It's normal for tastes and priorities change over time. I almost completely stopped messing with the hardware side and also getting new hardware. Sometimes I pick up this and that for free or unfairly cheap, but mostly I have everything I'd ever need. I have projects in my head, but not as motivated to go through with them as I was 3-5 years ago.

I could sell most of what I have, but I know I go through phases and there is a good chance at some point I'll regain my interest and by then most of what I have, including the now cheap and common stuff, will be unobtanium.

I have noticed my interest declining in general. I think much of this just has to do with time. Nearly all of my free time is spent with kids or family time in general. I just have less personal time and what free time I do have I try and make count. If I do have a few minutes it's usually spent with on my guitar hobby. I did recently pick up a ROG Ally thinking that the late night video game sessions before bed might translate. I used to play my Switch a fair bit, but game releases haven't kept my interest.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-08-27, 17:13:

Thats a cool machine. Just looked it up. Is the soundcard supported in DOS? I am guessing not, and that it relies on SB emulation in DOS window from Windows?

I couldn't remember since most of the games I was playing with it were Windows based, so I found the backup of my drivers. It appears that it is a Soundmax chipset and WDM_AC97, so yeah it wouldn't work from DOS unless SBEmu could do it.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-08-27, 17:29:

I have found greater fulfillment and enjoyment of my retro hardware through disciplining myself to write programs for them rather than just consooming them through games or other software.

Absolutely.

The most satisfying kind of programming is the kind you do on a computer you have known for decades.

I have written most of my database and HTTP POST / JSON response API backend of the point of sale system I have embarked to program this week, on that RH8.0-running P120 I compiled MariaDB on recently.

It is multi user, uses sessions, looks up and adds scanned barcodes, searches for products by barcode, vendor, partial name match all in one thing.

It generates an invoice in one atomic transaction from the scanned list, as well as generating the actual pdf of the invoice the frontend application would just need to fetch and print out. This is the most complex API call, with >10 SQL queries, of which 4 are in a commit/rollback style transaction. That and the pdf generation takes less than a second 😀

Still need to write the refund API and some management/reporting features.

I am even tempted to put this thing into production... (but I have something more than 10x faster and 15 years newer waiting for it to be deployed, so no.)

I even believe would not have been able to start working on this thing without the aid of the pentium1. Programming on modern stuff is a lot like eating mcdonalds to me: you bring it to your face, but when it reaches it, your head has in the mean while automatically turned away 😀

I'm also more interested in the hardware than just gaming. Writing software is painful to me, and everything else works on my modern computer that's already turned on and ready. Unfortunately, that means that the hardware just collects dust after I'm done, and I don't even mess around with hardware anymore because of current prices and a lack of storage space.

Also, working with popular hardware is boring to me. It feels like everything has already been done. I want to see the stuff that nobody wanted and try to get acceptable performance from it.

I've found the hobby to be a bit of a journey, is that because I'm getting older? Maybe.

I used to game a bunch, jump online Friday night and play Command & Conquer 3 with friends. Then over the years that all subsided, gaming now is more of a special occasion. Retro game nights, LAN parties, etc.

Finding the time to commit to gaming has become challenging I also get that feeling with the free time I have that gaming is "a waste", totally a mentality thing. Ironically I'll happily spend hours setting up machines or watching YouTube.

Recently set up some thin clients as mini XP gaming machines to be used for LAN parities has been the most fun I've had with retro computing in recent times, a nice balance between old and new. I've become to realise that less is more, not needing to have the perfect hardware, all the games installed on some mega system. Makes projects more achievable and less likely to stall at 90% which has been a common problem with many of my projects over the years.

Looking back hardware always interested me more than the software, there was always the thrill of pushing devices to their limits or finding hardware additions that gave you an edge or some special feature. That's probably why game console modding always fascinated me, making the device better than it was before.