Doesn't matter. It's generational. Kids who began tinkering with computers around Y2K will now be old guys with fond memories of P4's -- and lots of cash to spend on them.

Errius wrote:

Doesn't matter. It's generational. Kids who began tinkering with computers around Y2K will now be old guys with fond memories of Athlon XP/64 -- and lots of cash to spend on them.

FTFY 😉

I don't think I'll ever be nostalgic about P4 machines

Top tier machines with 850/865/875 chipsets and 3ghz+ CPUs already starting to gain in price slowly.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

I don't think I'll ever be nostalgic about P4 machines

Top tier machines with 850/865/875 chipsets and 3ghz+ CPUs already starting to gain in price slowly.

They are competing with rising prices of electric eaters I suppose?

Really?
Pentium 4 is trash in my book mainly because the games/software can be played/used on any other modern machine or virtual machine with excellent results.
IMO truly collectible hardware/system is one you cannot use its software library accurately on anything else.

The Super NT for example just made the original SNES/SFC console quite unnecessary.

And one of the few reasons to have a SNES vs good software emulation was the Superscope. That had, what, two compatible games.

As computers get more powerful eventually we will be able to emulate whole configurations, specific graphics cards, soundcards and so on, which will make the actual hardware redundant, asides from maybe CRTs to display it on. Perhaps with the advent of quantum computing this will become possible.

Tetrium wrote:

I do think prices are inflated, not only by hyping but also by scrupulous traders who buy and sell by the ton and don't know anything about the components they sell, except the price tag. I'm talking about mass hoarding of parts with the intend of selling them down the line and being patient enough to keep things in storage for a very long time (think 20 years or longer). Obviously this would create an artificial scarcity, which by definition calls for inflated pricing of parts which would otherwise be a lot cheaper.

What other conspiracy theories can you come up with? 🤣

Another thing is, people reviewing certain retro hardware, such as the Roland MT-32 on YouTube drives the prices high. The Roland MT-32 I have was purchased by my dad 30 years ago and it still works to this day.

Just for the record - 3dfx cards even five years ago were not sold for ludicrous amounts of money like now.

Another thing is, people reviewing certain retro hardware, such as the Roland MT-32 on YouTube drives the prices high

Youtube boom certainly had huge impact. Especially on everything related to Nintendo.

Quite a few hobbies start with the nuts who collect what most people view as useless garbage. Then people hear of others doing the same thing and there is less stigma to it. Then you get more people in the hobby and prices start to rise above free. Eventually people start posting on Facebook and Youtube about it and it starts being a craze where people with money buy everything "cool".

P4's will be worth something down the road because of the vast amount of people who started using computers on that hardware and want to do it again 20 years from now after 99% of it has been recycled. I only have a couple P4 machines because the chip never interested me, but I have a ton of Athlon XP/A64/Opteron hardware of the time period that did interest me. I collected 3DFX before it was cool because I was an early 3DFX adopter and later on I just snagged the models I never had when they were surplus junk.

There are people now who love collecting Packard Bell machines when they were considered junk and a joke when new.

I do think Ebay prices for rarities can be manipulated but not the more common stuff that sell all over. Billions of dollars of old hardware gets sold on ebay every year, so those prices are more accurate then what one item sold for twice on Amibay.

Qjimbo wrote:

As computers get more powerful eventually we will be able to emulate whole configurations, specific graphics cards, soundcards and so on, which will make the actual hardware redundant, asides from maybe CRTs to display it on. Perhaps with the advent of quantum computing this will become possible.

Provided people continue to develop emulators and such. It's a shame that DosBox stopped at 0.74.

Keatah wrote:

It's a shame that DosBox stopped at 0.74.

What makes you think that it stopped?

gdjacobs wrote:

Keatah wrote:

It's a shame that DosBox stopped at 0.74.

What makes you think that it stopped?

Probably because that is the latest official compiled version.

Years ago, when I had a project and released modified CPU core files which reduced the needed CPU cycles by about 20%, I got people complaining that I didn't release a compiled binary.

I took the project down soon after that because people were acting like spoiled little brats and expected me to do everything for them even though the project was done in my spare time and I got absolutely nothing from it but whining.

cyclone3d wrote:

Probably because that is the latest official compiled version.

Years ago, when I had a project and released modified CPU core files which reduced the needed CPU cycles by about 20%, I got people complaining that I didn't release a compiled binary.

I took the project down soon after that because people were acting like spoiled little brats and expected me to do everything for them even though the project was done in my spare time and I got absolutely nothing from it but whining.

Yup, people can be ungrateful. It's probably better, though, if you think of DOSBox as a rolling release. They haven't pushed a new version, but stability of any SVN commit seems to be really good.

gdjacobs wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Probably because that is the latest official compiled version.

Yup. That would be the reason.

cyclone3d wrote:

I took the project down soon after that because people were acting like spoiled little brats and expected me to do everything for them even though the project was done in my spare time and I got absolutely nothing from it but whining.

Welcome to free open source software. Though it's not the developers' fault but when you release free software, some users just have insane expectations and come across as arrogantly ungrateful. There's a polite way to request new features or suggestions instead of thinking in the typical internet neckbeard cynicalism mindset.

I also noticed that there was a bug in DOSBox 0.74 when playing Frederik Pohl's Gateway using the MT-32: it only played 1 song when going around the town instead of all 3. I reversed the code (thank you, DOSBox mods and admins on here), compiled my own revision, and it works.

Another reason I think DOSBox stopped at 0.74 was because everyone was buying old computers for better gameplay and better support. I use DOSBox for testing games that people are developing nowadays, and if they work, then I make a diskette of the games by extracting some of the files onto a diskette and do a test to see if the game works with my machine(s) running DOS/Win9x.

86Box also works well

ElementalChaos wrote:

It is still plenty possible to get old hardware for cheap or free. eBay isn't everything. Go to thrift stores...

Are thrift stores in your municipality really selling old computers? I haven't seen a computer in a thrift store for at least 10 years. Where I live, they go straight to the recycler when left at the thrift store.