UCyborg wrote on 2026-09-06, 17:23:

It all goes downhill when they find someone...

haha you reckon its women related?

Nothing lasts forever unfortunately. There is always internet archive to mirror his site if it goes.

AppleSauce wrote on 2026-09-06, 02:53:

He's also been selling his stuff in bulk via Lots on OCAU so i think he's winding down and focusing other priorities in life.

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I had a collection of plastic boxes like that before I sold almost all my old gear off. Now I dont even bother with DOS, just a couple of win98 pcs for that tricky hard to emulate era.

It was hard to let go of those rare ISA sound cards, so I know what he is going through.

He was my go-to channel for a few years.
Can't say nothing bad about his dos pack. 😀

At some point you have new priorities and hobbies.
SO usually have a saying in that.

As many pointed out, this hobby of ours is mostly nostalgia fueled: when we are done getting that last piece some are actually ok leaving the hobby.
He isn't old enough to be passing the torch to someone else. I wonder if he'll get back to it in his 70's.

I hope there doesn't come a time when he regrets getting rid of some of this stuff. Though if you just want it for your own use in playing retro PC games you can make do with a DOS/Win9X box and an XP/Vista/7 box. There will, of course, be some games that won't work though

Looking at the number of boxes he has there, that's at least ten times bigger than my collection. Must be daunting to think about selling most of it. I am sure that cant be all of it either, as computer cases and monitors won't be in those boxes.

Certainly he has some stuff that I would love to have. I am guessing he's trying to offload it all into Australia though.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-06, 20:05:

He had some decent stuff on his youtube channel. But for every good video there were 5 not worth watching.
But having said that the good ones he did were so good the 5 bad ones were worth putting up with anyway. He really was that good, if you see what I mean.

I know what you mean, all videos were good - but there's a lot of overlap / similarity between some. still, its all good stuff and i suppose would eventually have just started repeating

zapbuzz wrote on Yesterday, 05:42:

Nothing lasts forever unfortunately. There is always internet archive to mirror his site if it goes.

i guess internet archive is part of nothing lasts forever though

gerry wrote on Yesterday, 14:09:

I know what you mean, all videos were good - but there's a lot of overlap / similarity between some. still, its all good stuff and i suppose would eventually have just started repeating

True. There are only so many interesting topics you can cover on obsolete PC tech. There are some modern innovations that are relevant, but not enough for regular content.

Yes, Phil did cover some things multiple times. But, honestly, whenever I had a question about a certain piece of hardware/technology, or comparison of alternatives, Phil always had a video that covered it.

I think the main things he didn't cover were pre-386 (PC gaming was rather primitive before that TBH). The 386 and 486 eras were relatively sparsely covered, as he had a preference for "Time machines" that slow down to that level. But that is fair enough.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 01:16:

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 00:43:

Fujoshi-hime wrote on Yesterday, 00:23:

On the one hand, it's a shame because I always enjoyed his content. On the other hand, it did seem that he had nearly exhausted the topic of '90s to mid 2000's x86 Retro PC Gaming And Compuiting' and wasstruggling to find new things to cover. An amazing 12 years of work and I hope he enjoys whatever he's moving onto. I for sure own one of those Asrock 775 with AGP mobos because of his work.

My K6-2+ system was based around his 4-in-1 video

I bought my Asrock 775i65G R3.0 from him the other day, he was selling three of them and I managed to snag one of them before they got bought out.

Yeah luckily he didnt make it into late ear XP motherboards otherwise the prices of those boards would rocket up too.

kennyPENTIUMpowers wrote on Yesterday, 04:35:

UCyborg wrote on 2026-09-06, 17:23:

It all goes downhill when they find someone...

haha you reckon its women related?

Seems likely. It's how it started with my ex-friend.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Yesterday, 13:51:

Looking at the number of boxes he has there, that's at least ten times bigger than my collection. Must be daunting to think about selling most of it. I am sure that cant be all of it either, as computer cases and monitors won't be in those boxes.

Certainly he has some stuff that I would love to have. I am guessing he's trying to offload it all into Australia though.

With how much it costs here ATM to ship stuff internationally this would be a very good guess, especially for the big bulky items, every extra half kilo adds quite a bit to costs and then they add extra for how big the box actually is so yeah...Shipping one of them plastic crates would be rather expensive locally, international costs might actually be more expensive than the total cost of the items in the crate.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 20:41:

With how much it costs here ATM to ship stuff internationally this would be a very good guess, especially for the big bulky items, every extra half kilo adds quite a bit to costs and then they add extra for how big the box actually is so yeah...Shipping one of them plastic crates would be rather expensive locally, international costs might actually be more expensive than the total cost of the items in the crate.

Shame. Wouldn't surprise me if he hangs on to the rarest stuff though.

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way.

Our society does not value 'contemporary artifacts', even though the rapid pace of obsolecense of these devices means many historically relavent devices may only exist as pictures at this point.

The importance of well preserved private collections in the face of that should be immediate and clear, but sadly is not.

You can easily count the number of bonafide computing museums, and their difficulties staying in operation are well documented, due to this lack of consideration.

I hope the pieces went to good conservators.

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 20:53:

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way. […]
Show full quote

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way.

Our society does not value 'contemporary artifacts', even though the rapid pace of obsolecense of these devices means many historically relavent devices may only exist as pictures at this point.

The importance of well preserved private collections in the face of that should be immediate and clear, but sadly is not.

You can easily count the number of bonafide computing museums, and their difficulties staying in operation are well documented, due to this lack of consideration.

I hope the pieces went to good conservators.

Whats worse is lost media due to how quickly data storage is advancing. Once you lose the ability to read a media type it is incredibly hard or expensive to get it back later.

This will soon become a much bigger issue than it is now. Already old magnetic media and optical diskrot has caused the loss of a lot of stored media.

Phil is the first I have seen to really explain in a concise manner all kinds of retro-related stuff. Also his videos pushed me to start my first retro build back in 2015. His Intel versus AMD videos are legendary, I watched them dozens of times; he also explained some windows 9X things in a few videos - he made some videos about updating windows 98/me using community made patches that are very good.
However he monetized his channel which I consider a big mistake. If you want to give something to the community don't ask for money!
The best retro-hardware channel on youtube and the best collector of hardware ever to exist on this planet never asked anything, he made videos at his own pace, however he liked. Despite having 3+ tons of hardware he purchased everything with his own money, never accepted donations of any kind.
I think we should seriously consider backing up everything on his website.
As for the fact that he is a married man now I wish him all the best! Thankfully my wife accepted me as I am - with this hobby included.

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 20:53:

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way. […]
Show full quote

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way.

Our society does not value 'contemporary artifacts', even though the rapid pace of obsolecense of these devices means many historically relavent devices may only exist as pictures at this point.

The importance of well preserved private collections in the face of that should be immediate and clear, but sadly is not.

You can easily count the number of bonafide computing museums, and their difficulties staying in operation are well documented, due to this lack of consideration.

I hope the pieces went to good conservators.

How exactly does a private collection help society though? At least Phil's collection was put to good use for producing educational and informative content that will now hopefully be around forever. Many private collectors hoard far more than they need and do nothing with it (or at least they don't publish their findings). Which effectively is a waste of their potential, and also drives up the prices for those that do want to use these items.

Whilst my collection is nothing compared to Phil's, there is certainly more there than I can use day-to-day. For the most part, I only have one of each type of thing though (Unless I plan to SLI it).

I do have the desire to start publishing stuff on my YouTube channel but there is little point in doing that until I am in a place where I can post consistently, and with quality content. Because the algorithm will simply not show it to people.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 06:18:

How exactly does a private collection help society though? At least Phil's collection was put to good use for producing educati […]
Show full quote

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 20:53:

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way. […]
Show full quote

Given how the scalpers are these days, I am saddened to see 'museum pieces' sold this way.

Our society does not value 'contemporary artifacts', even though the rapid pace of obsolecense of these devices means many historically relavent devices may only exist as pictures at this point.

The importance of well preserved private collections in the face of that should be immediate and clear, but sadly is not.

You can easily count the number of bonafide computing museums, and their difficulties staying in operation are well documented, due to this lack of consideration.

I hope the pieces went to good conservators.

How exactly does a private collection help society though? At least Phil's collection was put to good use for producing educational and informative content that will now hopefully be around forever. Many private collectors hoard far more than they need and do nothing with it (or at least they don't publish their findings). Which effectively is a waste of their potential, and also drives up the prices for those that do want to use these items.

Whilst my collection is nothing compared to Phil's, there is certainly more there than I can use day-to-day. For the most part, I only have one of each type of thing though (Unless I plan to SLI it).

I do have the desire to start publishing stuff on my YouTube channel but there is little point in doing that until I am in a place where I can post consistently, and with quality content. Because the algorithm will simply not show it to people.

Depends if you consider that important, once you start down the must appease the algorithm route you forever become a slave to it.

Best to have the information out there as a resource than worry about the algo pushing it.

nd22 wrote on Today, 06:13:

However he monetized his channel which I consider a big mistake. If you want to give something to the community don't ask for money!

According to a post I saw, he was spending anything from 10 to 30 hours a week on his channel (I think). That seems significant enough that some form of payment is warranted.

nd22 wrote on Today, 06:13:

The best retro-hardware channel on youtube and the best collector of hardware ever to exist on this planet never asked anything, he made videos at his own pace, however he liked. Despite having 3+ tons of hardware he purchased everything with his own money, never accepted donations of any kind.

Not sure what you mean. Are you talking about a other channel that closed its doors?

nd22 wrote on Today, 06:13:

I think we should seriously consider backing up everything on his website.

For sure! I haven't copied everything from there, but I copied the drivers he hosts, his MS-DOS starter pack, the 136-in-one project, the DOS Benchmark Pack, the Future Mark benchmarks.

nd22 wrote on Today, 06:13:

As for the fact that he is a married man now I wish him all the best! Thankfully my wife accepted me as I am - with this hobby included.

For sure. Whilst my wife is accepting of my hobby, to a point, there's no way I could have the amount of stuff Phil acquired. Haha.

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 06:24:

Depends if you consider that important, once you start down the must appease the algorithm route you forever become a slave to it.

Best to have the information out there as a resource than worry about the algo pushing it.

Well, I'd want my content seen, or what's the point? But I have no illusions that it could be a viable source of income.

But, yeah, I don't want to be a slave to the algorithm. Weekly posts just won't be possible with me being full-time employed and also a father/husband. I don't want it to feel like a job. I want to enjoy it and not have it be a source of stress.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Today, 06:31:

According to a post I saw, he was spending anything from 10 to 30 hours a week on his channel (I think). That seems significant […]
Show full quote

According to a post I saw, he was spending anything from 10 to 30 hours a week on his channel (I think). That seems significant enough that some form of payment is warranted.

Not sure what you mean. Are you talking about a other channel that closed its doors?

nd22 wrote on Today, 06:13:

As for the fact that he is a married man now I wish him all the best! Thankfully my wife accepted me as I am - with this hobby included.

For sure. Whilst my wife is accepting of my hobby, to a point, there's no way I could have the amount of stuff Phil acquired. Haha.

That happens when you make money on youtube. If you do it slow, at a leisure pace, you do not actually need to put up 1 video every single week.
I am talking about this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RETROHardware/videos. This guy has a "few" pieces of hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8gqgybDLD8. 40kg of RAM, not 40 pieces, 40 kg and that is 6 years ago!
My wife would not accept the kind of hoarding Phil did either 😀