I'm kinda in the same boat here... the closer I get to finish my wish list the less I'm interested... been going on for 3-4 months now. I even left a few auctions early as I wasn't that interested. Last year I wouldn't let them pass. Although I regret it now and then.

Not sure why this is happening but it might be some part of my limit space. I have stuff all over and can't enjoy any 🙁 We're looking for a house to buy for two years now and nothing we'd be happy about. I don't want to go into building a new one - just too much hassle.

Although I like to tinker with the hardware I just don't like to have everything in boxes and not even knowing what is in them. But it's fun from time to time to be surprised what you find 🤣 Like the other day I went through my misc AGP cards... more then 100 of them and found Asus Geforce 256 DDR in there that everyone is talking about these days 😲 Of course I don't know it's condition... no time to test everything I have 😢

I get this with anything - if you overdo it you can get burnt out, punch dunk, whatever you want to call it; the romance cools off a bit. I've been in a cool phase with old gear for a year or two. Having been round this particular block a few times, this time round I down-sized a bit, logged my remaining gear [lists of what is in which box], mothballed anything I wanted to keep but couldn't have set up, and then got on with other things that had got hold of me; I still come onto vogons but mostly just read milliways. What I'm also finding these days is that the nature of my interest in - most things - is changing, becoming more refined. But that's just me.

I personally try to use retro tech as modern one so basically you're forced to use it. I also tried to use a 386DX as main pc even if it's not that easy. 😁

You're not alone King_C - my interest has been cooling for a while now and I got rid of a large pile of stuff recently. Real life has an impact of course, but I've also reached a place where I have nearly everything I wanted.

In saying that I've quite enjoyed the processes of looking at my collection and trimming it down to just the real gems - it probably still looks like a lot to the untrained eye but I have a reason for owning most of it now, which is a good feeling.

I'm at peak retro too - in terms of collecting systems - but looking forward to playing some more games and maybe doing a little coding too, see if I can get more out of these machines. A house move is helping to focus on what's important to display and use.

By the way I also don't collect anymore much retro tech, space reason for sure but also to mantain the few things that really you care of these computer/components. For example I built a 386 machine and I don't think I will never build another one ever. If I decide to build a 486 system I'll use its case so I'll end up having only one machine built.

Yes, I'm right there with you, King_Corduroy. For me, the driving force was the games, so once I got enough systems to play all the games I want to, I had less motivation to spend $$ on hardware that in my mind I'd never use. I'm sure if one of my systems goes kaput, I'll get really excited about sourcing the parts to replace it. 😀 But this is a great community to hang out, with many like-minded people, so I keep reading here, and try to help people if I'm lucky enough to have an answer to their problem.

Now that I think about it, I think money is a big factor. Now that I'm happy with what I have, I'm unwilling to spend money just to get something. But I have no doubt, if someone offered cool retro hardware for free, I'd most likely gladly accept. It's not important enough anymore to spend money on, but still a great hobby if you acquire freebies.

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.

However, as time goes, what's previously not considered "retro" will be considered retro in the future. Now I'm focusing on Windows XP build --a system with hottest GPU possible to maximize AA and AF, with great backward compatibility with early 2000 games, and still support Windows XP. As less and less hardware supports Windows 7, I would be likely to hoard the fastest --yet still support Windows 7--- hardware in the future. My retro computing hobby would probably stop when either Windows or Windows game have become really sucked, that I see no point to hoard hardware that still support them. In 2027, I wouldn't be interested to build a retro system that still support Windows 10, for example.

Ah cool so it's not just me. 🤣 I recently restored a Windows Xp computer but found it had even less of a place in my heart than some of the other things I was holding onto so I ended up tearing it apart again and scrapping it.

I think what ruined vintage computing for me was trying to make my Win 98 Packard an everyday computer and trying to use it for any mundane task I could think of. I even have a scanner and a laser printer on it (both period correct), the thing that shattered the nostalgia for me was image processing on a vintage computer, I was scanning documents and printing them with the vintage laser printer and it not only took forever but was also slow to print and looked pretty crap compared to what printers can do now. It just made all those feelings of frustration from back in the day using a Packard Bell with windows 95 well into the 2000's come flooding back and I haven't really touched it since. Probably what really started the decline for me was setting up MFM hard drives, I hate those things and I've pitched a few computers out of frustration because of that. 🤣

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 (which can also still play some more modern games). So my retro rigs are more DOS-era. I prefer the DOS games on real hardware to DOSBox, but because my GOG Win9x games have modern installers, I see no point to running them on a period-correct OS. Plus, the DOS games are more enjoyable on a CRT, which I'm unwilling to use on a modern PC, while the Win9x games are more enjoyable on LCD.

Goes to show there are multiple paths to ideal, and each person's ideal is unique. 😀

Originally I got into it cause I couldn't run Win9x games like Earth 2140 properly in dosbox, runs too slow / choppy on that and the videos don't play right. So I use a Pentium machine to run everything old, anything that requires a Pentium II and up I can run on my modern computer but honestly I don't game much anymore so it's all kind of pointless. 🤣

You are not alone, I believe this experience is true if you are a conscious human being.
Sometimes "having" is more important than "using", that's the way it is.
There are many sides to retro collecting and gaming, most of them are in your mind.... 😀
As long as it's not an obsession, you're okay.

The journey is more important than the destination

BTW, if you are bored on this plane, you can always astral travel... it's never boring there.

I don't know that I'd say I'm bored exactly, but I can definitely identify with feeling very "meh" about things these days.

I'm in my 40s now, I'm very conscious of the fact that I may not have too many good years left, in fact I narrowly dodged my first heart attack last summer and am trying to get my health back in order.

So spending an entire day trying to get an old ass computer working is just not my idea of a good time anymore. Or endlessly playing games. Don't get me wrong, I like games still but I cannot devote 100-200 hours on old-school RPGs anymore. I have a list of maybe 25 that I want to finish when I retire, the rest of my tremendous backlog I will probably never get to. I prefer more casually playing something for a half hour or hour at the end of the day.

But there is other stuff I want to do still, and retrogaming/retrocomputing is definitely falling to the wayside.

I've been pretty burned out for several years now. I'm on here mostly to see what like minded people are up to and to be helpful occasionally.

In my case, vintage computing is not about collecting or hoarding stuff I won't ever use. I use what I have, get what I need and keep a few spares just in case, I was never interested in getting rare hardware to have it in display somewhere. This keeps me from becoming overwhelmed and tired of these old things.

Also, I don't think I dedicate nearly enough time to the hobby to get burned out. I may not spend any time on it in months besides participating in this forum, but that doesn't mean I don't like vintage gaming/hardware anymore. I just don't obsess over it, for example I like Monkey Island but that doesn't mean I need to play it every week to remind myself of that fact.

Not really, I tend to build stuff when I need it to do a job, and then I use it. I do find the builds fun, it's interesting to get everything you want working together and satisfying to "tune" a system. It's a bit (vaguely) like maintaining an old sports car with carbs and mechanical systems that need tweaking. But it's not something I just do out of nowhere; I don't try to collect all the parts in the world and build every possible "retro-rig" just for curiosity's sake. If I need something, I build it. 😜 When the end result does something useful for me then I feel like it was time well spent.

I have done a few build-and-sells but it was mostly to get parts out of my closet and into the hands of other enthusiasts. Some people will pay a bit for (e.g.) an oldschool games machine where everything needed is already present & working well rather than trying to hunt down 20-year-old video cards themselves. They didn't exactly make back the time I put into them but that wasn't the point.

386SX wrote:

I personally try to use retro tech as modern one so basically you're forced to use it. I also tried to use a 386DX as main pc even if it's not that easy. 😁

Cool. You may find this blog interesting, then. The blogger is using someting like that as his main machine, I believe. 😄

PCem's been responsible for layers of dust on my old rigs. 😀 I dusted one off and Voodoo2'd it up to provide accuracy crosschecking lately (and writing a Voodoo2-specific dac filter), and I do plan to dust more off for profiling art assets when an important majority are completed.

For extra heresy around these parts, I should also mention that none of my desktop rigs has an OPL2/3 sound card installed. It's only a laptop providing this true OPL3 now.

TheMobRules wrote:

In my case, vintage computing is not about collecting or hoarding stuff I won't ever use. I use what I have, get what I need and keep a few spares just in case, I was never interested in getting rare hardware to have it in display somewhere. This keeps me from becoming overwhelmed and tired of these old things.

Also, I don't think I dedicate nearly enough time to the hobby to get burned out. I may not spend any time on it in months besides participating in this forum, but that doesn't mean I don't like vintage gaming/hardware anymore. I just don't obsess over it, for example I like Monkey Island but that doesn't mean I need to play it every week to remind myself of that fact.

I wouldn't say I fall under the hoarder category myself, either. I have 5 different retro machines, or rather 2 actual working systems and 3 other planned builds that I just haven't gotten around to. I just don't use the retro systems on a daily basis for my work, I can't...it simply isn't possible and for my other hobby activities I use the faster DOS systems for older DOS/Win 3.1 graphics stuff but it doesn't make sense to do something on the 386 box just for the sake of using the 386 when it can be done much better and with less hair pulling on the Pentium Pro OS/2 Warp/IBM DOS7 system I have.

Maybe I just need a break or to find something else to do for a bit. I may end up selling off some of my systems.

With respect to gaming: maybe I'm spoiled by modern games but I just can't get into something like Bard's Tale anymore. I would like to finish Ultima 6 and 7 as well as a few others that I have just never gotten around to but I've got too much else going on in my life right now. It's easier for me to just play something casual like an old school arcade hit like Galaga or something. Or Pinball Extreme for a bit just to chill.