Oh man, now here's a big wall of text coming up....grab a coffee, you're going to need it.....
Since my oldest sister got a 386 for college in 1991, and I played Monkey Island on it, I wanted a computer of my own. Then my other sister got a Pentium 100 in 1995 and got internet access through the University. That fueled the fire more. But back then, computers were expensive and until the early 21st century I had no bloody idea that I would ever be able to afford one. I also kind of feared the "Nerd" stigma so I did not talk openly about my technological leanings as a kid.
I did not start in this hobby like most people do now. I started getting my hands on vintage PC compatibles LOOOONG before it was cool to do so. Back when this stuff was "old junk". I'd get laughed at by people in the know, and people not in the know just saw me as some dumb kid looking for a glorified games device.
I kind of got the "gamer" reputation because I started collecting Atari 2600 games in 1995, NES a year later.
Truth be told, I wanted a PC with Internet, and I started off with my second older sister's old Tandy 1000 SX in 1997! This was what I had for my FIRST computer. So I was retro from my first PC onward.
The problem with the Tandy though was that back then, computers were a mystery to the typical run-of-the-mill "for beer money" freelance computer techs and various other I.t. people I crossed paths with. They called it a "Dinosaur", a "Doorstop", a "useless piece of junk", and so on. I upgraded the RAM to 640K using Radio Shack's outdated ink-and-paper catalogs in-store - I paid $46 in 1998 to add like...eight more DIP IC chips to make the full 640K RAM the system supported just so I could play Ultima VI: The False Prophet off of a total of 11 360K DSDD Floppies. Playing that game was an all day affair so I only played it on Sundays. Traveling from Brittania to Trinsic took me till Lunch time on that pokey little 8088.
Then a family friend, one of those freelancer I.T. guys, Larry, he would come by to visit every so often and one day took a look at the Tandy and said if I got my grades sup in school he would build me a 486 based system that could run Windows 95 and have internet access. He also had a 4MB VLB video card for it (!!!) - god I wish he'd left that WITH the motherboard. Of course, he had a falling out with the fam and was never seen or heard from again.
The motherboard was a ZEOS 459-0001-GMB, aKa. the Zeos Upgradeable Systems Main board used in their 386 and 486 line of machines circa 1989-1990. It was a baby AT board, had one IDE channel, on-board floppy, on-board game, serial, and parallel ports. The CPU fit onto a daughtercard that attached to the motherboard via 2 connectors and held on by 2 screws.
After the Tandy died because the 8253 chip got spotty, I got rid of all of the Tandy stuff ( a move I sorely regret, hell, I wish I'd kept the old CGA RGB monitor it had....hindsight is 20/20, and at the time I had no idea this stuff would become collectable yet). I took to digging on the street curbs of Opelika and Auburn looking for dead x86 PC's to get parts from. Eventually I got 2 Packard Bell LPX Shell halves for 2 different models, used a Dremel to hack-them together properly, got a floppy drive in one pile, got a PSU in another (a WORKING PSU at that), and would have had a usable PC by this point had I had a video card, monitor, keyboard, and cables.....
Then things REALLY Began.....
I had joined a metal band, and our rhythm guitar player's dad was a Lawyer who once was a computer tech. He had some old systems at his house he wanted to give away, 2 of which were 386 based systems (one I found). The one I got initially was a Flight 386 SX built sometime around 1992, with a 124MB Maxtor 7120AT hard disk, 1.2 and 1.4M Floppy drives, an Addonics MON7c4B VGA monitor, and a Chicony 5661 Xt/AT switchable keyboard. It came home on February 9th 2001 - my 18th birthday - and that's when I started with this madness seriously. About 2 weeks in, I did my first motherboard swap, and after about six months of my mom witnessing that computer growing off thrift shop parts and hardware I found by walking home six miles from my school through downtown Opelika buying up every New-Old-Stock and cast-off PC component I could find, she put $150 into it and got us a modem, printer, and a mouse, and I got online finally via AOL 3.0 and 4.0 in July of 2001. I also started my old website called the Creeping Network around that time and learned HTML coding, how to use FTP, and so on, at that time.
When I was not rehearsing, practicing guitar, or anything, I was dabbling in legacy I.T. Word got around I liked fixing and was doing amazing things with these old machines - getting them online, and was taking it as a serious career path (I work in I.T. now). In a way, this hobby did kind of save me from a future of being a constantly broke, lonely, angry, and most likely homeless and destitute local rock musician as up til that point that's ALL I wanted to do with my life. My mom considered my room a computer version of "Monster Garage".
When word got around, I met my rhythm guitarist's sister who was server watcher-person for a local bank. She'd just got a circa 1995 IBM PC 330 100DX4 system from work and gave it to me for fixing her AMD 5x86 133 box, that was the first DECENT computer that ran a modern O/S on it - she later got a Data General Pentium, upgraded to that herself (she knew a lot of computer technical stuff as well), and gave me her AMD 5x86 133 based system as well (overclocked to 160MHz as well). Not long after that, the dad had another 386 - a GEM computer Products 386 that he bought new circa 1988 for about $3000 with the coolest looking full AT case that mimicked a Compaq Deskpro 386. That was originally my rhythm guitarist's and he gave it to me because it was a bloody basketcase, it blew the PSU and the Seagate MFM ST-421 HDD in the first month.
And to think, all this madness started with me just wanting to cobble together a cheap computer that could dial-up to the internet and allow me to pursue my music and other goals at the time, as well as play a few old DOS games like Monkey Island and Ultima VI: The False Prophet. Then with all the naysaying of IT people around me, saying a 486 can't go online, and all this other baloney, it made me mad, drove me to PROVE it could be done, and I kept trying it. My collection was not about value, it was about trying to PROVE someone, or someone's, wrong, and get all the benefits and fun of messing with older hardware up until about 2005 - I accumulated more machines eventually peaking around 2004 with a total of 32 machines ranging from a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a to that same old GEM computer case-modded into a micro ATX Pentium III system with half a gig of RAM running Windows 2000. Also, back then, it was CHEAP!
I could go into any thrift shop and buy a pile of 486s for the cost of a Papa Johns Pizza. The more shady, decrepit, or worn down looking the thrift shop, the better, because in Alabama at the time, the best, oldest, weirdest, coolest looking hardware was found in these little junk shops in places like downtown Montgomery or downtown Opelika that were run by little old ladies who had no idea what they had and just wanted to get that old boat anchor out of the store. If I walked in with a $100 bill at that time, I could have bought every computer, monitor, or piece of hardware in the store! It was insane. I really really miss those early days.
Also, I made friends through garage sales and thrifts? Ever brought a Ford Explorer to it's axles with computer hardware? I have. I had enough crap in there that it looked like Doctor Emmett L Brown tried to make a time machine out of it! The rhythm guitarist in the band followed suit not long afterward, I think I recall his back den was nothing but a mess of old computers and printers for about 2 years after that, and I was constantly trading/buying/taking the stuff he would not use or that I needed if possible.
Other fun memories of starting off and the early days. That band folded, me and those people all fell out of touch and stopped getting along, typical late teen/early tewenty something rocker bullshit. I eventually found another great source with this old man downtown who had a unlabeled shop full of vintage DOS era hardware out the wazoo. I bought so many cards, SIMMS, drives, cables, monitors, and other stuff off him, and some of that stuff is still out there in circulation to this day. In 2003 I started selling the computers I rebuilt/repaired on e-bay for bargain basement prices to people whom I assume where some of the other early collectors.
I would not trade the journey of this hobby for anything. I could write a literal book on it.
These days, I don't really "collect" anymore. I have three vintage machines, my Tandy 1000, GEM 286, and XT 486 Frankenputer that I am caregiver to, but all those experiences early on are visible in those machines, and some of the parts from those old machines from the old days live on in those computers. Crazy to think that's over 17 years ago.