Shader_BiH wrote on Today, 09:59:

Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 00:27:

Bleh. […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 17:12:

It happened... went on thrift patrol in the neighbouring town because I was over there for other stuff...

Some months ago one of the volunteer thrifts put up a new glass cabinet, intended solely for digital and personal electronics, and one or two computer items made it in there, now, it has fallen to the old ladies, and is full of "pretty plates". ... despite 4 more cabinets and a couple of display shelves in the store also being full of "pretty plates". Gah.

Bleh.

I have some relatives that have been selling antiques for a few decades and they are mostly focused on glassware. They told me recently that the market for such things has basically vanished. Younger generations have absolutely zero interest in glass and the people who care(d) are trying to downsize and no longer want it. So, it doesn't surprise me that thrift stores would have more and more of it to sell. As people from the baby-boom generation die off and their used-to-be-super-valuable glassware is no longer worth trying to sell and ship on ebay, the stuff will go to thrift stores.

I wonder when that will happen with computer stuff... 😮

It's becoming a bit of concern... Most 90s computer stuff of collectors are nostalgia driven, and these generations will be on their way out in about 20-30 years. It's difficult to see how new generations are relating to this era, but it's safe to say they do not share our exact enthusiasm. Meanwhile my collection is getting bigger by the day, and some of these cards were very expensive... hundreds of dollars. It's not that I'm regreting it, it's just when I think long-term I can't see it getting more expensive, because that requires interest and I'd say we are at the peak just about now. If someone was to inherit my collection later, God knows what would he think of, or do with it, so.... I think our own satifaction with our hobby and interest in old hardware should be the only consideration regarding it's worth or "fate".

I think it will happen sooner than we think

my 16yo son has ZERO interest in computers even modern ones, all he cares are stupid free "tower defence" mobile phone games
When I was 16 I was devouring assembler , programming and hardware books.

Our generation is the last (and first) to be fascinated with mechanical clunky machines accessing data stored on magnetic materials

That said and if we look at our previous generations interests like a phonograph a typewriter, comics, coin collections those were much more "static" items you just collected and looked at them
A computer is something different, more interactive, more interesting, with many things to discover, its like an old car so I believe there will still be a significant interest in younger generations in vintage hardware but not to the level we are seing today with our generation

AaronS wrote on 2026-04-15, 14:03:

Absolute bargain for this PCI 6200 (£16.95) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/336535191948

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/evga-ge … ci-256-mb.b2273

What is your plan for it?

I also have a later era architecture in PCI format. Mine is a PCI Radeon 9200 twin GPU, which is an oddity that I don’t have an obvious use case for.

It’s too new for Win98 drivers - maybe WinME can be coerced into accepting later previously extracted drivers?

In Win11 and PCIe era systems it’s possible to have WinXP in an emulator and PCI pass through with supported drivers.

In WinXP and AGP era systems the PCI can drive extra monitors. Maybe there is some kind of A/B testing that can demo differences between GPUs in realtime but when I looked into that for Quake 3 it seemed I would need to change the code?

Not sure. Need a plan.