I can't afford to be like this for retro pc stuff, due to cost limitations. But I've been there in the past when buying new stuff. I would see one 3D card on the shelf at Best Buy and then something wouldn't be quite right or to my liking. Try another.. Try another, oh hey overstock.com has free overnight shipping how about that Creative TNT2... oh shit my PC locks up, how about that Geforce 2MX, etc.

Kind of had the same experience with Aureal's A3D sound card. I tried it, wasn't really impressed, I think I tried it with X-Wing Alliance. Took it back for some other reason too I think.

The last thing I bought in the recent past that I regret, was probably investing in AMD's FX line. I got an 8 core FX8320 that can edge out my old i5 in a few tasks, but overall is about the same.. Just really poor IPC and single core performance. I'm pretty much an Intel convert at this point. Sitting on a i7 6800K right now, although I do kind of wish I waited for the new Kaby Lake-X stuff to come out. It may have been a better investment platform-wise, in terms up future CPU upgrades.

I guess most of us spend more time with the systems we're more familiar and have more memories of. For some maybe the Win9x, for others the Amiga etc

konc wrote:

I guess most of us spend more time with the systems we're more familiar and have more memories of. For some maybe the Win9x, for others the Amiga etc

This. If you haven't had / worked with an Amiga, it's a totally new worlds.

Man the time I spent until I finally got a workbench installed on my Mist with working WHDload. I think I must have gone through 10 guides until I found one that wasn't from an Amiga guy for another Amiga guy 🤣

Well yes, obviously. I have maybe 30 desktops and no room to display or use them at once so I have to keep 4-5 available and the rest are stored away. It is a bit of a problem as I tend to forget where I put things and It takes a lot of time to rummage through the closets and storage to find what I'm looking for. PC's are easy as they only require the basic cables, but all the other systems have to have their own PSU's, cables and whatnot to function and finding them takes even longer. That's why I mostly have PC's available and only one A500 hooked up. It would be nice if I had enough space to have 5-6 game consoles and a couple home computers, but that's just not possible at the moment. That way I would actually use them instead of wondering how high I can still stack these?

I suffer from the start a project and then start another project before the first project is done and so on and so on and so on. I have the same problem with finishing games.

Rhuwyn wrote:

I have the same problem with finishing games.

Yes, this is even worse. Last autumn I checked that I have around 700 floppy/CD/DVD based games that I actually mean to play at some point. Then there's hundreds of other module and tape games too. I doubt I'll live long enough to go through them all. 😵

Somewhat. I have something like 5 or 7 retro systems that I need to build, but all the parts were bought with specific builds in mind and I went for stuff that I either knew would be high-end compared to what I had "back in the day" or stuff that was rare/hard to find or both. I tend to be more this way with software. I've been working on a long (very long) term project (more like farting around with sprints of serious work for a few weeks) and will occasionally think about switching to another 3d package. But I already did that once and there was a huge learning curve to climb as I learned the new tool, mainly because the modeler was so radically different. And I assumed I knew everything because I was good with one tool. So, every time I find myself looking at Lightwave or Blender and saying "geez maybe that would make this or that thing easier to do" I have to catch myself before going off on a tangent again. Although I will probably need to buy Lightwave or Maya at some point if I ever want to actually work in that industry, although that is less and less likely as time goes on.

It's funny, but yesterday I began to explore my A3000 and it's software - I ordered a network card by an engeneer from St.PEtersburg to send data to it... Also few onth ago began to explore macs - some machines from 1989 to 1999 - as they were just gathering dust in my room, but this autumn I was making pictures in the Apple Computer museums and at last was inspired by the old macs with systems from 7.1 to 10.4... But I don't regard these machines as "old" - I explore them as I explore Linux on a new PC - just the thing I never used before...)

And about nostalgic element - yes it's the good old PC's - I still have my first own PC - pentium 1/75mhz and some 286 machines - I use them now and remember as as a child I was looking at school at elder boys playing Golden Axe and the Death Track in Director's room an a 286 machine about 1991-1993 and also one more episode - F-19 was shown to me at my faher's work in 1992, at the NYT office in Moscow on a 286 Compaq Deskpro)... Now I have these machines an when I turn them on somehow I imagine I had them in MY 1991-1993)

My "problem" is that I decided early on to focus on only AT and ATX stuff in order to maximize compatibility.

I have played on some non-x86 systems and a few consoles, but the flexibility of PC architecture is what motivated me to kinda limit myself to PC stuff.
And I also happen to also like the enormous variety PC architecture has to offer, there's a zillion thingies out there for us to explore 🤣!

sf78 wrote:

Well yes, obviously. I have maybe 30 desktops and no room to display or use them at once so I have to keep 4-5 available and the rest are stored away. It is a bit of a problem as I tend to forget where I put things and It takes a lot of time to rummage through the closets and storage to find what I'm looking for. PC's are easy as they only require the basic cables, but all the other systems have to have their own PSU's, cables and whatnot to function and finding them takes even longer. That's why I mostly have PC's available and only one A500 hooked up. It would be nice if I had enough space to have 5-6 game consoles and a couple home computers, but that's just not possible at the moment. That way I would actually use them instead of wondering how high I can still stack these?

I'd like to suggest to you to start labeling boxes in such a way that you intuitively know where to start looking when you're looking for any particular part.
I ended up organizing my collection as things started to grow out of control and I literally started never finding what I needed and also forgetting what I already had.
In my sig is a link to a page on Vogonswiki which has a couple threads about "How to store all your stuff", this might be of some use to you 😀

Rhuwyn wrote:

I suffer from the start a project and then start another project before the first project is done and so on and so on and so on. I have the same problem with finishing games.

I think it took me over a year or so before I actually managed to finally complete a build.
I'd start working on a rig and then get distracted by something else or too curious about some very 1337 part that I got while building was in progress 🤣

But in the end I kinda got the hang of it 😁

Finishing games? Don't get me started 🤣

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

This. If you haven't had / worked with an Amiga, it's a totally new worlds.

Yep I see them for sale and occasionally experience a "me wants" moment, but then I remind myself that I know nothing about them and don't even have enough time to fully explore my beloved DOS / Win9x machines, so I control myself.

I do have a C64 but that was somewhat familiar when I got it going a few years ago, having used one in my youth. For the most though part I'm in a good place with my collection; I've pared it back to a handful of PC's that I refined over the last 6 years and just cycle through them as my interest takes me.

badmojo wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

This. If you haven't had / worked with an Amiga, it's a totally new worlds.

Yep I see them for sale and occasionally experience a "me wants" moment, but then I remind myself that I know nothing about them and don't even have enough time to fully explore my beloved DOS / Win9x machines, so I control myself.

I do have a C64 but that was somewhat familiar when I got it going a few years ago, having used one in my youth. For the most though part I'm in a good place with my collection; I've pared it back to a handful of PC's that I refined over the last 6 years and just cycle through them as my interest takes me.

Same. As cool as Amigas are, I wouldn't even know where to begin troubleshooting a 25-30 year old Amiga, or how to set it up. As much as I wish I'd spent my money on an Amiga 500 way back in 1990 instead of a bare-bones 286, it is what it is. I had some good times with it, just might have gotten into computer graphics sooner had I gone the Amiga route.

I jumped from my first computer a Timex 2068 to a C64 in the 1980's and then went to a 286 for college. Missed out on Amiga Atari ST and Macs. Ever since my main machine has been an X86/X64. Around 2000 I started looking into the machines I had passed over back in the day, and started with Mac and then hit the Amiga. My first Amiga was an A500 and to be honest it wasn't that much of a difference between it and a DOS machine. 68k and PPC macs reminded me of early Windows, I had more issues learning OS/2 then I did Mac OS. While the Amiga was a great games machine, and the Mac line was a pretty decent graphics workstation I don't regret my jump t the PC. I never had much software for my Timex, and many years later I ended up getting a whole bunch of boxed apps and games for it, but I just couldn't get into it again. I do miss my boxed C64 games I sold with my machine, but I do have a whole shelf of Amiga games.