I echo Xmas' sentiments.

However, I tend to hang on more to my pre-ATX computers than my ATX era computers.

I think that I've collected enough vintage computer parts and I would actually like now to spend more time playing my old games. Lately, I haven't had much time to play any games, since I'm currently busy "thinning out" a bit and then I want to set up a hobby/play room for myself (my study is too small to set up everything).

At 43, I definitely haven't become bored of this hobby but, I am taking things a bit slower these days in terms of collecting vintage PC parts.

Well.. anyone who wants some computer stuff look on facebook market and craigslist if your in the chicago area. 🤣

Miphee wrote:

I know the feeling and that's the reason I change my hobbies every few months or years. Cars, electronics, computers, woodwork, […]
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I know the feeling and that's the reason I change my hobbies every few months or years.
Cars, electronics, computers, woodwork, steelwork, renovation.. it's a long list.

1. I get interested in a hobby.
2. Getting all the information, forums, etc.
3. I spend like crazy to get what I need.
4. Having fun and spending most of my time with the hobby (wife angry).
5. Here comes the slow "burn out" phase and I get disinterested (wife happy).
6. I find a new hobby (wife angry again).

The hardest part for me is to properly store everything until I get interested in the same hobby again. Sometimes I just sell or throw everything out and regret it years later.

Yes, this sounds pretty much familiar to me 🤣
Though I have stayed with actually building and buying hardware for much longer than usual, but probably because I have always been a gamer (and not only the computer stuff but also board games, just to name something) and I still enjoy modding as much as I enjoyed it on my Deschutes 😁 , though I have gotten considerably more adept at modifying game files to make them do what I want them to do without getting too many surprise flashvisits back to my desktop 🤣

For a while now I have hardly bought any new stuff anymore, partially as I feel like I kinda got whatever I wanted and a collection doesn't need to be perfect.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

I'm also seriously considering giving up on VOGONS, the forums have been very lackluster for me as of late.

How so? What has changed according to you?

King_Corduroy wrote:

Well as for what I'm doing now, I'm still trying to get rid of stuff and simplify.
But I converted my old computer room into a quick music room/ sitting room I'll try and clean it up and take a pic tomorrow [..]

Hah, that reminds me of my younger self (heck, I'm not that old yet 😉 ). Years ago, I had so much stuff, that I had the urge to get rid of it, to "be free".
At the rime, I sold much of my NES/SNES stuff and early computers (Thomson TO-7, ZX81, etc). For a while, it seemed fine.
Later, however, the room became quite cold and empty. So believe me, a bit of kitsch and junk here and there makes a place snugly and gives it a personality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't get rid of stuff, just please take your time. Don't throw it all out in a hurry.
Soon or later you may miss some of this stuff. Tidying up your room first also may help to reduce the burden/mental stress of "owning too much junk".

PS: I'm still collectiing a bit of stuff, mainly books and old radio gear.
But in terms of computers and replacement parts, I focused more on late 80s/early 90s stuff.

Honestly, if I got rid of the very last of my Packard Bell machines and my boxed games to run on them then yeah I could see a time when I would miss those. However part of clearing everything else and focusing on a time before I got fully into computers is that 8-tracks take up a hell of a lot less space and honestly they are just as fun to get in the mail repair and use. It's generally the same feeling of accomplishment. Plus the general aesthetic I'm going for is basically the antithesis of cold and empty or sterile. 🤣 Warm colours, deep pile rugs, wood grain everywhere and a much more manageable hobby that makes you look a lot less like a hoarder. 🤣

Not that I'm bored, but I just don't find the energy and time anymore to play with things. I sometimes devote a whole day doing the perfect flight sim setup only to find out that I'm too tired/disinterested to play anything. I also realize I have hundreds of games and only about 20 years of worthy game time left so I'm not going to finish or even play most of them. I seem to avoid starting anything that feels like a chore these days and most retro things or games won't be up and running in seconds like all the modern things are. So, not given up yet, but I do see it getting closer and closer each year.

I haven't given up but now that I have the systems I want built and a majority of the hardware I want collected, I find it hard to busy myself with it a lot. The stuff I still want is usually too expensive for me to buy, and I don't have time to play around with most of the stuff I have, so even my built systems and OEMs are always in storage. I'm playing around with the idea of building a daily driver that I can keep around to mess with and test shit on but haven't decided on what to build (Conflicted between a VESA/PCI Socket3 486DX4, a Socket 7 PentiumMMX/Voodoo and a Slot-1 P3/Voodoo2..) so yeah..

I've had to mostly give up on actual system builds. A big part of it is that the supply has dried up, and the prices are too high. I do manage to find some cheap gems every now and then, but it's really getting pretty challenging. Also, most of my stuff is currently in storage, and I don't really have any room to play with it anyway (there is a solution on the horizon though). I have quite a number of items that have been on ice for 5 years. Since I can't really play around, I spend most of that time reading old computer magazines, forums like this one and trying track down more hardware (on the cheap).

Hobbies are like seasons to me. I go through periods where I'm REALLY into something, then it takes a back seat for a while until I come around to it again. Forum membership usually coincides with interest. The daily ebb and flow of topics is only interesting as long as it's new, I think. Once you feel like you've "got it," it can be hard to maintain enthusiasm. But then I realize at some point I've forgotten a lot of the details, and these things tend to be so technical that if you're not honing your skills, you end up back in the "normies" group sooner or later, and then you're faced with whether or not you feel motivated to climb that learning curve again.

Now, for me, the collecting bit of it is mostly based in FOMO, because none of this stuff is getting cheaper or easier to find, so get it while the getting's good. But also because I'm a hardware / software hacker -- as in, I want an OG Sound Blaster 1.5 because some day I will use it as a baseline for an FPGA recreation that I make just for funsies. I've collected just about all the hardware that I'm really interested in. Some of it for its historical value to me, others because it's a recreation of what I had at a point in time. Others because I didn't have it, but I've always been curious. The software is where I get stuck, particularly for game consoles. There's SO MUCH out there, and I hate the idea of finding out about my new favorite game when it's $400 for one in "acceptable" condition on Ebay, so I've got a ridiculous collection just so I can go through it at my leisure. I can always scale down...

I like your new room, BTW. Looks warm and inviting. 😀 I'm going for something similar with a 90s vibe. Games, computers, audio equipment... it was a time when all of that stuff was exciting and people that liked computers or music were serious about it. Now it seems almost too accessible, so that it's not really special anymore. So I want to create a place for myself where I still have album covers, 240p, and command lines. Never mind the 4K TV, I brought that back from the future. 😁

I have several hobbies based on material possessions -- such as vinyl and now retro PC stuff -- but my interest in them is coming and going. I also have one hobby which is my true passion -- drawing -- and so far I have been able to consistently sustain it for more than 10 years (my record streak is drawing every day for 989 days in a row).

I don't go after the old stuff like I used to because the prices are too high and the selection sucks. While I have been collecting computer gear for almost 20 years I do bounce around between platforms and eras. The only hobby I have had that lasted this long was stamp collecting which I don't actively do except for a few pieces once in a great while.

I have also run out of room for systems and I barely have any for parts.

I haven't left the computer hobby, nor technology in general, and I don't think I ever will. I've been interested in most of this tech stuff since I was very young, and there actually have been some interests I've had in the past that have come and gone, but this is my interest that'll never leave me. So nope, I've not given up on this stuff 😀

Sometimes I give myself a hard time when the desire to tinker fades.. I chalk it up to my age and health; but when I look back to my time in the 80s and 90s, there was always something new on the horizon that would solve some annoyance or make a great leap in performance. Those were exiciting times when home-computing wasn't a "solved problem" like today.. you had to tinker a little, and it was easy to be drawn in and try the new stuff.
Back then the industry itself was wind in my sail combined with my own interest - but today it's just me, so I don't get too worried when I need to take a break.

I will never give up. This is a part of me, my childhood. I will take it with me and pass on to my kids, if one day I have kids...

I might give it up when I retire to a beach somewhere....I don't know if I want to spend my final years looking at any kind of screen. But until then it's retro-steaming ahead!

Like most "old" users here I don't have the same energy about retro stuff anymore. It's just slow these days... I still like to buy stuff but testing it after takes time... I haven't even opened one package with 4-5 386/486 motherboards that I bought a few months ago 😲 Or maybe it's just the renovation of the house that takes all the energy/time/money... 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

in general. The hobby became waaaay too much about collecting new things also rather than using what I had

For me, this is important to keep in focus. I try to keep any new purchases limited to stuff that helps me experience the sights and sounds of retro in a new and interesting way. I'm not really into collecting things to have so much as collecting things to do, although time is always a big constraint.

imi wrote:

quite on the contrary, I'm getting sick of new operating systems, software and what people consider good web design nowadays, everything is becoming so cumbersome and unintuitive for power users, not to forget the downfall of most of the gaming industry with microtransactions... I am looking forward to be doing more with old computers and the OS actually doing what I want it to and play games that work without an internet connection and don't bug me to get new DLC all the time.

This right here.

sf78 wrote:

Not that I'm bored, but I just don't find the energy and time anymore to play with things. I sometimes devote a whole day doing the perfect flight sim setup only to find out that I'm too tired/disinterested to play anything. I also realize I have hundreds of games and only about 20 years of worthy game time left so I'm not going to finish or even play most of them. I seem to avoid starting anything that feels like a chore these days and most retro things or games won't be up and running in seconds like all the modern things are. So, not given up yet, but I do see it getting closer and closer each year.

This is how I felt the last two years. I would get things and I had a nice LAN and computer room setup with all the games I basically ever wanted and I never touched it. I would start a computer up every once in a while, click around a bit and then just shut it off again. 😒 I've decided to sell off ALL of my commodore 64 and 128 stuff for this reason as well. I was very excited about the C64 4-5 years ago but once I got a working one and got some others, then made my own custom black C64c I basically stopped caring about it other than to acknowledge it was cool. It's all been sitting up in my attic unloved since I last did a video on the C64 about 4 years ago.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I've decided to sell off ALL of my commodore 64 and 128 stuff for this reason as well. I was very excited about the C64 4-5 years ago but once I got a working one and got some others, then made my own custom black C64c I basically stopped caring about it other than to acknowledge it was cool. It's all been sitting up in my attic unloved since I last did a video on the C64 about 4 years ago.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot those. I also have several Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, whatever machines that basically just take up space on the shelf and in the closet. I don't even know how many different consoles I have. I really should just start dumping it while I have the energy and time to check that everything is in working order. I started cleaning up the storage weeks ago, but only got about halfway through before giving up. 😵