First post, by wackomenace
tl;dr is there someone/some company in the UK I can pay to build/refurbish me a retro PC?
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I'm on a bit of a retro nostalgic journey at the moment, thinking about how I got started with PCs, and it made me think. I (stupidly) disposed of two PCs that I started off with that would have made the ideal retro PCs of today for running old software and reminiscing about how those were the good days. I want to get back into this, but I am very firmly a software guy and not a hardware one. I have assembled my own PCs before and am happy to do so again, but also very aware that getting an old PC back up and running or attempting to build a new one with yesterday's specs isn't for the faint hearted.
I have read about recapping, leaking batteries, retrobriting yellowed cases etc and honestly have no appetite for that, nor ability or equipment for things like soldering. For the lazy amongst us, is there someone I can pay who will either:
* find an old PC of the correct era and do what needs to be done to get it running, or
* build a period-correct PC using either used or new-old-stock components?
Or maybe with some coaxing I could get retro OSs and software running on relatively new hardware that is still somewhat available and I can assemble without delving into circuit diagrams? Maybe either with patched drivers etc or running them under a bare-metal hypervisor. Running Windows 98 on my M2 MacBook is fun but not quite the same...