chinny22 wrote on 2020-09-08, 13:38:

Yes this was always a generalization. Will always be some people that become more interested in earlier systems, just as plenty of people my age still play modern games on modern rigs.
Did you start with a S478 build? thats the other ting that happens often enough. Start by trying to recreate your childhood PC, catch the hardware bug then it's no longer about the games but building up systems that we knew by name but never came access physically.

This right here. I starred with the PCs i had from years ago. Then I started collecting different PCs from different eras. Now when I get one, it's kind of a pastime to starr with delousing it, see if i can make it work properly again. I try different operation systems to see what it can handle. As my collection grows, I reinvision how I'll set them up, and what I'll purpose each one for.

I've been amazed how much some machines can do once they arent full of spyware, poorly designed addons and toolbars, and bloated antivirus scanners. Much faster than I remember.

Of course there is also the overclocking community

Which is why I also collect some cool i875P boards.

I'm mainly interested in the topic because I often hear from people that they regret throwing away old computers that are expensive now.
This means that at one point they got rid of that old rig because it was useless to them.
And now it's happening to the aforementioned platforms as well.

Quadrachewski wrote on 2020-09-08, 08:55:

True, new systems are also pretty stable and reliable, the biggest problem was the capacitor plague that is fixable most of the […]
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kolderman wrote on 2020-09-08, 08:18:

You have to consider supply, not just demand.

True, new systems are also pretty stable and reliable, the biggest problem was the capacitor plague that is fixable most of the time and rarely caused permanent damage.
Old boards with the NiCd battery corrosion won't ever be the same and properly executed repairs are very rare. Flawless boards are hard to get.
There are exceptions tough, s775 systems with the Extreme CPUs are expensive now.

S775 boards and Extreme CPUs can get expensive but if you keep an eye out, you can get them cheaply.

As for good P45 based boards, there is no reason for Extreme edition CPUs as the bus speed available greatly surpasses what the CPUs can handle at the default multiplier unless you are doing extreme overclocking.

Rare and unique boards will probably continue to grow in value and are already rather expensive. I don't see later AM2 or 775 chipsets ever being worth as much because they don't offer anything unique compared to later sockets.

Quadrachewski wrote on 2020-09-07, 18:52:

It's quite hard to find 286-386-486 systems that are in decent shape (so no battery corrosion and doesn't look like it's been dragged through the streets to the recycling center) and I don't have to break the bank to get one.
I pretty much gave up on these systems because there is too little gain for too much money. CGA or EGA? No, I don't want to sell my car to get one.

Depends on your idea of what's 'expensive'. Compared to other hobbies I find retro hardware affordable, even most vintage and rare items. Sure, if you want to own it all or only want the high end or rare stuff, yes then it starts to add up substantially.

In my country x86 pc's are quite sought after and less are offered for sale in recent years, but I remember a time when you couldn't give them away for free (early 2000's). Still, I can find a random x86 pc (most of them need a little TLC) for sale at the local Craigslist variant at any day of the week.

But what about more recent systems that are available everywhere?
Will these ever become as valuable as a 386?

Looking around online I see that complete S462, S754 and S939 systems are becoming quite hard to find. S478 are still quite common and most LGA775 pc's fall in the category 'stuff you can't get rid off at any price'. Even though most early 2000's pc hardware is still easy to find at a low price, you'll be surprised about what you will have to pay in the next 5 years for a lot of the hardware from that period. The 2000-2005 capacitor plague (for some manufacturers more like 1999-2006) has caused people to throw out hardware prematurely. It has affected the functionality of motherboards, graphics cards, power supplies etc. A LOT of that stuff, especially complete systems, has already been recycled and quite a lot still gets thrown out as of today. I would buy the stuff that you really want to own now. This is the time to buy. It's unlikely to get any more affordable. Premium graphics card like the GF 6800 Ultra are already sought after and quite expensive for my taste. A 386 pc is generally speaking more affordable than a high end 486 pc. It's hard to say what prices are exactly going to do, but it seems quite likely they (i.e.: for early 2000's stuff) will move in the direction of older hardware. That having said, there's a certain limit to what people can and will pay. The really old 1980's computers like Commodore 64 are not really going up in value anymore and Amiga's also seem to have hit the ceiling. In the end a lot of old computer hardware needs TLC. Most people don't have time to do that, they don't want to, don't have the tools or knowledge to do that. That's what keeps prices quite affordable for most of us.

Compared to other hobbies I find retro hardware affordable, even most vintage and rare items.

Eh, depends. IBM PC compatible stuff in general? Sure, it's abundant enough. Commodore Amiga? Probably lost train. Some old Apple stuff? Also lost train.

jheronimus wrote on 2020-09-08, 11:13:

I'm 30 now, got into the hobby when I was 25 years old. As a child I had access to my father's 486 Toshiba laptop (Prince of Persia, LHX, Supaplex, Blockout) and a Pentium 2 machine (went to my grandparents every weekend to play some Starcraft, Diablo 2, Black & White and Baldur's Gate). However, the defining platform for me would be S478. That's the first computer that I had that could play modern games like Morrowind, X2: The Threat or KOTOR — with Pentium 4 2GHz, 512MB RAM and GeForce 4 ti4200 it was a very powerful system for 2002. I've spent hours in front of that thing.

And yet these days S478 holds absolutely no nostalgic value for me. I've tried building a WinXP/S478 machine once and I simply didn't enjoy it.

I'm 30 too and have spent hours using my dad's Packard Bell with PIII 800 and presumably the dreadful TNT2 M64 and later on for a short while a GF 6200 or 6600 which I had bought from my own money, just before I finally gave up on that POS when my dad bought an Athlon 64 X2 system (which also turned out to be a POS, but that's another story) 😀

I am at this point in time that anything early 2000's feels quite nostalgic. Yes, I am quite interested in early 2000's hardware. Recently I have bought some NOS S462, S478 and even S775 stuff. I don't want to wait until every vogons member buys that stuff in front of my nose and leaves me to choose from an assortment of Celeron D's and crappy motherboards on ebay 🤣. I plan to use that hardware with Windows 2000 Pro instead of XP with its activation loop.

I also see many younger people in the retro community now — somebody who is around 20 or 25 years old now. Somebody who is unlikely to have ever experienced a DOS/Win9x machine in their childhood. And yet, these people seem to be more interested in anything but PC. Handhelds/PDAs, early mobile phones, consoles. When it comes to computing even G3/G4 era Macs seem more interesting to this generation. And in the rare case they do get involved with PC — it's still the XT-P3 range, not something newer.

I've met some too, but not many. Some are interested in old IBM stuff (like crappy old Thinkpads), others are Apple fanboys who have probably never touched a screwdriver or have but screwed something up horribly. The ones that I have met are not interested in really old home computers like I used to be years ago. They have very little knowledge of the history of the personal computer.