Yeah I agree, modern graphics kind or ruined old gaming for me. Not that modern games are very good in comparison though, it's just the old controls and graphics that are off putting. That and I just never feel like playing anything these days so it may just be more on me than the clunkiness of the old games themselves. Especially when I think about the fact that old games had memorable soundtracks, great game play and awesome story a lot of times games these days seem to lack all of that but have very shiny graphics.

I agree about the break part, I'm considering taking an internet and computering siesta. Especially since I definitely fall under the hoarder category, I've collected things out of curiosity more so than nostalgia and now I just want to get rid of all the things I never use and grabbed because they are valuable or otherwise "interesting" to the general hobbyist population (IE my boxed Amiga 1000, I don't use it and wasn't very impressed by it).

I feel the same way about retro PCs, as I stick to 486/Socket 7/Slot 1 P2/3s mostly. Now that I've built whatever I've wanted and experienced all sorts of retro nostalgia goodness, I feel fulfilled in that department. Also pretty much anything I use my retro PCs for I can do in 86Box or a Windows 98 VM. It's been fun but right now I am in the process of selling off my last retro PCs for now. But I'll still stick around here cause a lot of these builds you guys do are interesting and I'd like to help out too if someone's having an issue I know how to fix.

Huh, never heard of 86 box. I've been looking for something to emulate a Pentium 1 computer faithfully without getting hitchy. Is that a good tool?

I can relate to that feeling. Like the others I agree that that the journey was an incredible experience but it gets boring soon after you have accomplished your goals. However there is one computer that always kept my interest and that is my trusty Commodore 64. What kept me going was that I am somewhat active within the demo scene. Going to demo parties and socialising with other hobbyists, while drinking beers and having fun offers a lasting experience. Besides I love the effort people put in fresh new releases on ancient hardware. There are even several newly released indie games that help and keep me interested.

On the other side I have several other hobbies too. I find my interests shifting from one hobby to the other from time to time.

Yep I feel like I've done everything I wanted to do with retro hardware and games. Still want to put my Tandy sound card into the 5160 and move the SB Pro 2 from there to my Tandy TL/2. I have a 287XL to go into the TL/2 also. Really happy with my big box game collection although I wouldn't mind a boxed Ultima VII. Overall though I'm in a good place, not too much stuff and what I do have is way too cool to get rid of. My only problem is having free time to use them between work and a young family. That will change in the future though. I'm playing the long game 😀

The collection has stabilised at 'only' five machines, all working and complete:

IBM 5160 & 5153 & Model F (old CGA games)
Tandy TL/2 & CM8833, SB Pro 2 (EGA & Tandy games)
Thinkpad 370C & Dock 1, CD, SB16, SCP-55 (VGA games away from home)
K6-3+ & Voodoo 2, AWE64, GUS (newer DOS games)
Athlon XP & GF4, Voodoo 3, MX300, Audigy 2 (Windows games)
Plus some MT-32, CM-32L, SC-55 goodness

Right now I'm also more interested in tinkering with cars. But I expect I will come back to retro computing in the future.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Huh, never heard of 86 box. I've been looking for something to emulate a Pentium 1 computer faithfully without getting hitchy. Is that a good tool?

Yeah it works pretty well... a bit buggy but it's being updated all the time. There's an IRC channel on irc.rol.im #softhistory that acts as a support channel for it. It does require decent hardware.

I guess the interest in vintage computing comes and goes (much like any type of hobby), which is probably dependent on your "focus area" and how wide your "focus area" is.
Sometimes it will keep you interested forever (since there is always something that you want to try out) and in other cases, once you've reached your "goal", you will probably decide to "tone down" a bit and focus on something else.

For example, some people decide to focus on just the IBM PC compatible architecture, while others will start to branch out to other architectures/hardware like Amiga, Atari, Apple, Commodore, etc.
You can imagine that if your focus area extends to more than just the IBM PC compatible architecture, you'll probably be playing around and collecting vintage computing hardware for years.

Personally, I've decided to just focus on the IBM PC compatible hardware and not to branch out to other architectures/hardware since, firstly, I don't have the space for it and, secondly, I don't have the knowledge (or the desire to learn) about the other architectures. Essentially, I like to stick with what I've grown up with for the most part.

I started a long time ago collecting vintage computer parts (purely IBM PC compatible) and this was mostly to collect "backup" parts for my main retro PC's (which were basically for my 386 & 486 era PC's).
I've never had an interest in anything older than that, since most of the games I like to play runs fine on either a 386 or 486. As such, I stopped collecting PC parts (and old PC's) about 3 years ago.
About a year ago, I suddenly started to develop an interest in older XT PC's. So, now my focus has shifted slightly to the PC's from that era.

You'd think yeah but I was collecting pretty much anything retro at one point and one day I just realized I hated collecting all these different weird ass formats since I didn't have much room to begin with. I tossed or sold most of my weird gear and I'm thinking about selling my Amiga and consoles I have. I already sold my Mac classic and my Coleco Adam. The only thing I've seemed worthy of keeping honestly is c64 and my FOT era Packard Bell machines.

So basically I came to the same conclusion and am now just collecting machines from when I was a kid. Not including my pcjr or my c64. Those were my first two 80s computers and I love them dearly 🤣.

Tim1075 wrote:

I can relate to that feeling. Like the others I agree that that the journey was an incredible experience but it gets boring soon after you have accomplished your goals. However there is one computer that always kept my interest and that is my trusty Commodore 64. What kept me going was that I am somewhat active within the demo scene. Going to demo parties and socialising with other hobbyists, while drinking beers and having fun offers a lasting experience. Besides I love the effort people put in fresh new releases on ancient hardware. There are even several newly released indie games that help and keep me interested.

On the other side I have several other hobbies too. I find my interests shifting from one hobby to the other from time to time.

I agree with this. Somehow the commodore 64 stands alone in my mind as one of the greatest computers ever made and I didn't even get to experience it when it was new since I was born in 90. Lol

clueless1 wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I have no desire to assemble an 486, for instance, because low res, 320x200 DOS games could be nicely played in DOSBOX. My retro computing stuff was focused on 440BX era.

Ha! I came to the opposite conclusion. All the Win9x games I want to play are available on GOG, so I easily play those on XP

But if the said game looks best with GLide, or sounds best with Aureal 3D, it's better to build a Win98 system, isn't it? 😉

No I do not get bored with old hardware.

I do have other hobbies though like less old computers, retro audio gear, fast cars and playing MMORPGs. I can not find time for them all so I kind of rotate my time between hobbies doing one or two at the time and then switch long before I get bored.😁

I get the issue with storage though. I live in a 4 room 2 bathroom apartment (~100 m2) and I have enough computer gear and other electronics to fill a house and that's only the stuff that isn't in storage. The stacks of boxes with unknown hardware kind of bothers me and I should really really get a house but the prices are too high in Sweden at the moment.

I think for those with a general interest in computer hardware and other electronics it's hard to ever get bored. If you get board with one era just mess with stuff from another era. I often come back to the "early to mid 2000 era" as there are endless with stuff to try out. Dual s603/s604 Xeon rigs are my focus at the moment even if the progress so far has been slow with one PSU up in smoke and zero systems finished! 😁 I do also tinker with Socket 423 and testing different hardware in vanilla World of Warcraft while I wait on parts from USA, the UK, Poland, Korea and China.

Today I have leared that the Geforce FX5900 Ultra runs vanilla World of Warcraft perfectly fine at 1280*1024 with all settings maxed out. Not that I ever doubted it would but now I know! 😁

Skyscraper wrote:

No I do not get bored with old hardware.

I do have other hobbies though like retro audio gear, fast cars and playing MMORPGs. I can not find time for them all so I kind of rotate my time between hobbies doing one or two at the time and then switch long before I get bored.😁

I get the issue with storage though. I live in a 4 room 2 bathroom apartment (~100 m2) and I have enough computer gear and other electronics to fill a house and that's only the stuff that isn't in storage. The stacks of boxes with unknown hardware kind of bothers me and I should really really get a house but the prices are too high in Sweden at the moment.

I also don't think I will get bored of old hardware very soon (might just tone down a bit in collecting more hardware), but I have plenty of things I want to try out and still want to build up a couple of old retro PC's (and I have plenty of spare parts).

Although I'm fortunate enough to live in a decent size house, I don't have exclusive access to the full area, since my wife and kids occupy most of the space 🤣.
At this point, I'm confined to a very small study (+/- 5.8 m²) and a small store room (+/- 4.4 m²). However, with a store room, one probably has to taken into account ceiling height as well, since you can stack boxes on top of each other (and I do have shelves in there). Due to my small study, KVM switches does come in handy.

I find my self going back in years these day's. Win98se and newer, simply does not grasp my attention.
Yeah... It will come back. My primaery interest are Pentium-1 and older these days.
These days I do more vintage computing than retro computing. You know... MS-Dos 6.22 and so on.

I've felt this way before. Sometimes I don't use my retro PCs for weeks, or months at a time. The great thing about it though is that they aren't going to be obsolete for their purpose. If I want to play DOS or early Windows games right now, or if I want to play it in six months time, or six years time, the PCs are there and ready to rock.

Sourcing and building is also half the fun in my opinion. Scouring eBay and other sites for that one part you want, and the thrill of finally finding it.

I try to diversify what I work on though. Doing anything repetitively leads to burnout as many others pointed out. Another normal build isn't as interesting to me as it used to be. I love the hardware, but putting it all together in the same way with different cards isn't hitting the spot anymore.

That's why I've built or been building and planning more exotic forms of retro PCs for niche, unusual or non-gaming purposes. My water cooled ultimate year 2000 gaming PC. My in the works, all-in-one PC/Monitor/Speakers ANSI and ASCII art display for my own art and others I like, to sit in my office. All different twists on retro hardware. I've played so many games, there's not much joy in building another PC to play some more games now. I can already do that on my main or other retro PC. I just want to push myself to solve problems that I can't easily Google the answer to and give my brain a bit of a workout.

In a more general sense, I strongly believe the hobby is what you make of it. It doesn't have to be something you devote every hour of free time, every spare dollar and every conscious minute of thought to. There's nothing wrong with building a couple of systems and just being proud of accomplishing something that you put work into - the research, the sourcing and the build. No different to a woodworking project, fixing a car or painting a picture.

If you've got the space, it is something you can fire up when you feel like or, keep as a conversation piece if you have friends or colleagues who may be interested, or just a memento of a good time. And if anyone ever has to sell something, chances are it is going to someone who will have the same joy you all had when receiving it for the first time.

I'm really close of finishing a very old desire of mine regarding vintage computing, which is to own a Tandy 1000 computer. If oyu're reading this and you live in North America this ight seem super trivial, but living in Europe...believe me...it is not. There are several difficulties one must go around to make these machines work properly, specially in Europe.

Having said this, believe me or not, the most fun i had with gaming for the past 3 years was with retro gaming. Playing Fleet Defender and more recently Starflight was and has been (Starflight) an absolute joy. I don't think it would be the same if i was playing this stuff in DOSBox.

As far as collecting i'm really close to owning everything i ever wanted. Hardware wise i'm just missing a couple of soundcards for specialized builds, and with games i'm close to own pretty much all the classics and a few old novelties i wanted. It is so satisfying to open a physical game manual instead of a pdf in a different window.

Sometimes i genuinely think that i should just use DOSBox and be done with it, but the reality is that in a modern machine i can't just get away from how easy is to launch a browser, lose myself on the way while hours go by, retrogaming just gets lost into what you can do which such a system.

The only thing I'm tired of is going on eBay and not being able to find what I want. Compared to what it used to be the selection seriously sucks. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Also when you DO find something you're interested in, chances are it is insanely priced.

Dosbox + MUNT + SC-55 plug-in + VirtualMIDISynth actually destroyed my vintage computer tinkering... 🤣

I still have my trusty 486DX2-66, Pentium II 400 and P4 3.6GHz Win98SE machines for that classic moments. But otherwise, spend most of my time in Dosbox + MUNT - have it installed in all my Desktop, Laptop and Dell Win10 Tablet.

EDIT :

I have posted this many times before, and yet, I'm unable to refrain from repeating it again :

With Dosbox plus MUNT and the MIDI tools, I am able to free myself the actual hardware that takes up space, which also have so many cables to connect to, and not to mention the additional power adapters I need to connect - for the MT-32, SC-55.
Plus, in my Dell Venue Pro tablet, and my laptop, my DOS "machines" (Dosbox) with the "MT-32" (MUNT) and "AWE32" (via AWE32 ROM in VirtualMIDISynth) and SC-55 (via SoundCanvas VA Plugin and Loop MIDI), are always with me, wherever I go and wherever I am. (without lugging all those bulky machines with the jungle of wires and speakers and modules) 😁

(And this holds true for all the emulations of other consoles - SNES, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, etc...)

Some might argue that this is not the same as the real thing... well... I do have the hardware, but I prefer this way. And it works better and it's more efficient and more practical. And no more dreaded 640k conventional RAM, EMS, UMB, etc.. management headaches... 🤣

Not to mention the speed fine tuning in Dosbox, to perfectly match the proper speed for DOS games of any era!

ONE DOSBOX TO RULE THEM ALL!

Can't say I'm bored of it, but I may go significant periods between gaming, and things such as the SGI O2 boxes haven't been switched on for at least a year..

I'm almost at Peak Retro, mostly due to space. Once the study is done all the computers will be set up for when I want to use them, the rest of the time I use modern kit, and I can choose between retro PCs, retro consoles, modern laptops/PCs, and the 3DS. Job done, won't be buying much more stuff for years.

For the consoles I mostly use (original) XBox, Saturn, and Dreamcast. There will come a moment when I've got a hankering for Rogue Leader, and then I'll pop on the Gamecube.

I will admit that all the retro fiddling gets in the way of playing modern games. Again, when the study is complete I'll have a system up to date enough to play most modern games. In the meantime the 2006 laptop and the consoles get used most, simply because they're there, and set up to use.

I haven't use DOSBox much, because until my new system is set up, I've found it far too slow on a Core2Quad to run various games (with the exception of things like Commander Keen 4/5, which to my mind look and sound perfect).

I go through periods myself, of feeling like I've spent too much money or too much time. So many of the older systems have very good emulators so I really don't even bother with any of the really old systems. I really don't go back any further then the 486 era because that mid/late DOS era is basically where I grew up so it's nostalgic to me. Outside of a couple of very specific 90s builds I am more about being practical then anything else. In spite of that, I still have spent a lot of money on winning lots on ebay or picking up local lots of computers. I had a hard time turning anything down that I knew would end up in a scrap heap. I really don't like the idea of something being trashed that has a perfectly good purpose. I think I've learned to balance it now though. Ultimately, I need to spend less time on thinking about and procuring hardware for projects and more time completing projects and enjoying the project once it's complete.