34. Get married and have kids so you'll only have a few hours at most for your hobby on the weekends.

I will say my 5 year old son gives me an excuse to play games and work on the computers. He really enjoyed helping me build him a socket A system that he uses just about every day playing all the older educational games I grew up on in the early-mid 90s.

Somewhere in that list: Go crazy spending on monitors, CRTS, scalers, VGA to HDMI converters, OSSC, etc to finally realize that what you really want/need does not exist or costs more than you are willing/able to pay . Have hopes up for OSSC Pro .

33. It is time to boldly go where many other men have gone before (and many have regretted): Start building an XT/AT system

I've never dived deeper than 386DX. And most of my pre-Socket 7 and non-ATX stuff is just for some occasional benching, not really playing anything. To my taste, beefy* Slot 1/Socket 370 system is enough for Win9x gaming.

*Coppermine/Tualatin 1 Ghz+

darry wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:08:

Somewhere in that list: Go crazy spending on monitors, CRTS, scalers, VGA to HDMI converters, OSSC, etc to finally realize that what you really want/need does not exist or costs more than you are willing/able to pay . Have hopes up for OSSC Pro .

I think this is a branching path for people who want to record/stream videos. It's a whole other rabbit hole, really.

darry wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:08:

Somewhere in that list: Go crazy spending on monitors, CRTS, scalers, VGA to HDMI converters, OSSC, etc to finally realize that what you really want/need does not exist or costs more than you are willing/able to pay .

^^^^^^^^

😁

*peeks innocently at a shelf full of extron&kramer gear*

I think this is a branching path for people who want to record/stream videos. It's a whole other rabbit hole, really.

That's more game console/old video players thing.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:16:

darry wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:08:

Somewhere in that list: Go crazy spending on monitors, CRTS, scalers, VGA to HDMI converters, OSSC, etc to finally realize that what you really want/need does not exist or costs more than you are willing/able to pay . Have hopes up for OSSC Pro .

I think this is a branching path for people who want to record/stream videos. It's a whole other rabbit hole, really.

I agree that it can be another rabbit hole if capture/streaming is the end goal . I just want the best visual experience possible (short of, in my case, using a CRT) while preserving 4:3 aspect ratio, having 70Hz refresh capability (where appropriate) and maintaining (near) integer scaling .

You forgot the most important part: play your favorite childhood games on your retro rig.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:39:

You forgot the most important part: play your favorite childhood games on your retro rig.

No one ever really does this 😁

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-28, 15:27:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-28, 14:39:

You forgot the most important part: play your favorite childhood games on your retro rig.

No one ever really does this 😁

yeah, if you actually make it to that part you're doing something wrong ^^

I feel personally attacked

😉

Also: you forgot the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia 😜

@appiah4

Very nice enumeration. I found myself on many points. Maybe not the exact sequence and not every single point, but all in all very nice 🤣 For example i found and used Vogons very late in my retro careere.
I have nearly finished all my dreams, in 7 systems, now. I „only“ have to switch some card (which i already have) and install/optimize the Software and i am done, but i am grounded by the family. Ok, i have to post and update the systems in Vogons if i am „finally“ done with the systems. It’s a really frustrating situation to have no further goals/builds. For my lowest system i went from a 386 (which was my entry point in retro computing in 2006) to a 486 ISA system and i can do all early DOS stuff what i want with it. Thy Olymp for me was to build and max out a !stable! 486 VLB system @40MHz FSB - and configure a GUS fully in Win95.
I started in 1991 with an AT and it was a stable but always slow and disappointing system - for me. So i have no wishes to spend money and time in such a system. And i think it never will happen ... 😉

Next Level could be to build a System in commission.

PS: I am building, stressing and benchmarking each system for a couple of months, but i play games on it for only a few minutes, maybe hours.

Awesome topic, I wholeheartedly agree.
I didn't take the exact same route but a quite similar one.

My experience has been a little different. I am 66 years old and at one time or another had most of these old machines. But I would just upgrade and move on, never really thought much about old computers. Then about 4 or 5 years ago I came across a huge stack of old computers in my local thrift store. Picked up an old Mac and a pentium 2 computer for $5 each. Came home and started searching the internet and found Vogons. That was the beginning of madness for me. Ended up buying most every computer that store had plus many more. My wife thinks i an senile. She may be right.

Thankfully I took a short cut

1. Become interested in a certain retro game or computer hardware
2. Find your way onto Vogons
3. Start reading up and accumulating information
4. Install dos box / munt and play 3 of your childhood games for about 30 minutes each, marvel at the MIDI sound and call it good.

Switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 meant that old DOS games were no longer playable, at least if you wanted sound. VDMSound fixed the problem and I used it for many years. Then I got a 64-bit OS which wouldn't run DOS programs at all. That finally brought me to VOGONS.

Retro rigs were for games that couldn't be played via emulation. Many Windows 9x games are still today difficult to play without original hardware. I remember getting POD (1997) to work was particularly aggravating. I have a Pentium MMX rig just for that one game.

Yeah Dosbox is awesome but I agree that Win9x is a different beast. Many games have patches (in fact all I play) either official or unofficial but there are still some games left which simply won't run on new platforms or operating systems.
And in my case it is really just nostalgia and collecting. No objective reason.

Others however are really playing those hard to run games and some might even run old applications.

some of that stuff happened but most of that stuff never happened to me. Mostly becasue I am cheap, and am a hoarder. I also know better about hardware limits and incompatibility. I have learned a lot tho from vogons people and it made me change my opinion a lot.