Surely not 😉

Since 64-bit PC era began in 2003 (20 years ago!) I have many x64 CPUs... but my desire is the 90s. I have loads of 286 to Pentium 3 stuff and newer too.

No, not at all.
My desire starts at the 80486 and ends at the K6-3+ / Pentium III

I have mostly 32-bit machines followed by 16-bit, then 8-bit, then 64-bit.

x86-64, PCIe, SATA... for me, it's all modern, and I don't count that as a part of collection.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:40:

x86-64, PCIe, SATA... for me, it's all modern, and I don't count that as a part of collection.

this

I really don't give a shit about anything after 2000

Ignoring daily drivers I only have the one a Win7 x64 PC which can also boot into WinXP x32 although I almost never do.
I've 2 pure XP x32 PC's
Then its a mess of dual 9x/2k builds.

But if you include the laptops for browsing, and other boring daily tasks It's probably close to matching my 32 bit machines

mm.. in my case, i think i have much more 8/16/32bits computers than modern ones, i think maybe 90% of my collection is hardware/software before 2000s

Yes, i have a lot of Pentium 4+ CPUs, PCI-E cards, etc etc in a box, but i dont care about them, is stuff I just i get free from friends, work, in garbage, etc and i use for work. Moderd for personal use, i have a 775 Xeon and a C2D laptop, thats all

If you mean collection, then no. I have a lot more 32bit (working, fully completed) PCs than 64bit. Currently they outnumber 64bit PCs by around 5:1.

If you include workhorses, then I have one DIY NAS, two thin clients and a laptop and desktop I daily drive. That brings the ratio to round 11:7 still in favor for 32bit.

If I also count mostly complete PCs (those that only miss non-essential parts, like a case, but otherwise functionally complete), that's another 1×64bit and 4×32bit PC.

My main PC is 64 bit. My two old-games PCs are 32 bit. I do have a second 64-bit PC for testing purposes. That's all I have room for.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:53:

Grzyb wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:40:

x86-64, PCIe, SATA... for me, it's all modern, and I don't count that as a part of collection.

this

I really don't give a shit about anything after 2000

Agree.
I also don't like other modern rubbish stuff, like PCI slots or USB.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-04-11, 13:40:

x86-64, PCIe, SATA... for me, it's all modern, and I don't count that as a part of collection.

that's the thing - it is modern, and yet much of it dates back nearly 20 years and most of it was established 15 years ago

in 2000 we definitely would have considered a 1985 PC to be vintage

i tend to use 15 years as the rough border between "a bit vintage" and "a bit modern" but another view would be the 32-64 bit divide

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-04-11, 15:26:

If you mean collection, then no. I have a lot more 32bit (working, fully completed) PCs than 64bit. Currently they outnumber 64bit PCs by around 5:1.

If you include workhorses, then I have one DIY NAS, two thin clients and a laptop and desktop I daily drive. That brings the ratio to round 11:7 still in favor for 32bit.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-04-11, 14:17:

But if you include the laptops for browsing, and other boring daily tasks It's probably close to matching my 32 bit machines

i am including PCs not really for hobby alone so i'm pushing the boundary of the collection a bit more than some would, but then its a fuzzy line between hobby/interest and 'still use it for browsing etc', i have a 775 based machine with linux for instance - but consider it part of the collection because it also interests me

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-04-11, 16:44:

I also don't like other modern rubbish stuff, like PCI slots

I don't consider Conventional PCI modern - there's no such slots in current machines.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-11, 18:59:

that's the thing - it is modern, and yet much of it dates back nearly 20 years and most of it was established 15 years ago
in 2000 we definitely would have considered a 1985 PC to be vintage

Oh yeah, the progress has slowed down a lot...

Grzyb wrote on 2023-04-11, 21:06:

I don't consider Conventional PCI modern - there's no such slots in current machines. […]
Show full quote

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-04-11, 16:44:

I also don't like other modern rubbish stuff, like PCI slots

I don't consider Conventional PCI modern - there's no such slots in current machines.

gerry wrote on 2023-04-11, 18:59:

that's the thing - it is modern, and yet much of it dates back nearly 20 years and most of it was established 15 years ago
in 2000 we definitely would have considered a 1985 PC to be vintage

Oh yeah, the progress has slowed down a lot...

My posting was a bit of a joke. I know PCI was introduced in 1993.
My hardware collection is a very limited, it starts with 80486 and it ends with 80486. So only 486 and I prefer the ones with Vesa Local Bus slots or EISA slots. Or both EISA and VLB.

Grzyb wrote on 2023-04-11, 21:06:

gerry wrote on 2023-04-11, 18:59:

that's the thing - it is modern, and yet much of it dates back nearly 20 years and most of it was established 15 years ago
in 2000 we definitely would have considered a 1985 PC to be vintage

Oh yeah, the progress has slowed down a lot...

It did, but that doesn't mean that those 20-ish years old hardware are usable to any degree for modern tasks. Maybe they can manage some very specific stuff insanely suboptimally.
And just because those old PCs use (earlier revisions of) the same interfaces, that doesn't mean they are fully compatible with modern hardware.
Same with software compatibility. A Core2 Quad or Phenom II X6 may have the same number of cores as modern budget CPUs, but they still can't run a lot of modern software because of missing some necessary instruction sets.

These 15-20 years old hardware are absolutely not modern even if they aged slower than pre-64bit era components.

I've recently been upgrading three old laptops from circa 2010. Putting in SSDs, faster CPUs, Windows 10, and upgrading memory to >4 GiB, which of course requires 64-bit Windows. You can't run modern games on these things of course, but with all the upgrades they're still perfectly good machines for casual use.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-04-11, 21:21:

My hardware collection is a very limited, it starts with 80486 and it ends with 80486. So only 486 and I prefer the ones with Vesa Local Bus slots or EISA slots. Or both EISA and VLB.

that's a very focussed collection 😀

Let's see:

32 bit:
- generic PC Chips Celeron P3 tower
- HP Vectra VL400 (Pentium 3)
- generic Asrock Pentium 4 tower
- Packard Bell iGO 4000 (Pentium 4 M)
- iCOP 1st generation Vortex86

64 & 32:
- Thinkcentre M73 (whatever's after Ivy Bridge)
- Dell 755 (C2D, may get rid of it)
- Dell 7010 (Ivy Bridge, newest purchase and probably going to be my main desktop)

64 only (§):
- Huawei MateStation S (Ryzen 4600), funny enough this is by far the newest PC I have by manufacturing date and one I want to get rid of the most

Dubious:
- Vaio FZ21M (C2D, nv*dia'd)
-§ NEC TW708CAS (classic mid-2010s Win8 tablet, totaled eMMC)
- Chromebook Lick (Celeron-Atom N4000, designed for full 64 bit operation but I think it's plausible to compile a 32 bit EFI or even BIOS for it right now)
- generic Gigabyte micro ITX system (Celeron-Arrandale?, seems to have big firmware bugs and in my limited testing only works fine in BIOS emulation)

§ = 64 bit CPU but 32 bit EFI and/or no CSM (that conceptually sucks anyway)

Hmmm, almost a 50% split, I'd never have expected that!
(Of course, this is excluding all the things that never wanted, even only spiritually, to be "IBM compatible"...)

Personally I don't see the need to "collect" modern PC hardware. Game performance and compatibility has become so generalized, along with 3D APIs, specific hardware is no longer a requirement and hasn't been for some time. Not like back in the day when different sound and video cards made a dramatic difference in quality of gameplay. Any modern PC can run a vast majority of games back to about the year 2000 just fine with no discernible difference in quality, except of course for the rare incompatibility.

I only have two 64-bit desktop PCs, one is my DD, a Ryzen 5950X with a GTX 3080, the other is an Intel 4790K with a GTX 970 (used to be two in SLI but I sold one) which is sitting unused since I built the preceding one, and between those two they can run most any game for the past 23 years. I also have a 17" gaming laptop with an Intel 6700 i7 and a GTX 1070 which is also a reasonably stout gamer, except for the absolute latest titles, which I don't care for. Really I don't see a need for any more "modern" systems.

Ryccardo wrote on 2023-04-15, 10:19:

Hmmm, almost a 50% split, I'd never have expected that!

64 bit parity/dominance kind of creeps up on you 😀

Brawndo wrote on 2023-04-15, 16:16:

Personally I don't see the need to "collect" modern PC hardware. Game performance and compatibility has become so generalized, along with 3D APIs, specific hardware is no longer a requirement and hasn't been for some time. Not like back in the day when different sound and video cards made a dramatic difference in quality of gameplay. Any modern PC can run a vast majority of games back to about the year 2000 just fine with no discernible difference in quality, except of course for the rare incompatibility.

I only have two 64-bit desktop PCs, one is my DD, a Ryzen 5950X with a GTX 3080, the other is an Intel 4790K with a GTX 970 (used to be two in SLI but I sold one) which is sitting unused since I built the preceding one, and between those two they can run most any game for the past 23 years. I also have a 17" gaming laptop with an Intel 6700 i7 and a GTX 1070 which is also a reasonably stout gamer, except for the absolute latest titles, which I don't care for. Really I don't see a need for any more "modern" systems.

yes indeed, to 'collect' for specific software compatibility or gameplay hasn't been a reason to collect PCs for some time and is the domain only of pre-64bit and probably pre year 2000 machines really

one thing that's interesting if you look at some of those gameplay / test / budget build type youtube videos is that you realise almost any game, bar the most demanding, would actually play ok on a circa 2010 quad core machine (or a fast i3 in many cases) with a modest mid range card. Sure the youtuber might mention needing to give up 4k or 1020p and put settings to default or low but the game plays anyway.

gog/steam and dosbox have largely done away with the need for hardware to play old games, except those not accommodated within gog/steam of course!