Sums me up, I enjoy collecting and building than I do most games.

I like sound more than games so i spend a lot of time with hardware as well.
But its just like with anything - To some having an cool Retro Machine is like having an cool retro car.

I like to wrestle with the old hardware, being proud maybe have one of the last lasting systems worldwide *i know there are more people who own an older system* but the main group is very thinned out because of the scrapers and gold sellers. I really love that old technology, smell. The main reason for me its not only the build progress, its just the whole thing is just really nice thought that there`s only a limited people who still owns this stuff.. For my its hardware, the experience, software, games and everything around this nice hobby.

Only the bad thing is.. I just have alot stuff i just need to test, clean out, looking if special settings can be made.. if support processors i want to use. Solve problems the motherboard has.. This really taking for me a lot of time, thats why me building progresses are very slow at this moment.. I really like if i can fix every board i have to a fully working piece without any problems anymore.

You easily can say, i have been grow up from 1983 till now.. Computer just changed my life.. from boring to have a nice hobby to get proud of it.

People who are into "retro gaming" (don't like this hipster term a lot) on actual hardware usually only have old consoles since you can just hook them up and play old games without much trouble. Messing with old PC hardware is rarer, the stuff has a higher chance of being thrown/given away when it is seen as obsolete and maybe some just expect old games to play on their modern PC.

The hardware seems to be more readily available than a lot of the older games so I, too, have a lot more hardware than games at this time.

This thread makes a lot of sense. Myself i opened my eBay account almost a year ago. Main objective was to restore my first PC ever, a 386 DX 40. So i started to grab old hardware. Of course, retrogaming was a goal too, but suddenly this thing started to get bigger and bigger and now i own a lot of stuff that should be quite desirable by collectors.

I consider that i have 80% of the stuff that i've been setting myself to have. I've been collecting complete games, the ones i consider the most important for my retro gaming hobby. I've played a bit, here and there, but i've spent most of my time playing around with hardware rather than games.

My current goals:

Super Socket 7 machine:
- Needs a new case, probably will be a Gigabyte GZ-X1.
- Need to decide which motherboard will be final. Better candidates are the IWill XA100 Plus and the DFI K6XV3+ /66.

486 machine:
- Need to decide on the motherboard; Most likely to use A-Trend ATC-1425B due to be able to run PCI asynchronously for a 50MHz FSB.
- Need to decide on what is more interesting CPU build: 486 DX-50 or AMD 5x86 200MHz.

386 machine:
-Willing to get a horizontal AT case for a 2nd 386 machine;
-Need a decent 386 motherboard with replaceable clock osci;
-Goal is for a 100MHz Oscillator Crystal for a 386 DX-50 build; (Not that i need the extra speed, it is just something cool)
-Will use 10ns cache SRAM;
-Need to use fast RAM, at least 60ns sticks or 50ns (very hard to find);
-Will need a new AT case, will get a horizontal one which i never used;

Possible XT class machine:
-Might get a XT motherboard if the price is nice;
-If i get the board, there's a nice AT computer case i can get locally for theis build very cheap!;

Tandy 1000 RL:
-Owning such a system would tottaly replace a XT class system for obvious reasons;
-Further problems, like Power Supply for 115V VAC with propietary connectors not suitable for European operation;
-Cost of machine and shipping;

Hardware to get:
-A couple more 5.25 inch floppy drives;
-Boxed Adlib sound card;
-Boxed Sound Blaster Pro;
-Boxed Gravis Ultrasound;
-Yamaha FB-01 (if a cheap opportunity appears);

Games to get:

-Still i'm missing about 20 boxed complete games;

After i do this all, i'm pretty much finished. I think.....

EDIT: I just remembered something, i would like to get a Kryoflux USB device, to preserve my old floppies. These devices create pretty much 100% images of floppies. Too bad it is expensive.

I do more things involving development than gaming on my things...

carlostex wrote:

After i do this all, i'm pretty much finished. I think.....

You are never REALLY finished. I've given up on that idea a long time ago... 😀

Artex wrote:

You are never REALLY finished. I've given up on that idea a long time ago... 😀

Hey!!!

Don't you dare curse me!!! 🤣

Yea I often though "when it's all done I will sit down and play Wing Commander". Never happened 😁

I actually played most DOS games through DOSBox on my main desktop.

In a way it's a bit sad. But one day I should be finished.

I'm getting there. Just playing around with my 386 and 486 stuff to complete the cycle. Apart from that I really have everything, all the good Sound cards and MIDI modules. I've also done most videos I envisioned as well. I might review a few motherboards, but apart from that there is only so much to talk about.

To people who want a single machine to play Monkey Island, Wing Commander and Doom I will continue to recommend the Super Socket 7 platform. It's wonderful to work with and covers all the speed ranges for these games. Having a real 386 and 486 means a lot more work and money, but nice to see how things run on a real machine (not any different to SS7 I might add).

It's usually the serial and PS/2 mice I have that discourage me. So I stop this retro ball mouse crap and just cut to the chase with an optical...

We've done this already.
The Natural Evolution of the Retrogamer.

Big part of the retrogaming fun is setting things up, it's plain that when your spare time starts getting scarcer and scarcer...

Looks like I'm the odd-man out 😀 .

Yes, I play games more. And only old games - newest one is Doom 3 (close to 10 years old).

Why? Simple - I have very little room to store old computer hardware (mostly in the garage), I don't play online at all (I really suck at it 😵 ), and I seriously dislike online DRM (so the likes of Steam and Uplay are definitely out of the question).

Now don't get me wrong, I do like to experiment with the few computer parts and pieces I have - in fact, I finished rebuilding my old P4 Northwood about 3 months ago. It now runs Windows 98 SE and as many Windows-only games I currently have and can install without major issues or problems. And between this P4 ,my P166MMX, and my Core i5, I believe I now have enough to keep me going for quite some time. Then again, I read in another thread that Keropi has a Voodoo 2 in his P4 - and I do have a boxed, unopened Voodoo 2 1000 sitting on a shelf in the garage. Hmmm...... 😏

It's the hardware. Computers are like old cars and motorcycles. All very fun hobbies with a common factor, there are basket cases that are fun to look and talk about, then there are running examples. Nirvana.

I do retro gaming only very rarely, several times a year. Mostly it's either tinkering, or coding some DOS stuff.

Jorpho wrote:

We've done this already.
The Natural Evolution of the Retrogamer.

That thread is 10 months old. Not even sure that I was a member back then 😀

EDIT: nope, sure wasn't.

After a couple of years doing the serious collector thing - just gabbing as much stuff as I could and building / pulling apart / rebuilding machines - I've moved into a nice phase of cutting back the collection to a manageable selection of the stuff that I really like, and having some time to actually use it. I'm doing 50/50 playing games and messing around with hardware. I have 5 or so systems left that I really like, and still I refine them from time to time so I'll never actually "be finished", but it's very nice to finally use this great stuff I've slowly put together.

Playing games was always the goal.

My first obsession were 8-bit computers such as Commodore C64, Spectrums etc. I still have about 15 complete systems 😁 Next I switched to searching for a perfect mechanical keyboard! Some 25 keyboards later, I still haven't found it. Now it's retro computing!

Planning to start playing games soon tho 😁