When I started collecting some ~15 years ago, I collected mostly console games. Those games that I always wanted to play back in the day but couldn't afford. This was mostly Sega 8 & 16 bit. A few years later I wanted to discover more about different consoles. By then collecting turned more into hoarding... I just wanted to buy every game/system that was on the market. Some years later I realized this was too much, and sold off a big chunk off my collection. Now I rarely buy stuff anymore, but I enjoy fiddling with those old PC's and Amiga. It's pure nostalgia now!

I do it mostly for nostalgia. To experience things I was alive for an couldn't afford in some cases, and for a little bit of bragging rights.

I don't think I'm a traditional collector. My main motivation in building a bit of a game collection is purely in proper digital archival and preservation; the physical crap is clutter that I put up with.

On the hardware side the fun is in tinkering, I just really try to keep it somewhat focused. It's really fascinating to delve into relatively little known equipment, learn more about all the details and even modify things for improved functionality. The PC gear is all either inside one of my two retro builds (DOS/Win3.1 and 98SE/DOS) or spare parts from the process (which seems to never end). Kitting out and modifying a Sega Mega Drive and a Playstation 2 were fairly simple projects and the next thing I've been messing with is a Neo Geo MVS arcade board.

Nostalgia is a part of it, but I wouldn't say it's the main thing. This stuff really is unique to me.

Re-living my youth days and finally have hardware that I couldn't afford back then or didn't even knew existed. There is a certain nice feeling when you replay a game that you also played when you were 10 😀

petieken wrote:

When I started collecting some ~15 years ago, I collected mostly console games. Those games that I always wanted to play back in the day but couldn't afford. This was mostly Sega 8 & 16 bit. A few years later I wanted to discover more about different consoles. By then collecting turned more into hoarding... I just wanted to buy every game/system that was on the market. Some years later I realized this was too much, and sold off a big chunk off my collection. Now I rarely buy stuff anymore, but I enjoy fiddling with those old PC's and Amiga. It's pure nostalgia now!

I am like you....I started with a couple things after I found my old Pentium 1 6 or 7 years ago in the attic at my mothers...this led to Youtube videos and hoarding that found me getting everything I could find in both consoles / PCs / Amigas / Ataris / Texas Instruments / Coleco / Commodore / etc. By 2015 I had a TON of hardware and nothing to do with it as I also got into emulation, so I had all the consoles and games I wanted on my emulator PC and all the different computer hardware I wasnt actually using, just gathering it and putting it on shelves. So last January 2016 I started to sell off the hoard and by this past October had gotten rid of all of it outside my PC stuff, which I kept and will continue to work with, collect parts for and mess with system builds, research how they worked, and get them working. I dont regret getting of any of it outside two things, my Roland MT-32 and My Roland MPU-401 ISA Card. I wish I could take them back, but at the time needed the money so I sold them.

Now, I do it for the nostalgia, the retro fun, and the relaxation of messing with the older / retro stuff and working to build systems I would not have had the cash for when they were new. A part of me still does it for the collecting as much as I can part, but its focused to one thing, PC's...which is a LOT of things to collect, but at least I am using it!!

Since I am still a young teenager (14) I really never got to experience playing on a 486 when it was new, or a similar system since the first PC I got was a Pentium II 400..I guess I do it just for preservation of history and because it's just fun 🤣

Like cj_reha, I never knew 486s or pentiums when they were new. However being 18 years old, I knew the early 2000's. Back then we had a cheap PC that ran a Celeron Coppermine 633 with Windows 98 installed. This computer allowed us to play many late 90's games. Some of them were actually just kid games that I will probably never play again, but some other were cool games. I remember seing my big brother playing Age of Empires II, and I really like theses memories. I think it's already nostalgia even though this happened "only" 15 years ago, but I still really like that. We had also a "very old computer" like we called it back then that was given to us in 2002 and that was running Windows 3.11 but we never really used it. We also had a Game Boy Color.

But why are these important ? Because all of these really intrigued me ! especially the "very old computer" and the "color" in the "game boy color" name. I started to collect few game boy games apporximatively a decade ago (yeah I was still very young) ... when retro games were still cheap. Then I discovered other game consoles such as the super nintendo, n64, etc ... But like I said, this "very old computer" still was very odd to me, and I wondered what it could do. I don't really remember why I wanted to disassemble it, probably curiosity, but one day I took a look inside it and saw that *very odd to mee* ceramic CPU, which was a 486 DX33.

And this was the beginning of my interest in old PCs. After that I searched for informations and I saw that I was able to run Windows 95 ! This surprised me in a good way for me as it reminded me the old celeron we had in the early 2000s, I was actually able to do something with that computer ! (I really didn't knew anything about MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 and it seemed very complicated and unpratical). I discovered that I could play some simple games that ran on the celeron too. Unfortunately, it was too slow for most of them. I tried many upgrades (more ram, installing a DX2-66 ...) but none of them made it able to run the games I wanted. At some point I thought about buying a 5x86 as it was "taking the computer to pentium speed" but it was too hard to find (I couldn't understand and speak english as great as I can today). After this I bought a Pentium computer, and I also started to collect PC games as retro consoles games were getting harder to find for cheap. But again I discovered that a pentium still wasn't fast enough for some of the games we used to play.

All of this introduction where I only talk about myself to explain that I think I'm collecting retro games and retro PCs because many things I knew during my childhood always seemed mysterious (even though now I think that I know a big chunk of PC history). I prefered retro consoles games when I was younger (maybe because that was because everybody were talking about these), but when I discovered PC games I found them refreshing towards games I could buy on consoles (and also because games I couldn't find were available on the internet for free 🤣 ) I always lived with old games and I still don't get tired of them as I still find new ones that seem to be completely forgotten.

Since the beginning of my "1998 top performing gaming PC" I also discovered that I like to reproduce more or less a period of time that I wasn't able to know and that is still very close to what I knew when I was a kid as I was born in that same year. I really enjoy searching for informations, parts, etc for that computer.

Like I mentionned, I find retro PC games refreshing because some of them seem to be completely forgotten but I have the same thing with hardware. I managed to buy a lot of retro hardware over the year, and I really like to discover some cards that I didn't knew when I first looked for new parts for old computers. For example I knew that sound blaster cards were known to be great cards, but when I found this strange PCI sound card in a garage sale 2 years ago for 0.50€ with that "yamaha" chip I though to myself "why not ?". I tried it in my pentium 3 few month laters, but when I heared the midi sound it was capable of creating, I though to myself "wow this sounds really great ! That card is awesome !" and it made me very happy

In late spring, summer and autumn I often go to garage sales and flea markets. Most of the time at least once a week. And I really like the feeling that you can find something really rare, really odd, really interesting, etc or nothing at all (of course I don't really like to come back without anything, but that's how it works ^^). I like to discover things I didn't knew, things I never thought I could ever put my hands on (I once found a boxed Windows 98 on FLOPPY DISKS !). So yeah I think that I like to discover new old things 😁

More than just collecting I like to build systems that show you could theorically still live with that technology today, so I like to use them almost like main machines. First x86 computer I met in the past was the 386/486s in the early 90s and both in computer and console world any new days seems new technologies became reality. Let's think to the switch from a command o.s. to a graphical one, the switch from a 2D CGA graphic to a 3D SVGA one..
Nowdays everything seems to be standardized and I don't see passion in newer hardware in pc not to mention in the mobile sector.

For me, collecting retro hardware and software started out of a passion for oldschool FPS games. I'm sure like some people here and many more around the world, I have fond memories of sitting in my Dad's lap while playing Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem and the like. Going to work with him on the weekends since both of my parents worked and getting to play Doom on the HUGE 20" CRT monitor there. That always seemed to stick with me. Every subsequent PC I owned I found myself eventually installing Doom, UT99 and a whole slew of other games. I never played on consoles much. We had a PlayStation 1, a Nintendo 64, a PlayStation 2 and eventually an original Xbox all of which I enjoyed greatly, but it seemed PCs were for me. I haven't touched a console since 2002 or thereabouts.

Fast forward to around 2004 when I got my first job at a computer store. It was just a fairly average run of the mill family owned small business. The owner loved hardware and the other bloke who worked there was a hardcore Linux user -- and frankly should have been in a much higher paying job elsewhere. I was only part time but I spent my time there building and fixing computers. Customers would often leave their old computers aside when they bought new ones, and they let me take them home if I wanted too, and that's where my collection started. Innocent enough, really. A couple of computers here and there to play around with and experiment on without feeling bad about potentially breaking everything.

I found myself eventually collecting them. Different processors, different GPUs (I really love the good ol' GPU box / cooler art), motherboards and stickers. The collection of case badges and stickers has only grown since then. I got to keep ones from computers we made as well as collecting ones I took off of old PCs. Anything from the old Pentium I / II / III & AMD K6 / Athlon stickers out the back, to the then brand new and shiny Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Athlon 64 and so on. It's a whole other collection I still grow to this day.

Eventually the store closed down as online ordering became more widespread and popular with lower prices than a bricks and mortar retail store could never match. Closing up the store was what really kickstarted it. I was taking home boxes of motherboards, processors, GPUs that was anything from all but destroyed to brand new in the box. ATI, Nvidia, 3dfx, Gigabyte, Cyrix, Asus, Aopen, MSI, AMD -- if it was a brand that sold a PC product sometime in the last 15 years, chances are I walked away with something that day. Some standouts that I still clearly remember is the Voodoo5 5500 PCI that I'm still using to this day, sealed copies of Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP in their retail boxes, dozens of GPU boxes and a Lian Li PC60.

As high school went by and University started, I had less and less time and money to spend on it. Between University and my over the top World of Warcraft habit at the time, my collection simply sat and collected dust. Graduated and got another job. More disposable income meant more collecting. I found myself building all sorts of systems from all different periods. 386/486, Pentium Pro, Dual PIII, average Celeron "home" PCs. I made them and played games on them after work. There was a year or two where a day didn't go by without loading up UT99 or Doom on one of those machines. Quake 3 was eventually substituted for Quake Live on my main PC.

Lately, I've had the urge to experiment more with old hardware. Almost 15 years of building these old PCs in their time appropriate cases, with time appropriate hardware, while fun has gotten a little bit repetitive. Building a Socket 370 PC in a modern, upmarket case for example. With watercooling (been prototyping my waterblocks for CPU/GPU), tempered glass, sleeved cables, UV lights. Something that looks perfectly in-place with any modern PC setup, but it 100% oldschool power. I may do it, I may not. It seems a little blasphemous 😊

All in all, retro collecting for me serves as a way to remember the past and where I came from (so to speak), to preserve something that many people and businesses throw away as old and obsolete and a way to relax. Taking apart and building computers is quite therapeutic, but it is just too expensive to do it on new hardware. Being able to pick up an old IBM for $10 is much more reasonable and fun. I get a kick out of buying or finding these parts and checking through old magazines and catalogues to see how much this would have cost me to make when it was all new. I keep my case badges and stickers in a nice book with acid free lining that is timelined and annotated, and I always add to it. My GPUs sit on a shelf that I can see from my work area. My "main" retro PC sits right next to my main PC so when I get that urge to play some old games I just turn my chair around, plug in that CRT and go to town. My games are on my bookshelf because I refuse to pirate even old games. Everything else is boxed up and either in my garage or my storage unit. Can't fit it all in my home when I have others living here. 😵

I will try and be brief on this. The reason for me is pretty simple and straight forward.
There are basically two main reasons why I do all this.

The first reason is that I want to preserve the old legacy or that part of our history.
I wanted to preserve the history of home pc's from the nerd's machine in the
basement to the family's everyday driver. You know... The everything-internet machine.
This is from around the early 80's to around 2000/01 or something.
And because I have no indication that others are doing this in Denmark, at that extent.
Then I began collecting, just so at least something will be preserved and not scrapped.

The second reson is for pure nostalgic purpouse. As I have experienced computing from
the early 80's and onwards to around 2005. (I was born in 1976).
And I do want to play a couple of games from my teens now and then.
That however is something I see as a sort of bonus. The main focus is to collect hardware.
It is the main goal of the "madness".

keropi wrote:

Re-living my youth days and finally have hardware that I couldn't afford back then or didn't even knew existed. There is a certain nice feeling when you replay a game that you also played when you were 10 😀

Same here - I think a lot of people get nostalgic for places / experiences from their youth but for most there's no going back. I consider myself lucky that the digital worlds I grew up with are still accessible, and it turns out that building time machines to visit them is half the fun 😎

For me, at this point (and as others have said) it's just nostalgia. Recall a time when PCs were coming of age and the possibilities seemed endless. Fiddle with hardware that was revolutionary/unique back then - and will probably never see anything like it ever again. Play PC games that had great appeal at the time - and still do today. Most of all, relive the 1990s - a time period when computers and PC gaming became an integral part of my life.

As far as collecting itself, I'm going to say I'm no longer doing that. Any PC hardware I acquire today (retro or current) will be for repair/replacement purposes only; anything left that has no particular use will be sold. That's all.

For me, this has become a midlife crisis. 🤣. But at least I'm not buying sports cars. 😀

I started my collection with a Dell Dimension 4100 with Windows 98SE that someone brought me to dispose. I spent months with this as my lone retro system, and it brought back lots of great feelings of nostalgia. But my heart and nostalgia are biggest for the DOS era, so when I started getting DOS parts, I lost interest in Win9x or even Win3.x. I was in college during the DOS days, and have tons of great memories building systems and pulling all-nighters playing RPGs. So a lot of my motivation today is either replaying favorite DOS games, or playing great DOS games that I missed when they were new. It seems the hardware is a huge draw with a lot of folks here, whereas with me, it's the games. A good DOS RPG is like sitting down in front of Netflix and watching a great series (like X-Files, Lost, or Star Trek:TNG) from beginning to end. It might take weeks or months to get through it, but it's very satisfying.

My collection is pretty small compared to some here, but it's because I'm honed in to a very specific era: 1990 to 1997. That's when I was finishing college and starting my first job. I was single and most of my disposable income went into hardware and games. I subscribed to various PC gaming magazines and spent lots of time at game shops, like Egghead Software, Walden Books, B. Dalton Books, and CompUSA. Remember when book stores sold computer games? 😀

clueless1 wrote:

Remember when book stores sold computer games? 😀

I remember when they sold older games in book stores with new lower prices all in floppy version when I still had the 386. 😉

386SX wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Remember when book stores sold computer games? 😀

I remember when they sold older games in book stores with new lower prices all in floppy version when I still had the 386. 😉

Yes! I also remember Infocom games being the first computer games sold in book stores...because they were kind of a bridge between books and PC games. Loved their box art and design, and the touchy/feely/smelly thingies they included to enrich the experience.

For me its both nostalgia and for the fun of it. My favorite era is 98-04 I grew up playing with a lot of pentium III machines back in 2004 because that's all could afford was free I remember drooling over the brand new pentium 4 HT machines that our school upgraded to, lot of them where Dell Optiplex GX270's and they where fast for there time, I told my self I would save for a p4 machine and I never got one until 2008 from a dumpster that had coffee all over it, of course i cleaned it well and it worked afterwards. So now I pretty much hoard anything pentium 3, 4, K6 and Athlon XP related and Win98 and XP are my favorite go to operating systems and sometimes lubuntu.

Ive alway been really interested in maxing out my system like 1.4GHz celeron on a old intel bx boards or 4GB of RAM in my p4 rigs with 1TB HDD's, im always curious as to what there capability are.

I see me more as a retro PC caretaker than a collector.

The problem is that when you try to save everything retro PC related you happen to stumble upon it's not that different from hording. It's lucky that old PC-hardware dosn't need any kind of expensive special food.

I grew up with Windows XP... but I always liked Windows 98 better because it ran on DOS and seemed more lightweight (I really liked DOS for some reason, and still do... mostly because it's such a simple OS yet it can still do so much) so I would try to install 98 on newer systems with little success 🤣 When Windows Vista/7 came around I became an XP fanatic. Now with Windows 10... well, I'm a 7 guy for as long as MS keeps up the "service/subscription, not an OS" BS.

But I really have a soft spot for machines that were obsolete long before I was born. I want to build an XT someday, for instance. I love anything with an ISA slot.

But I also collect other old technology, such as cameras, typewriters, radios... you name it. I have a thing for old tech, I guess I like simplicity.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that I don't usually mod my preexisting systems,like ones I bought complete off ebay - if a part needs to be replaced, I'll find a similar replacement sure but I usually keep them original and if I need a retro rig I'll build it from ground up 😀