to feed this cycle if possible.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 15:13:

Sure. But you have to agree, there is not much else to do with stickers and sports/pokémon/whatever cards than putting them in an album and sometimes browse through them. I still have my Dragon Ball cards back from elementary school Retro hardware however has a "practical" utility. Running retro software. A lot of us are in this hobby to do exactly that for one reason or another. I know I'd own absolutely zero retro hardware if I couldn't play my collection of retro games on them.

100% agree, most collections are useless if we take the "usefulness as a working unit" component away. Collecting ancient coins is pointless because I can't buy snacks for it in Tesco or Walmart. People still collect them for many different reasons though, even series that likely won't ever appreciate in value. Did you know there are people out there collecting LGA775 processors? Not just different models, every single models with different production codes ever released, that's like 300 different processors. All just for the sake of having a complete collection. This desire won't ever change unless computers become uniform and 100% integrated.

I think this society is obsessed with usefulness, watching a sport game is useless, reading a novel is useless, painting, playing with your kids, loving another person etc.
But it enriches a part of you that doesn't conform to the mechanical nature of today's society, those useless acts are the most important part of us being humans, i guess the only way to stop these threads is simply to embrace this concept, there's more to life than usefulness, waaaaaay more.

Capcholo wrote on 2023-07-22, 07:41:

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-21, 15:13:

Sure. But you have to agree, there is not much else to do with stickers and sports/pokémon/whatever cards than putting them in an album and sometimes browse through them. I still have my Dragon Ball cards back from elementary school Retro hardware however has a "practical" utility. Running retro software. A lot of us are in this hobby to do exactly that for one reason or another. I know I'd own absolutely zero retro hardware if I couldn't play my collection of retro games on them.

100% agree, most collections are useless if we take the "usefulness as a working unit" component away. Collecting ancient coins is pointless because I can't buy snacks for it in Tesco or Walmart. People still collect them for many different reasons though, even series that likely won't ever appreciate in value. Did you know there are people out there collecting LGA775 processors? Not just different models, every single models with different production codes ever released, that's like 300 different processors. All just for the sake of having a complete collection. This desire won't ever change unless computers become uniform and 100% integrated.

Sure, but if we take practical utility out of hardware collection, the number of people interested in drops down to a fraction. This whole community on Vogons is about sharing experiences of using obsolete hardware running obsolete software. There are the odd guy here and there who want to collect one of each Voodoo cards or Slot-1 processor, but as things stand now, they are the exception, not the norm.

Providing entertainment is a kind of utility.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-07-22, 14:18:

Providing entertainment is a kind of utility.

It's more of a philosophical issue, something useful has to bring you something concrete as a result, personal enrichment or interellational one doesn't do that at least from a positivistic point of view.
You have to start thinking in a metaphysical manner to see the usefulness in entertainment or in any act that doesn't have a direct material correlation.

doublebuffer wrote on 2023-07-20, 12:59:

I'm new to this hobby and this is kinda harshly put but do you ever get a feeling that you're paying too much for what is essentially worthless junk? I don't pay ebay prices but often I'm still thinking whether there is any sense in hoarding old hardware, but on the other hand it's fun to tinker with and re-live some experiences of the childhood and try out different things that were out of reach back then, not to mention how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel to watch an old computer still boot up. Yet sometimes I have this nagging feeling now that I am getting my 5th or 6th system that needs restoration, that maybe I have gone overboard already. Do you know this feel or should I just stop worrying and learn to love the retro?

I very rarely pay ebay prices for retro gear. In my years of collecting I've only done it twice, on things I really wanted to own and use - a Cyrix MediaGX board (new in box) and a Roland SC55mk2 - and the reasoning behind it was actually using this hardware close to daily instead of putting it on a shelf or stuffing it in a box someware to occasionally play with or just say "oh I have one of those".

....even so things did not exactly go as planned - I don't use the SC55 daily since I only have time to fire up my retro gaming rigs once or twice a week - but when I do you can bet that SC55 gets used - and the MediaGX system has been sitting on a shelf for months due to limited space and actually having better rigs to play around with in the little time I can afford to dedicate to this hobby 🙁 Payed 100$ for the SC55 (shipped) and 55$ for the ECS MediaGX board.

There's one more piece of retro-gear I'd pay close to fleabay prices for - and that's a dual socket A motherboard complete with a pair of Athlon MPs - something I found recently, but was unable to afford at that moment (or even now)

Most of the time I look over classifieds for ads of people selling cheap unidentified or labeled as old and useless or e-waste *stuff. Sometimes there's something useful. Rarely something interesting. Most of the time I go to recycling centers. Stuff as old as XT clas computers and parts can still be had there, paying by KG for them - and sometimes they even work. Other times they're repairable, but lately 50% of the stuff I bring home is beyond my ability to repair. Still worth the gamble considering how cheap they are and how fun it is to scour mounts of old computers for any parts or complete systems I want.

This morning I went HDD hunting. Picked up 9 disk drives - two 1.2gb WD, 3 Seagate in 3,2GB, 4GB and 6.4GB capacities, and the rest are 8, 10gb and 13gb seagate and fujitsu drives, all plucked directly form PC cases. Tested 5 so far and they work well. Out of the 5 one has a couple of bad blocks, but I'm gonna let HDD regenarator have a go at it. Not bad for 20 euro if you ask me.

The rest of my stuff has been acquired from institutions dumping old hardware, donations from friends and family and trading with other collectors.

iraito wrote on 2023-07-22, 08:02:

I think this society is obsessed with usefulness, watching a sport game is useless, reading a novel is useless, painting, playing with your kids, loving another person etc.
But it enriches a part of you that doesn't conform to the mechanical nature of today's society, those useless acts are the most important part of us being humans, i guess the only way to stop these threads is simply to embrace this concept, there's more to life than usefulness, waaaaaay more.

well said

HanSolo wrote on 2023-07-21, 14:50:

I read that pretty often in such discussions, but I don't subscribe to this opinion. Assuming we're not talking about the hobby […]
Show full quote

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-07-20, 18:02:

With the current prices, I don't think I would have ever gotten into the hobby.

I read that pretty often in such discussions, but I don't subscribe to this opinion.
Assuming we're not talking about the hobby of collecting 3dfx-hardware but building retro computers to play games from the 90's, then this is not expensive at all.
It seems that many only consider the prices of valuable hardware or the 'buy now'-prices on ebay. But it's easy to build a totally usable retro machine without having the feeling of 'paying too much'.

If you have the technical know-how to build and configure and old gaming PC it is indeed trivial, but for the Average Joe who just has a flight of fancy and wants to play that one game he spent a summer on back in grade school it may not be that easy. Most flock to fleabay and alike after finding out the old game they downloaded will not run on modern hardware. I've sold many a few of these machines to such people - who can't or don't want to make the effort of hunting down parts, software, media and then read tutorials on how to setup such systems.

Only a couple of days ago I setup a retro gaming PC for my brother-in-law. He wanted to play Eye of the Beholder, Ultima V and a few other dos and some widows XP era games, but he either couldn't get them running on a modern PC or - his words not mine: "The game just doesn't look right". So I set him up with an LGA775 PC made from parts I had lying around. A pentium dual core e6600, 4GB of ram, a 250GB SATA HDD, a working optical drive (he has quite the collection of repacked bargain bin CDs and DVDs with old games he never even opened) and a Radeon 3850, all packed into a brand new desktop form factor ATX case (CM Elite 361) plus a new old stock Dell 17" CRT monitor. It runs windows XP. All dos games are running trough DOSBOX, and the PC is connected to the internet so he can download offline installers for his GOG collection. Games like Baldur's Gate, Sacrifice and so on run great on XP and look the part on that CRT monitor.

Like you said, a really cheap PC, but it took me a couple of days to build and setup.

iraito wrote on 2023-07-22, 08:02:

I think this society is obsessed with usefulness, watching a sport game is useless, reading a novel is useless, painting, playing with your kids, loving another person etc.
But it enriches a part of you that doesn't conform to the mechanical nature of today's society, those useless acts are the most important part of us being humans, i guess the only way to stop these threads is simply to embrace this concept, there's more to life than usefulness, waaaaaay more.

I think your concept of what's useful and what usefulness is is very or should I say overly limited.
You list a number of activities, brand them as useless, then proceed to explain why they are useful meanwhile keep denying their usefulness.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-07-22, 17:30:

iraito wrote on 2023-07-22, 08:02:

I think this society is obsessed with usefulness, watching a sport game is useless, reading a novel is useless, painting, playing with your kids, loving another person etc.
But it enriches a part of you that doesn't conform to the mechanical nature of today's society, those useless acts are the most important part of us being humans, i guess the only way to stop these threads is simply to embrace this concept, there's more to life than usefulness, waaaaaay more.

I think your concept of what's useful and what usefulness is is very or should I say overly limited.
You list a number of activities, brand them as useless, then proceed to explain why they are useful meanwhile keep denying their usefulness.

I'm using epistemology, I'm actually specifying the spheres of interests and further explaining the connection they have with each other.
Trust me if anything I'm expanding on concepts that are usually superficially discussed in a really narrow way but relativistically, which makes the discussion appear complex but ends up being mostly sophistic when you get to the essence of it.