As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

— Denis Diderot, "Encyclopédie" (1755)
[/quote]

VIVE LA REVOLUtION!

I wouldn't say interest is decreasing....but the rarer hardware is. Gobbled up by collectors like myself and many others. I have a lot of rare stuff, my favorite period is mid 90's through early 2000's. Much prior to that is pretty useless for my interests and much after just hasn't 'earned its stripes' yet. The point being, if the hardware you're insterested in building is just impossible to find; knowing you'll likely never obtain it, interest fades away.

We could just be on the cusp of another availability spike. The "well established curious dude" of age 30 to 40 who could afford to dabble in PCs 1985 though the 90s, is getting to the age of mortality or family packing them off into a care home, so their equipment may be coming on the market in the next 5 years. I think that will include a lot of engineer types who didn't buy mass market trash and kept their stuff in good order. Having said that, I guess there's a few members here who might think we're eyeballing them for a coffin fitting 🤣 but yeah, a lot of us are only a decade or two behind.

Shagittarius wrote on 2026-03-06, 18:51:

One thing for sure , we live in a time unprecedented in history. Barring a terrible disaster we will really be the first generation in history where the common man will be remembered more clearly than even the rulers of previous ages. History was written by the few and most people are forgotten, but as the first generation in history to so fully document itself through the internet we will live on in a way no common man has ever done before.

They will still get things wrong about us but our thoughts will live on for reflection.

I have a couple business/investment ideas along these lines. If you want to invest hit me up.

I'm not even sure that's as true as it seems. How much of the internet has vanished forever? all those livestreamed lives from various video services, will they stay up forever? i cant imagine every youtube video being available 50 years from now, let alone all the other services, blogs etc. Individually, masses of data can rapidly disappear into obscurity - those people perpetually photographing everything rarely look at their own photos, other people hardly ever do and will companies really host it all in cloud for ever? I suspect a few AI training scans and a decade later and it'll start being deleted by small print provisions

Sure that still leaves a lot more detail than we have about 100 years back, even 30 years back really!

But overall, the aggregate picture of the ordinary life is captured like never before - but through the lens of the internet, not the actual day to day life of billions of people, that will leave a skewed picture of life. It will be like watching a tv drama about some period we lived through, where we think "well, it was a bit like that - but its off somehow, too much of x, too little of y, they missed a completely and added b that didn't really happen", only more skewed still.

Possibly the individual data will be gone, replaced only by 'trained' databases that have long reduced everything to generalities with occasional variances in accuracy. whatever happens the abundance of data will hinder as much as it helps form a picture of the past

the link with retro pc interest is there too, a lot of our retro pcs are not accurate examples of the past - putting XP on quad cores, 98se on a HT P4, and having everything maxxed out - all the voodoo, best graphics, masses of ram, vast hard discs and/or other solutions - thats not what i remember. these would be prohibitively expensive, and all the nocd, imaging, workarunds, hacks and other more recent patches and things weren't there either, maybe the interest in retro PCs has always had a slightly different shape from the way they were actually experienced

I'd add that its so easy not to have a retro pc and yet still experience almost all the games (and other applications) by use of patches, gog, steam, dosbox and so on that this itself might reduce interest too

Heh, in my experience things have exploded recently. Getting a sub-$100 retro PC is virtually impossible. Even loose P4 boards are listed for triple digits, and people seem to pay that from ended listings.

Hell, the 2013 X230i I'm typin from, barely worth cents 2-3 years ago, now goes for $70 in average condition.

I have 4 proper retro PC's and 2 of them i value at £1500 , one at £1000 and one for about £600.

There are some components that are so hard to find , the price just goes up and up and up....

Ahrle wrote on 2026-03-17, 02:57:

Even loose P4 boards are listed for triple digits, and people seem to pay that from ended listings.

I've got loads of Socket 775 boards I paid £1 for each. Fantastic investment. Any day now I'm going to be able to retire early! 😜

Big Pink wrote on 2026-07-23, 18:37:

Ahrle wrote on 2026-03-17, 02:57:

Even loose P4 boards are listed for triple digits, and people seem to pay that from ended listings.

I've got loads of Socket 775 boards I paid £1 for each. Fantastic investment. Any day now I'm going to be able to retire early! 😜

Anyone got ideas about which ones are fetching more than $50, got a few more than enough here, but mostly Intel made. Saw something new and shiny I want (Book 386) and wanna see if I can raise the price, plus the junk in/junk out consideration.

Joakim wrote on 2024-09-28, 16:43:

I am curious about your analysis, is the interest in retro PC hardware is decreasing? With retro PC hardware I am referring to something related to windows 98 and earlier.

I think with younger people there is less and less interest. They didnt grow up with it and dont care much for it because it wasnt attached to their time growing up like it was to me. Memories of paying on the family apple ii e and playing the kings quest games and so on , had a lot of memories behind it.

Younger generations dont care for it and I dont blame them.

I would love for people to be less interested in retro games and hardware because it became a fad to get into collecting retro games because of youtubers and so finding games and hardware go insanely hard because everyone was collecting because it was popular to.

In my opinion it depends on several variables.
- Demographics and age groups: Each have their own moments in life, where time and means for gaming and collecting goes from plenty to scarce and back.
- Available space and commuting hours: With cities getting crowded, and rent not getting any cheaper, having space for several pc towers, monitors and other hardware will be more dificult to access to. Reason for which portable emulators are selling more and more with prices for almost every budget.
- Less Available Income: With housing, healthcare and education trying to take even the last available penny out of our pockets, available income for none escencial items will get less available in the future, thus collector items will get harder to justify.
- Scalpers and asking prices: With concentration of money in fewer players everywhere in the world, scalpers look to sell their stuff to that top 20% and unless their business model is flawed, they can afford to wait more time. Many are using bots to search for any bargain they can resell before any individual buyer.
- There is still hope: From time to time a fair price for an interesting product appears in a local shop or on your favorite webmarketplace. A working Pentium 1 tower for less than 100, a big box sealed game for fast food price, even new sealed IDE hard drives for less than a movie ticket. At least that's my experience and opinion I wanted to share. Cheers! 😀

AntonPC wrote on 2026-11-12, 08:00:

- There is still hope: From time to time a fair price for an interesting product appears in a local shop or on your favorite webmarketplace. A working Pentium 1 tower for less than 100, a big box sealed game for fast food price, even new sealed IDE hard drives for less than a movie ticket. At least that's my experience and opinion I wanted to share. Cheers! 😀

True. For old big box games, in my experience it's only like 5% of games that go for really high prices - usually something considered "iconic" or something related to a series that's still popular. The other 95% of stuff has little-to-no demand and is mostly forgotten.

I recently got at auction the binder version of Falcon 4.0 for $8. It's an incredible and unique release but, like most other simulation games from the 90s, has basically no demand or interest nowadays. I also picked up Earthsiege + the expansion (both big box) for $20 total, and the floppy version of X-Wing for $10 and TIE Fighter for $15. The last two in particular surprised me because I thought there would be more demand for the series, but they always sell for really cheap.

Then, consider getting something like Daggerfall, and prepare to spend $200-300.

So, collecting can be fun if you avoid those types of things and focus on the slightly more obscure stuff.

I wrote about this previously in this thread, but this same thing happens with hardware. It's the "iconic" or well-known stuff that goes up in value to ridiculous prices (like anything 3dfx), while the less desirable or lesser known stuff stays relatively cheap. It's like that in all markets that concern nostalgia-based collecting.

True. For old big box games, in my experience it's only like 5% of games that go for really high prices

Completely agree - and for PC - unlike for console games - there is little to no hope to ever have a "complete" collection anyway. So you always will miss some things. I also agree that a lot of really good games still go for relatively low prices. As for the hardware - I also often sneak around some of these "iconic" items" and then just leave it. Once I start tinkering or cleaning or whatever - it does not matter if its a P1 or a P4. And if you are in for the long term - then ocasionally luck will strike

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm a newgen (a younger person in general, still in university + my only retro pc originated from a family computer that predates me), but I think part of it is just how different the tasks people use computers for nowadays are.
A lot of people do modern web browsing on the big-name sites, youtube, reddit, twitter, tiktok even, and those all have been getting more and more bloated and unable to run on any old computer, I think a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad would be the absolute minimum.
and those who don't probably instead use their phone for web browsing and apps (i hate apps so much) and would use their computers to play the latest and "greatest", your FIFAs, CoDs, GTA, Skyrim, all of the generic big-budget modern games that are super overbloated and have no chance of running on anything even remotely retro. So without a lot of care for older games, they'd be less likely to seek out old systems & unless you're overly pedantic, emulation can satisfy any interest too.

Not to mention that modern peripherals also won't work on older outdated operating systems just due to a lack of drivers. I was actually a little disappointed when using my retro PC initially and realising that my drawing tablet was too new to have any chance of running on anything older than Windows 7, no matter how much I searched Wacom's site for Windows Vista drivers, and sure I could've used Linux since that has drivers but part of why I even built it was to experience an OS from my childhood again (Windows Vista) so why bother at that point?

Younger people haven't experienced as much older hardware at all, but especially not the peripherals and software that go with them; it takes a special kind of person (probably someone who has autism like me) to have enough of an interest in not just computers but also these old systems they have no nostalgia for. And so the general interest in retro hardware probably would decrease over time as each new generation gets further and further detached from retro hardware and software and expects older computers to do all the modern things that their phones can.
I guess for me at least, a big part of the appeal is actually trying to get newer things running, and I woudn't be surprised if a lot of other people would think the same. (like watching a youtube video in low quality on a Pentium 4 with some Invidious host just to see that it's possible, or actually genuinely trying to see if there's any potential for usability in NetBSD on the Wii. Or, one thing that I want to do would be to make a demake of a game I enjoy just to see if it's possible, or running as new Minecraft as I can on it is another goal, or etc.)

That's my thought on the matter at least.
People are just too far detached from old hardware to be as interested nowadays.
(sorry for probably rambling a bit though)

VanillaFairy wrote on Yesterday, 10:03:

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm a newgen (a younger person in general, still in university + my only retro pc originate […]
Show full quote

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm a newgen (a younger person in general, still in university + my only retro pc originated from a family computer that predates me), but I think part of it is just how different the tasks people use computers for nowadays are.
A lot of people do modern web browsing on the big-name sites, youtube, reddit, twitter, tiktok even, and those all have been getting more and more bloated and unable to run on any old computer, I think a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad would be the absolute minimum.
and those who don't probably instead use their phone for web browsing and apps (i hate apps so much) and would use their computers to play the latest and "greatest", your FIFAs, CoDs, GTA, Skyrim, all of the generic big-budget modern games that are super overbloated and have no chance of running on anything even remotely retro. So without a lot of care for older games, they'd be less likely to seek out old systems & unless you're overly pedantic, emulation can satisfy any interest too.

Not to mention that modern peripherals also won't work on older outdated operating systems just due to a lack of drivers. I was actually a little disappointed when using my retro PC initially and realising that my drawing tablet was too new to have any chance of running on anything older than Windows 7, no matter how much I searched Wacom's site for Windows Vista drivers, and sure I could've used Linux since that has drivers but part of why I even built it was to experience an OS from my childhood again (Windows Vista) so why bother at that point?

Younger people haven't experienced as much older hardware at all, but especially not the peripherals and software that go with them; it takes a special kind of person (probably someone who has autism like me) to have enough of an interest in not just computers but also these old systems they have no nostalgia for. And so the general interest in retro hardware probably would decrease over time as each new generation gets further and further detached from retro hardware and software and expects older computers to do all the modern things that their phones can.
I guess for me at least, a big part of the appeal is actually trying to get newer things running, and I woudn't be surprised if a lot of other people would think the same. (like watching a youtube video in low quality on a Pentium 4 with some Invidious host just to see that it's possible, or actually genuinely trying to see if there's any potential for usability in NetBSD on the Wii. Or, one thing that I want to do would be to make a demake of a game I enjoy just to see if it's possible, or running as new Minecraft as I can on it is another goal, or etc.)

That's my thought on the matter at least.
People are just too far detached from old hardware to be as interested nowadays.
(sorry for probably rambling a bit though)

that's a set of good points

A lot of it is familiarity and effort vs perceived return

Like with cars - vintage cars might involve managing fuel air mix, syncromesh with double clutch and so on plus lots of more maintenance and checks. go back far enough and the starter is manual! The return for all this effort is a car that generally drinks more fuel, is slower, less comfortable, less safe. If you look only for the "return" you wont want to undertake the process given the modern equivalent. That's pretty much how things are all over. It's not necessarily a bad things but as you note - it forms part of the reason for reduced interest in vintage pc hardware

@VanillaFairy Thank you for your point of view!
Reading this reminds me a bit of my younger sister.
Thanks to her I had a second, late childhood and noticed the difference to mine.
There are things we do have in common, and some things we don't.
She likes some of the cartoons and games I've used to watch (say, Chip&Dale; Jill of Jungle) while other things don't interest her, at all.
What she (still) likes, though,-just like me-, are physical media and some old game consoles.
Such as the Gameboy Advance, which is in the spirit of good old Super NES.
So it depends, I guess. This YT user's video is interesting: https://tinyurl.com/48cehjfr

VanillaFairy wrote on Yesterday, 10:03:

People are just too far detached from old hardware to be as interested nowadays.
(sorry for probably rambling a bit though)

Can't trust 'reissued' impostors like the dent-less Logitech MX518 either, that one requires Win10!

I think AI is ushering in a new wave of retro interest. It's helping by plugging in the knowledge gaps and also provides comparisons of retro hardware at the time

gmaverick2k wrote on Today, 06:34:

AI is ushering in a new wave of retro interest

All of the AI-generated projects on here just make me more disinterested.

schmatzler wrote on Today, 10:57:

gmaverick2k wrote on Today, 06:34:

AI is ushering in a new wave of retro interest

All of the AI-generated projects on here just make me more disinterested.

An AI/LLM that runs locally on vintage hardware would be interesting, though, I think.
After all, there was Dr. SBaitso on DOS and so many Eliza clones on PET, C64 and whatnot.
There even were commercial expert systems such as Q&A (question and answer) running on original IBM PC in the 1980s.

schmatzler wrote on Today, 10:57:

gmaverick2k wrote on Today, 06:34:

AI is ushering in a new wave of retro interest

All of the AI-generated projects on here just make me more disinterested.

AI is a socialist tool. I kinda need it. I also use it.