my solution to this problem is to never finish a build 😁

seriously though, for me it is more about building it than having something "finished", I usually always keep tinkering with any PC, changing out hardware, tweaking here and there, switching cooling solutions or cases.
I do try to always keep my main workstation operational though ^^

My main problem is that I have 2 finished builds and with them I can play everything from my early pc days from 1988 to early 2000s and that fully fills my need for nostalgia and old games that I want to play. That is why I have noticed lack of motivation to finish my other builds that I have started. All of the unfinished builds have something special about them like rare parts used or specific theme which gave me inspiration to start doing them, but because they really don't add anything that I can't do with my 2 finished builds I seem to always lose motivation to finish them at some point.

It's still much better than losing interest before finishing a build...

The journey is the destination.

I started because i wanted to play the games of my memories, maybe sometime i will, maybe not.
It does not matter. You have to do what makes fun at the moment.

For a lot of people, the games justify the builds, since most people aren't willing to use them as "daily drivers" the way you would have when it was the current gen hardware. In some cases you just can't... Chrome would consume more memory for one tab than a pre-Pentium 4 machine would have installed. So, games and a couple other esoteric softwares pretty much become the purpose of the build.

However, if you're not an avid gamer, that's only going to hold your interest for so long. For some of us, the hardware IS the goal. Old PC hardware is interesting - it had a lot of personality. At least before Windows abstracted everything and made it all just kinda work (after fiddling with drivers enough.) Those frontier days were a wild ride for a lot of us here, and the hardware is a portal back to that time when computers were new and exciting, breaking new ground and overcoming limitations. Now they're kinda just a tool.

If that describes you, then you might just have to find a way to satisfy your interests without deluding yourself that it has to be a useful gaming machine afterwards. Some people just buy interesting hardware, and sell something they're done with to fund it. (Others just keep it all.) Maybe it's a shelf ornament that you can occasionally turn on and play with. You'll have to decide if you're OK with that.

For me, I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at my pile of beige. I do enjoy a game every now and then, so I'll keep them ready to spin up and play. But, I also realize a lot of my fascination is just having these little time-machines. Building them, fixing them up, restoring them to look as new as possible, getting all the video / audio switching stuff working, and so on. I also have aspirations to dive into hardware and software development. I've done some of each before, but not for retro PCs, so the landscape is ripe with possibilities ... and that's exciting to me.

Just gotta find your niche. Or, content yourself with one chameleon PC you can justify keeping tucked away when / if you feel like indulging in some old-school capture the flag. Remember that it's a hobby -- it doesn't have to make sense.

SirNickity wrote:

For me, I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at my pile of beige. I do enjoy a game every now and then, so I'll keep them ready to spin up and play. But, I also realize a lot of my fascination is just having these little time-machines. Building them, fixing them up, restoring them to look as new as possible, getting all the video / audio switching stuff working, and so on. I also have aspirations to dive into hardware and software development. I've done some of each before, but not for retro PCs, so the landscape is ripe with possibilities ... and that's exciting to me.

When i began this my wife once said "You love that sound." (Meaning the sound of a loud 3,5" floppydrive, and of course she said it in german) That's the thing, the feeling (and getting crazy) the smell. The smell of an old manual...

SirNickity wrote:

For a lot of people, the games justify the builds, since most people aren't willing to use them as "daily drivers" the way you w […]
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For a lot of people, the games justify the builds, since most people aren't willing to use them as "daily drivers" the way you would have when it was the current gen hardware. In some cases you just can't... Chrome would consume more memory for one tab than a pre-Pentium 4 machine would have installed. So, games and a couple other esoteric softwares pretty much become the purpose of the build.

However, if you're not an avid gamer, that's only going to hold your interest for so long. For some of us, the hardware IS the goal. Old PC hardware is interesting - it had a lot of personality. At least before Windows abstracted everything and made it all just kinda work (after fiddling with drivers enough.) Those frontier days were a wild ride for a lot of us here, and the hardware is a portal back to that time when computers were new and exciting, breaking new ground and overcoming limitations. Now they're kinda just a tool.

If that describes you, then you might just have to find a way to satisfy your interests without deluding yourself that it has to be a useful gaming machine afterwards. Some people just buy interesting hardware, and sell something they're done with to fund it. (Others just keep it all.) Maybe it's a shelf ornament that you can occasionally turn on and play with. You'll have to decide if you're OK with that.

For me, I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I look at my pile of beige. I do enjoy a game every now and then, so I'll keep them ready to spin up and play. But, I also realize a lot of my fascination is just having these little time-machines. Building them, fixing them up, restoring them to look as new as possible, getting all the video / audio switching stuff working, and so on. I also have aspirations to dive into hardware and software development. I've done some of each before, but not for retro PCs, so the landscape is ripe with possibilities ... and that's exciting to me.

Just gotta find your niche. Or, content yourself with one chameleon PC you can justify keeping tucked away when / if you feel like indulging in some old-school capture the flag. Remember that it's a hobby -- it doesn't have to make sense.

Best response so far. Yeah, I realize that this time I'm not sure I want to sell it, especially because I'd probably lose more money that way. I think most likely I'd use it occasionally and that would be ok. But you're right, it doesn't have to make sense. Nor do I have to justify it to myself to have a reason to have it by setting it up with a ton of games. I'll probably just set up what I can and just stop whenever. But yeah, it seems I like the build, the hardware, and os more than the actual playing of games that my modern machine can do just fine.

I do enjoy testing different combinations of hardware and benchmarking them. Also I enjoy trying to fix hardware that I have trouble with, but that doesn't equal same as a build to me. To me a build is a finished product that I have some use for and reason for keeping it ready to be turned on any time. That's why I am stuck with 2 finished builds currently that I mentioned in the earlier post and unable to find motivation to finish my half-finished builds even though they are interesting as they are.

The way the PC industry is jettisoning all things legacy, pretty soon 32-bit PCs will be retro, and you might have to keep a Core i5 around to run Windows 7. hehe That'll run pretty much anything back to Win 98 at least.

I had a little crisis of conscience once, too. I had started this little project to re-build my first from-scratch PC -- a DX2/66. One thing led to another and I ended up with a 386, and a Pentium before I finished my 486. I found my old Pentium II at my mom's place and thought... you know... every other gen up to current would be kind of fun. Then I was so close, I may as well fill in the gaps. And then "hey, I never had a socket 423 P4... that could be interesting.." You know how it goes.

So as I was looking over this row of PCs that overlap in capabilities, the only thing really different was the hardware and the OS I installed on it. I had a moment of reflection and realized that a good chunk in the middle was totally redundant -- I could run all that software on my main PC... faster.... at higher res. So why have all this stuff?

But then, I thought... F-- that. I love these things.

So I bought a PCjr, a Tandy, and a 286, and haven't really had any regrets since.

McBierle wrote:

The journey is the destination.

Quoted for truth. It sounds to me like OP and many others (I just commented in the other thread about losing interest in the hobby) here just plain enjoy hunting for parts and building the PC, benching and tweaking, and not so much using them. It doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, maybe try selling the computer for a small profit after you finish building it? or is that not lucrative? Build for friends?

If all else fails, grab a few programming books for $2-3 a piece from goodwill and start learning how to make use with your systems beyond just gaming (if you haven't already done so).. It may seem scary or boring at first but you may get hooked, then you'll get thousands of hours of fun and a seriously useful skill.

I don't think I would ever sell my retro parts/computers. I have found lots of things cheap that would sell on ebay for hundreds of euros. Most people here don't understand that such old computers and parts can have value. If I were to sell all my retro stuff, I think I could get 10 times what I have paid for them. I like too much this stuff, so I can't imagine a situation where I would sell any of them.

I think it all depends why you are building machines. Personally I like the hardware and building extra machines with different parts (multiple 486 systems for instance in ISA, MCA, EISA, PCI, VLB flavors) is fun.

Not everything I build is for gaming, I have machines dedicated to old analog video capture and editing. Some machines are just for old apps I like to play with.

Once built machines can sit around for months or in some cases years until I want to mess with them again.

Quite a bit of what I snag is free or close to it. I tend to pick on items that have no current collector value but I find interesting which is how I got into Amigas for instance ages ago. I started collecting 3dfx cards I never had when people were tossing them out. Same with Athlon era hardware with bad caps that were an easy fix.

There are periods where I snag a motherboard and clean and repair it as needed and make sure it works 100% then let it sit for a long time until I want to do something with it. Some builds get gutted over time and interest changes and I need the case or whatever for something else.

Rarely do I but something together and think it is to close to something I already have then take it apart after fiddling with it.

rishooty: It is natural to loose interest in something you have become good at after doing it many times. Maybe you need to broaden your interest and goals by doing something related too but slightly differant than what you actually have been doing. Being an old fart I can tell you I have gone in and out of interest in old hardware but it seems I always fall back to it even if 5 years have gone by. So set a new goal like test some parts you have had laying around a few years and do not think about building, just the testing.

Moved to Milliways (seemed a better fit for there)

Losing interest after finishing a build -- anyone else have this problem?

Always and with everything... not just retro computers 🤣

Hobbies, food, wives... It's an ancient story that happens to the best of us.

I have had half finished builds sitting round over a year before finishing them. Often missing a small cheap part or cable causes me to put it on hold and then take forever to get back to it. Recently finished hooking up a midi stack through a midi thru box after I got the required midi and audio cables off ebay. I find finishing a build increases interest as I can approach it without the dread of figuring out cables and connectors and drivers and configs...I can just boot up and play. I dedicate aan hour each weeknight to retro gaming specifically.!

To be honest I have been this way for two years. At the end of two years, I've completed the systems in my signature, so now I am doing the final touches on them, rehousing this and that now that I have better cases, changing a video or sound card here and there, but mostly it's done. Now that the journey is over, the thrill of building is gone, and I can finally sit down, set up my 386SX with my MUNT-Pi and enjoy playing Indy256. It makes me feel.. at peace, really. So just finish the projects in your heads. Once they are done, you will relax out of it.

Horun wrote:

rishooty: It is natural to loose interest in something you have become good at after doing it many times. Maybe you need to broaden your interest and goals by doing something related too but slightly differant than what you actually have been doing. Being an old fart I can tell you I have gone in and out of interest in old hardware but it seems I always fall back to it even if 5 years have gone by. So set a new goal like test some parts you have had laying around a few years and do not think about building, just the testing.

I think this is the case. I'm so stuck on trying to relive the joy building and playing x game gives me that I always forget that the journey and the destination pretty much can't do that at this point, even if I keep changing it up.

I guess I need to find something related that isn't as mentally or physically draining now that I have a full time job. This is especially the case with anything related to programming or sitting at a desk, now that I do that 8 hours a day. Game collecting and cleaning up old consoles is pretty much done too, other than the occasional craving to play a particular game.

[EDIT] I'm thinking trying to actually learn soldering again? I think my problem is I'm too stuck in the realm of technology though.