Finding parts for cheap are part of the fun for me.
I rarely had to pay the full price for rare parts. But I like to look at blurry pictures and mislabeled local ads to find a gem.

I always have been (and still be) a pc gamer but i only had (and still have) crappy / budget systems. I like to collect and build dream machines I could not afford back then.

I have never really wanted a Voodoo 5 like a 5500 now or when they came out, had a Geforce 256 at the time and ws good enough.
So no I am not in the camp of buying something super expensive to either replace something I had decades ago or get now for the fun of it.
There are some serious collectors here who do that type thing. If I was rich I might but maybe not 😀
Buying cheap old parts or finding them as dumpster finds is always fun !!

Only you can say whether it needs to be cheap to be fun for you. I like cheap, as, I expect, most do, but I have been known to pay high prices for high end kit that's only going to increase in price, because high end for any particular era is also fun, and because at the time of purchase I had nothing I needed more 😀

still listening to that music ?

It's always a balancing act between what you want (a lot) and what you can find and/or are prepared to pay.

I must say I've had by far the most satisfaction when I found things cheaply or completely free that were both desired by me, sought-after in general and expensive. Despite not actually liking any of the supported games, the time I found a bashed-up beige case by our local rubbish bins containing a working Apocalypse 3Dx (Nec PowerVR PCX2) ranks highly, as did all the stuff in the EUR 50 haul of early 1990s stuff that filled up my car completely. That's not to say I don't appreciate the things I actually paid good money for (GUS Classic, Roland SC-55MT, IBM Model F Battleship keyboard...), but I get more joy from the great finds than from the big buys.

This is totally disconnected from whatever I do with contemporary hardware, where I stay well behind the bleeding edge, buy hand-me-down GPUs from my F1 racing colleague and upgrade CPU once every 10 years or so when RAM capacity of motherboard becomes an issue. In fact, my children wanting to upgrade their hand-me-downs is the main driver for this cycle 😉

Yeah its a mixed bag for me too , I always enjoyed finding hardware abandoned on the side of the road because you never knew what exciting things you would find , if it wasn't something super special you could at least grab the screwdriver you took with you and take out the floppy driver and other bits you wanted.

Sometimes you'd get the occasional jackpot where someone would throw out a vlb system or a high end sony trinitron monitor. Overall the hobby felt more free back then. You just did what you want and didn't care as much about risking the hardware or experimenting , and mistakes were cheap. But now the hobby feels alot more stressful because for example if your rare x piece of hardware fails then that's 200 hundred dollars down the drain. Or you have to wait a long time to get another good deal to have your setup back to working again.

I do like the higher end stuff I've bought as well though I use my Mt32 and Voodoo cards alot. And I'm glad I got them , because they do improve the experience when games support them. With all the available info now via vogons or YouTube channels like LGR documenting it you can make very curated specific systems and obsses about owning these very cool historical relics. And on the flip side its encouraged less people to scrap hardware and to instead throw them on ebay which is good for preservation.

As for voodoo 5s and stuff and its not always the case but usually high end niche hardware goes for exorbitant amounts. (Adlib Gold , Voodoo 5 , IBM Music Feature Card , Gravis Ultrasound) , but I guess its the same with other hobbies with exclusive items with low quantities, it seems to generate a frenzy over price.

I try not to tie prices to enjoyment. It's really more about what the specific piece of hardware is and what sort of usage I'm going to get out of it.

I also consider that on balance things are still cheaper than they would have been back in their hey-day.

For example, a $3000 high-end gaming rig back in 1999 is about the equivalent of $5500 today. Even spending $1000 today on that same rig, it's still 1/5th of what it would have originally cost.

I've come to realize that patience really pays off. When I want something specific, I put up an eBay search with email notifications and that pops up every time something new comes up.

For example: I wanted a LiveDrive front panel for my SoundBlaster, they were going for ~100€ or more. This week, I got one for 30, because I was quick and the seller didn't know what he had. Took me 6 months to find that, though.

Back when most of the hardware was still extremely cheap, I bought too much of it anyway, so it's fine most of the time. Prevents me from hoarding stuff.

Sometimes it's frustrating though, not gonna lie. Old GeForce cards are all way overpriced compared to ATI cards. I guess the nostalgia factor is stronger with those.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-26, 00:29:

I try not to tie prices to enjoyment. It's really more about what the specific piece of hardware is and what sort of usage I'm going to get out of it.

I also consider that on balance things are still cheaper than they would have been back in their hey-day.

For example, a $3000 high-end gaming rig back in 1999 is about the equivalent of $5500 today. Even spending $1000 today on that same rig, it's still 1/5th of what it would have originally cost.

wow this is so true ! Back in Feb 1996 I built a complete P.Pro scsi box with all the works and it cost over $6000 (P.Pro 200's were going for $675 by themselves), I still have the invoice sheet. It was a much better economic time !
So to build today with same Asus P6NP5 and all the same stuff would be maybe about $1000 if you can find that motherboard, is very rare, none on ebay....memory4less wants $475, in 1996 was $275, there are other P.Pro boards for more reasonable prices though. But if one wanted that exact same board today you would have to pay a lot or wait months for one sold cheap...I get all that otherwise everything is much cheaper than 1990's era pricing.
If I did not have that same Asus board now would I buy one again, sure but only if price is right. Guess that answers the question of whether I would spend lots to get an exact of something previously owned.
But if I never owned one would not spend that much....just re-thinking this out loud..😀

I find patience is key for the halo parts you want, I got my V5 5500 for 150 AUD when the going price is closer to 700 AUD, it did take me 8 months before one popped up for that price but the wait was worth it. Similar story for my V4 4500 and V3 3500 both were snapped up mid last year for a quarter what they go for now simply by being patient and checking the listing, the V3 3500 was listed incorrectly and the V4 4500 was listed as not working. The 3500 turned out to be one of the Dell versions that doesn't need a breakout box and the 4500 worked perfectly.

I do love it when I find stuff that way, its part of the fun, I think the only parts I have paid a lot for was rare CPUs like the Rise MP6, Cyrix MII 466GP and the 333 Pentium Pro Overdrive even then the prices were not totally outrageous. (The Overdrive is possibly the most expensive retro part I have bought at close to 700 AUD)

Prices are pretty nasty here in Australia, being at the arse end of the world and having to import everything via air and sea cost a penny or three, then you get import taxed and duties on top oh and international postage costs are absurd.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-26, 00:29:

For example, a $3000 high-end gaming rig back in 1999 is about the equivalent of $5500 today. Even spending $1000 today on that same rig, it's still 1/5th of what it would have originally cost.

To be fair, all of the stuff we considered high tech back in the days was e-waste a short time later...
It lost all of its monetary value, and just kept (or regained) emotional value.

Even if you could get parts for 1/5 th the price today... it is still WAY too expensive for the parts itself... its just its emotional value.

The bad thing about emotional value is that its not coupled to a product ... or even reason...
This decouples prices from products and leads to the extreme prices we see today.

People interested in old computer stuff from their childhood have a higher chance of working in IT today and have some disposable income to just spend on emotional value. This makes the field of old technology even more expensive...

schmatzler wrote on 2023-11-26, 01:57:

I've come to realize that patience really pays off. When I want something specific, I put up an eBay search with email notifications and that pops up every time something new comes up.

For example: I wanted a LiveDrive front panel for my SoundBlaster, they were going for ~100€ or more. This week, I got one for 30, because I was quick and the seller didn't know what he had. Took me 6 months to find that, though.

Yup, but that requires a lot of luck. I've been trying to get some vintage Mac parts and every time someone shows up on eBay with an auction listing, I get outbid by the same guy who then turns around and lists them for huge money on buy-it-now. At least I've cost him a few hundred dollars along the way, even if I have nothing to show for it... 😀

The few bits of rarer kit I’ve got (Voodoo 5 5500 PCI, Rage Pro Maxx), I’ve waited and waited for until a “bargain” came along. My Voodoo 5 5500 PCI was $100~ two years ago, and my Rage Pro Maxx was £50.

Probably still a bit rich for some buyers, but as someone who uses rather than hoards, I was definitely at the upper limit of my lust for spending.

It's only expensive if you are chasing niche parts. The retro community, for whatever reason, wants to build systems with 3dfx and GUS so they can play a tiny number of games that need them.

smtkr wrote on 2023-11-26, 17:23:

The retro community, for whatever reason, wants to build systems with 3dfx and GUS so they can play a tiny number of games that need them.

The GUS was also heavily used for tracker music and in the demoscene.

It's a hobby so you'll have to do a budget first and stick to it. If you have like $300 disposable cash each month then buying a $400 V5 doesn't sound crazy at all. If your budget is $30 then it's probably a very bad idea. The rest all depends on your location, opportunities and patience. A high-end P3 rig with a V5 5500 is maybe $500 from Ebay but it's like $250 around here. It costs much less than a new 4060 GPU.
Do the budget and match your expectations.

It allways depends on the amount of money you are willing to spend.
I would never have paid 500 $ for a Microchannel Soundblaster or even 50 $ for Microchannel Ethernet boards,
but luckily I bought these years ago when retro computimg was in its beginning and parts were dirt cheap.
None of my dual PPro systems was more than 20 $, so it was still cheap if I collected up to 20 of these.
Instead of spending hundreds of bucks in 20 year old parts and systems I actually go for the 5-10 years old, still selling cheap on ebay.
Dual Xeon workstations like the hp Z600, Z800 or dual Opterons and the corresponding Nvidia Quattros are still selling for cheap, but prices are starting to rise for the upcoming classics.
Allready got more than 10 of these but some offers are irresistible.