probnot wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of these awful things: […]
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kikenovic wrote:Lol, the attack of the evil GX620s
I was thinking more along the lines of these awful things:
Good god, I'm sending one of those back into the wild in the not too distant future myself.
Actually, the last time I found a 486 in the wild, it was an AT tower at a local surplus shop....the dialog that ensued when I Tried to buy it was kinda funny....
CN: "Hi, I'd like to buy this old thing."
COunter Dude: "What do you want with that!?!? That's 20 year old computer there. You can't do anything with that."
ME: "Retrogaming"
Counter Dude: "Oh, that's that guy over there's PC, he started the company and that's the first one built."
And to this day it lives by the window, hanging out under a potted plant. Never to run Doom or Monkey Island again.
When I do find hardware that old, it's usually behind goodwill in a palette being wrapped up in cellophane, which pisses me off. Or it's one of those 30-ish or so guys on e-bay who've had the same x86 desktop computers since 2005 with the same three-four digit price tag.
I've gotten to the point where I'm just staying happy with the 3 vintage machines I've chosen as my "lifers", but I got them a loooong time ago. The Tandy 1000A I got was right when the well was drying up - $10.00, mint, original almost. The 486 I have was actually a New Old Stock XT case originally I bought on E-bay in 2004 for $35.00 after stalking it for about 2 years prior. The 286 I have was $35 on E-bay and I bought it just because it was a GEM Computer Products machine, wound up replacing the Deskpro 286 I had before it. I'm glad I'm close to 100% satisfied with those with how hard it's gotten looking for old hardware. I either find people who understand but know of the whole gold-scrapper/E-bay/E-Waste Program thing that tends to go on - or I find people who don't understand why I want something that old.
Still though, I wish it were like the good ole days of the early 2000's when 8088-80486 was considered "junk", when I Started out. Back then I was bringing stray x86 desktops home like a madman, like you could almost swear they were like Herbie the Love Bug following Jim Douglas home even at times. I could practically bathe in the number of 486 Processors I had at one point alone. And I spent nothing or next to nothing on all of it. Those were some great times for this hobby.
I really think after awhile there may be, if there is not already, a small niche market for retro-hardware for the PC's just like with the Amiga and Cmomodore 64 stuff. XT-IDE was a response to this sort of thing IIRC b/c all the guys on Vintage Computer Forum(Federation) were sick of paying out the nose on replacement MFM/RLL Hard disks for their IBM XT's, so they made a new controller that takes up to a 136GB HDD and ah...what the heck, you guys already know the rest since there's several of us here using them. I've also seen some retro-hardware graphics cards and memory boards over the years. I think Cases and Power supplies are prime real estate, especially cases since I find even regular power users who love thier multi gigabyte I7 box but think the idea of having a lay-flat quasi-AT Style 80's looking beige case to be a cool thing. IT seems the normal case makers (Antec, InWin, Corsair, CoolerMaster, etc...) want to ride close but don't want to actually revive 80's industrial design even though it'd be cheaper and easier to emulate than some of the other stuff, plus it's kinda niche, though I DO Think InWin should re-release the 500 series (D500, Q500, I500 - I have a D500 on m y desk right now). The idea of making a full ATX case compatible with AT like the InWin Q500 tower was but with the looks of something older really intriques me and is something I may dare to try someday once I have the space and tools to do some metal work.