I feel the same with IBM computers, they are The One for me. IBMs are also super rare here so it's a challenge to get anything IBM related.
Sure I could buy from Ebay and pay the overinflated reseller prices but it's just not fun (or cost effective). I'll just have to wait.
My current dream PC is the IBM PC AT.

Anything gateway2000. I would love one but never see them come up where I am.

This is likely going to be a semi-long list, but here's a few computers I've wanted to build/buy for a while:

A full-tower ATX dual Pentium Pro 200MHz server with 256MB of SDRAM and a few 4 or 8GB SCSI drives in RAID, with a tape backup drive, running Windows NT 4.0 server. This would be a main server to drive a vintage network of "meh," size, running dedicated servers for various late 90's games and running as a file server.

If you're talking going fully unrealistic, I'd really like to have a full-blown internal 56k dial-up network using Pentium III Xeon rack servers and enterprise class network switches and modems and the such, with my own mediocre websites for file directories and other things, and then a few servers dedicated to running a large amount of websites ripped from archive.org and stripped of anything but the original code and files, serving computers in a massive warehouse divided into smaller rooms by year of manufacture for each computer. What I would do with this, I have no idea. I could run a massive multiplayer death match in Quake III or something from the sections 1998 and up? How many people are really going to want to sit in a large, noisy room that sounds like it has 100's of small jets revving in it while playing 20+ year old games? How am I meant to keep said thousands of total computers in optimal shape and dust-free?

I'd like an 8088 based machine at some point, doesn't have to be an IBM, with a 20MB HDD or something like that in it, just to sit down at and mess with DOS and MS Works or some weird stuff like that.

More realistically, I'd like several Pentium II or Pentium III based machines with discrete graphics of some sort in their own little setups to have LAN parties for old games with. I did this before, but on a very limited scale, and there were only two late 90's computers in there, the rest were mid-Windows XP era. There is something far better about playing old games like that with friends in the same room on your own little network than just playing games with people online.

ENIAC.

Can emulate ANYTHING!
And think of all the free time I'd have!

For me it would be these :

• IBM System Unit 5162 (XT-286)
• Apple Macintosh SE/30 or IIfx (or even a G4 MDD DP)
• Logabax Persona 1600 (Olivetti M24 rebadge)
• Anything that is in a full-tower case, really.
• Any old system that has EISA and PCI (such as those NEC Proserv-something with dual Pentiums)
• Any system that can take two or more CPUs
• Alaris Cougar motherboard (the elusive one)
• Any NexGen Nx586PF system

There's more of course, but...

bjwil1991 wrote on 2019-12-30, 23:21:

Amiga 600
Tandy 1000 RL (EX or HX as well) --> never had a Tandy and they certainly look cool, especially with DeskMate on a ROM on certain models.
Any IBM terminal or computer (PC AT 5170, 3740 Terminal/PC, ThinkPad 701c, and so on)

Your dreams are rather easily convertible. I own two Amiga 600 (once had four!), a Tandy 1000 RL/HD (not even released here in Germany), and an IBM 5150 incl. the 5153 color monitor. None of these were hard to get, nor expensive.

Computers I'd like to get some day: Altair 8800 or IMSAI 8080, Draco, some SGI Indy, Octane, etc.

Always wanted one of these back in the day:

C for Cray series.

My upgrade path was potentially a Commodore 64 -> Cray 2 supercomputer. Alas, I was short on pocket money.

Get a Cray 1, XMP, or YMP. The chassis doubles as furniture. Just ask Ben and Bob.

The Cray 2 was indeed badass.. for 1985 it cranked out almost 2 billion floating point operations/s (1.9 GFLOPS), performance that would take 15 years before mere mortals could afford it, which is roughly a pentium III 750MHz circa 2000.

The killer was the power bill! 200 kilowatts per/hr.. at 10c USD/kwh, that's $20/hr round the clock or about $14k/mo. Although I believe the contracts were many millions of USD/yr and came with on-site dedicated maintenance staff; so power was little more than a rounding error (and might not have been costed back then at government research sites).

Cray is still at it today, landing a 600 million USD contract this year.

1) the original Compaq DeskPro, like the one shown here.

2) a Tandy 1000 of some sort.

3) a Toshiba "laptop" with a gas plasma screen (like a T3200).

4) a Compaq Portable II.

5) an Amiga 500.

Spent some of my college years at CU Boulder, and sprinkled about the dorms and buildings, every couple hallways, was a tiny and beautiful dark wood desk with phosphor lit green TTY terminal and heavy black keyboard.

I could login, check and send email, telnet to other machines on and off campus, and finger/who/etc other accounts and see their status.

Would love to jump back in time and interact with them again. I'm not sure what they were (make and model wise), but have very fond memories of the experience.

I'd get myself a terminal as well for UNIX/Linux commands. Weren't terminals connected to UNIX mainframes at that time back then?

Yup; the little terminals I used were connected with serial cables having connectors that looked like squashed versions of today's ethernet connectors.
The cables typically ran to patch panels or wall jacks, and from there to some central unix machine (which I never saw).

Unfortunately back then I was a unix newb only having windows 3.1 and dos at home, so didn't have the where with all to explore the system much beyond the basics.

The NEW Mac Pro with dual displays will suffice for now.

Soviet 'mass-produced' PCs:

Full-up ES1841 (CGA with HDD, RAM expansion to 640k conventional or 1 mb ramdisk ).
Non-existant (in working condition) compared to rare nowadays ES1841 basic config (CGA,512k RAM, 2 FDDs - had one at home during early middle school - with 1 mb ramdisk which i would gladly swapped for 128k conventional RAM back then - and never realized that there was composite TV-out in CGA card as last soviet TVs had composite line via SCART and not RCA).
http://www.leningrad.su/museum/show_calc.php?n=248

Or more 'domestic' FULLY slotted (with maxed up RAM expansions and disk controllers) Poisk 'keyboard-PC'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisk_(computer)

And 8-bit (i8080) Mikrosha
http://www.leningrad.su/museum/show_calc.php?n=286

Most of 'em (and other soviet pcs/hcs) were brutalized or destroyed by 'gold diggers' as their designs included significant amounts of gold and silver in chips, soldering and contacts...

Unfortunately i'm too bad at soldering to vet, repair and keep such 30+ year old hw running to even bother...

1) A facsimile of every PC I ever owned. (At least the primary ones.) I'm very close to completing this goal.

2) A Sharp X68000. I have no idea what I will do with it exactly. I'm not super excited about all the arcade ports for it. I just want to use one, learn 68K programming on it, and look at that sleek, sleek design that almost looks modern still.

3) There was an ad in the computer magazines back in the 386/486 days. It had two laptops side-by-side, with Win3.1 running Paint to show the color VGA LCD. I don't remember the two brands, but I'm 99% certain one was Toshiba. It was meant to show the superiority of one over the other. I don't remember for sure whether I was more impressed by the one the ad was selling or the underdog, but I want to someday locate that ad and find the laptop I used to drool over. Then I want to take a business trip and heft that thing onto the tray table to make up for all those car rides where I would be in the back seat, just staring holes into that page.

4) I want to complete my PCjr and Tandy 1000 RL-HD. I've got their original keyboards, now I just need their appropriate monitors. IBM 4863 and Tandy CM-11.

Bonus 5) I really want the HDD in my PS/2 model 30 to work. It worked a little bit when I first got it, but it's just sick with seek errors now. Formatting ends literally with more bad sectors than good. (Or would, if I let it go on long enough to finish.)