badmojo wrote:

If I'm being honest with myself - I'm not always - I'm forced to admit that I enjoy buying and playing with hardware more than playing games. My projects are always aimed at getting the best hardware to cover a given period, and I have several beautiful PC's and consoles as a result. But once I finish a project and sit down to rock some games on it, my mind starts wandering and before I know it I have some other project on the go.

100% this! I just noticed I have several 386SX desktops and I'd be lying to myself thinking I need them all when one would be more than enough. It's just a great feeling getting something this old to work and deciding which video/sound card to install this time. Then again, I'd hate to end up in a situation where I have one working rig without a backup. We are talking about decades old hardware here, and it's unlikely that it all stays in working shape for the next 20 years that I intend to use it. If something major would fail I'd never forgive myself for previously selling stuff that would be insanely expensive, hard or in many cases, impossible to find at that time.

Yep same, I enjoy collecting and playing with the computers more than playing video games these days. My fascination is with the design and aesthetic of machines more often than not. I just LOVE looking at them and firing them up, I don't even really do much with them anymore tbh. 🤣

Malik wrote:

I would say Vogons has evolved rather than 'lost focus'. There are a lot of classic hardware and software related discussions going on here more than anywhere else. (Although I admit, sometimes I get tired of seeing repeated questions and discussions again and again. Still, I try to reply when I see topics of my interest.)

And coming back on-topic, I wanted to put in my thoughts, until I realized this thread started long ago and I have already posted about 5 years ago. 🤣

5 years ago was a long time ago 🤣
Many things have changed for me.

I do like the symbiosis that's going on here. Vogons has evolved and became a knowledge base with knowledgeable people and what I also like is that every field seems to have its own specialists, so to say. And on top of that it's fun to read and has relatively little drama 😜

King_Corduroy wrote:

Yep same, I enjoy collecting and playing with the computers more than playing video games these days. My fascination is with the design and aesthetic of machines more often than not. I just LOVE looking at them and firing them up, I don't even really do much with them anymore tbh. 🤣

I build computers also just for the fun of building them and then stabilitytesting them. Or at least this often happened this way.
Some of my rigs did end up seeing heavy use and some of them last even till this day! And the vast majority of them turned out to be very stable.

I registered at this forum because of its classic hardware section, which contains lots of information I can’t find anywhere else, I like sharing some of my own stuff and knowledge, and to chat about old hardware in general. I understand the rest of this forum is to a large degree emulator related, but that doesn’t have my interest. In fact, I have never even used an emulator.

I like really old hardware; I like restoring, building, upgrading and configuring 90’s pc’s, up to the standard that they look and work (almost) like new and are authentic. To a lesser degree I also like gaming on those pc’s, but my time is limited and most games require investing tremendous amounts of time. If I want to play an old game, then I prefer to use the old hardware, because it feels authentic, it is part of the experience. Half the experience, using an emulator, means very little to me. But the part of my hobby I like most is the hunt. I love finding great deals, picking them up and then discover the seller has lots more or that something looks like new while the photos in the ad were horribe 😀

My collection consists of several classic pc’s and game consoles. In the last 15 years I have had the pleasure to try out many different computers and game consoles, from the late 70’s up to ca. 2000, but I enjoyed none of them as much as my 90’s pc’s. Probably because those were part of my youth, but also because older 1980’s computers and games are very limited in terms of graphical performance. For grainy 2D games I rather use a Super Nintendo than an old PC XT system (with noisy hard disk), also because Nintendo systems have the best 2D titles, ever, period 😊 (Sega Mega Drive titles are also nice 😊 )