jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-05-21, 18:08:

paradigital wrote on 2023-05-21, 10:56:

Is a great curiosity, but most retro enthusiasts want to feel the physical hardware, so PCemu can only marginally reduce the tar […]
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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-21, 10:46:

PCemu.

Is a great curiosity, but most retro enthusiasts want to feel the physical hardware, so PCemu can only marginally reduce the target market, nothing more.

I’d imagine that the biggest driver to currently reduced prices is the cost of living crisis being faced by most western nations due to the war on Ukraine affecting global food prices and disrupting the supply chain for a lot of new products, which has a knock-on effect of an economic downturn.

Legacy hardware is a finite resource that is reducing in usable quantities relatively consistently (thanks entropy!), as such prices will in general only increase with time.

I bet this applies to others, but I've been interested in this stuff since it was current, and then COVID came and I was bored at home... Some of that could be wearing off too.

COVID definitely played a role there, on multiple fronts. Many people were stuck at home, so more people started buying more content online causing shortages. These shortages (if applicable) were already present for retro hardware (prices of certain hardware was already going up quite steeply before COVID was even a thing), but the pandemic along with crypto mining (which may also have been at least partially caused by the pandemic) caused shortages of certain parts which also 'normalized' the higher prices for hardware somewhat, making people more willing to pay up for the increased prices.
Some of the people stuck at home may have also made retro pc computing their new hobby and in turn create more videos about retro computing with more people to watch because they were also stuck at home.
I can imagine some of these people were basically not even that much into retro pc computing to begin with, but were just basically riding the wave of increased retro pc computing popularity. Prices just went ballistic!

Now that the pandemic is over (and hopefully it will stay that way), it's reasonable to assume prices overall will likely sag for a bit. But for how long? That's the question 😋

I also agree that the war in Ukraine and the post-covid hangover will cause a (temporary?) dip in economies worldwide, but this retro pc stuff is finite. The number of retro pc hobbyists is in a way also finite, but way more flexible. And as long as scalping remains a thing, they will help to artificially jack up prices for as much as they can.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-21, 11:41:

I doubt that. Like I said, majority of interested people tend to pay more interest to game stuff an not ugly gray boxes from 90s […]
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video just increases interest in old hardware

I doubt that. Like I said, majority of interested people tend to pay more interest to game stuff an not ugly gray boxes from 90s. That also applies to old consoles. Because emulation is more convenient.

Because it's the fastest P3 you can build?

PIII itself is redundant, unless it comes with additional things that is usually associated with it.

There is an overall increased interest in building your own PC which is something that was going on for a while before COVID hit. Back in the 90's and early 2000s barely anyone knew how to build or troubleshoot PCs, so anyone who had some basic knowledge could even make some nice money out of this. But these days, currently basically everybody knows a brother or a next door neighbor who knows his (or her) way around computers, knowing your way around PCs isn't a rare thing anymore, it's way more common knowledge these days. Every streamer (who was stuck at home because pandemic) wanted to build a new blingbling PC.

And many of the people who learned how to build computers recently may still have some urge to explore eras like the P3 era (especially since P3 and 3dfx happen to have good overlap).
Back in the old days, you had to be some depressed geek if you were interested in tinkering with those grey old boxxes, but now PCs are shiny stuff with lots of LEDs and having a good rig (especially a good graphics card) became more of a status symbol (because of covid basically), so interest in the old stuff also increased. And with increased interest in the new came increased interest in the old.

In a way PIII is redundant, but retro pc computing as a whole is just as redundant. It really depends on how you want to look at it.
As a retro pc platform P3 is one of the better ones, imho of course.

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-22, 11:38:

There is an overall increased interest in building your own PC which is something that was going on for a while before COVID hit […]
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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-21, 11:41:

I doubt that. Like I said, majority of interested people tend to pay more interest to game stuff an not ugly gray boxes from 90s […]
Show full quote

video just increases interest in old hardware

I doubt that. Like I said, majority of interested people tend to pay more interest to game stuff an not ugly gray boxes from 90s. That also applies to old consoles. Because emulation is more convenient.

Because it's the fastest P3 you can build?

PIII itself is redundant, unless it comes with additional things that is usually associated with it.

There is an overall increased interest in building your own PC which is something that was going on for a while before COVID hit. Back in the 90's and early 2000s barely anyone knew how to build or troubleshoot PCs, so anyone who had some basic knowledge could even make some nice money out of this. But these days, currently basically everybody knows a brother or a next door neighbor who knows his (or her) way around computers, knowing your way around PCs isn't a rare thing anymore, it's way more common knowledge these days. Every streamer (who was stuck at home because pandemic) wanted to build a new blingbling PC.

And many of the people who learned how to build computers recently may still have some urge to explore eras like the P3 era (especially since P3 and 3dfx happen to have good overlap).
Back in the old days, you had to be some depressed geek if you were interested in tinkering with those grey old boxxes, but now PCs are shiny stuff with lots of LEDs and having a good rig (especially a good graphics card) became more of a status symbol (because of covid basically), so interest in the old stuff also increased. And with increased interest in the new came increased interest in the old.

In a way PIII is redundant, but retro pc computing as a whole is just as redundant. It really depends on how you want to look at it.
As a retro pc platform P3 is one of the better ones, imho of course.

Kinda agree, but to enjoy the retro you had to have lived it, we are spoiled with cpus with 20+ cores, that a pentium with HT is nonsense.

On a side note.
I have noticed recently that components are running out on respectable vendors like mouser or farnell, and prices in ebay are way higher than in aliexpress.

I'll admit I was quite happy to know that Nvidia is apparently halting its GPU production until June or something like that to avoid overstock. Especially after the shenanigans of the past few years with GPU pricing and "forced scarcity" for several reasons.

I think with everything that went on more and more people are finally realizing that they don't need the latest hardware or that they actually don't want to play the latest games. As I read elsewhere, it's good to know that people can still recognize what a bad deal looks like.

As we get older the nostalgia scope advances, I'd say all around Pentium III (my absolute favorite platform and era too) and Pentium IV will start to get the nostalgia effect in a more pronounced way, but as they were from a more spread out era in terms of production all around the world I think the prices will keep under check. I can only imagine what today's kids will feel like towards their first tablet or smartphone in which they saw their childhood videos and played their games, maybe nothing at all really, and just remember the content itself.

Any chance summer seasonals make people more interested in being outside than buying old computer parts?

That would be nice, but it would probably mean less non professional seller will be selling as well.

I've pretty much stopped buying hardware now (at 60 years old, I have more than I'll ever be able to test anyway). Buying DVDs and Blu-Rays now. Currently working on getting the complete Doctor Who collection 😀 Got over 1000 discs to watch (probably watched about a quarter so far). Given up with live TV 😀

andre_6 wrote on 2023-05-22, 16:53:

As we get older the nostalgia scope advances, I'd say all around Pentium III (my absolute favorite platform and era too) and Pentium IV will start to get the nostalgia effect in a more pronounced way, but as they were from a more spread out era in terms of production all around the world I think the prices will keep under check. I can only imagine what today's kids will feel like towards their first tablet or smartphone in which they saw their childhood videos and played their games, maybe nothing at all really, and just remember the content itself.

This a really interesting observation. What will kids today be nostalgic for in 20 years? They're probably playing semi-generic games on their iPads, iPhones, and Android tablets - whatever their parents are willing to hand them today. Will they be able to find these games later? Will they search for something like "shiny balloon game with cat characters" and get 1MM results and never find their childhood favorite game again? Even if they do find it, it might not be available for download or purchase anywhere. Maybe they'll at least get a couple screenshots, something to remind them of what they played. We might be entirely moved onto new architectures by then, think the M1 chip but with 20+ years of advancement.

In response to the topic of retro hardware prices coming down - I've seen a mix. Some things keep going up, like AWE64 gold cards. There used to be a soft limit around $200 but lately it's been going up to $250-$300 which fortunately don't seem as attractive and they're taking longer to sell. AWE32 cards are still more accessible and are probably fine for most people. I used to scroll my watched searches and find everything already sold, but not so much lately. Other parts aren't quite so ridiculous. I see some decent SS7 motherboards for $100 or less. Voodoo2 still seems wild - I wish I had bought a beautiful matching set of Voodoo2s for $400 last summer, but they were gone by the time I realized the deal.

Just my 2 cents but I also feel that many people use them to learn on. I did that 20 years ago. I bought several lots of computers from the 95 era from schools and practiced a lot on them with tearing down and building them. I had a few with the Kingston processor upgrades, etc. This is likely very common and with people bored at home it may have increased. Also a lot of retro computers still have uses as I have noticed. I was gifted a Compaq Contura from my former boss of the company I work for and it was from 1992, it came with dos originally, but was upgraded to windows 95. It had a full Microsoft office install and everything. I could totally write my papers on it today and finding software for it was fun. I also got a printer port to Ethernet adapter. I also just picked up a IBM thinkpad 760EL that was used by someone to play card games on it.

I also just fixed up a dell d430 rebuilding it and I use it as a work laptop (I work in health care as a manger in a group home). All of it parts are old, but still functional and with some upgrades, it works well still today. its has a intel u7700 1.3 ghz core 2 duo 64 bit, 2 gig ram, 126 gb SSD with a ziff to m.2 adaptor, bluetooth module, and cingular wireless. It is a great combo of old tech and new tech, though has its limitations, it is fast enough. boots in 1 minute 9 seconds compared to 6 minutes in its heyday. It runs q4os 64 bit linux based off debian

old computers are also great for learning Linux as well, even those ones from the old day, I contemplated installing greycat linux on the compaq contura.

It is just super fun to tear down and rebuild the older computers and the tech they had was very interesting at times.

Cosmic wrote on 2023-05-23, 02:50:

Some things keep going up, like AWE64 gold cards. There used to be a soft limit around $200 but lately it's been going up to $250-$300 which fortunately don't seem as attractive and they're taking longer to sell.

Looking at the sold items on ebay I see 10 x AWE64 Gold cards sold for 120-180 Euro. Only 2 are >200 and 2 are even under 100 Euro. (Shipping costs not included and I didn't check the details of the auctions. And only looked at cards without box. Some of them were also located in the US).

I think the market has stabilized. Although the asking prices did not significantly drop, I believe there is less buyer interest.
Living expenses are rising, which is decreasing demand for "luxury" goods like overpriced vintage components.

the awe64 gold is my barometer. i built my first retro pc back in 2007. price back then on ebay was $1.

i don't subscribe to the cultural scope of nostalgia advancing. first is first...there was already a golden age of computing and it won't be repeated. future hipsters will be nostalgic for that specific period for its coolness factor despite it technically occuring before their childhood.