Home Artists Posts Import Register

Downloads

Content

Like a lot of other people involved with vintage computing, I have a decently-sized collection of hardware. But...why?

Files

Comments

Anonymous

I don't collect PCs but I have gotten into collecting other things at different times in my life. I really like your philosophy of asking yourself WHY you like some thing. Do you enjoy the item after you've bought it and gotten it back into service, or just having the collection, or is it the chase and the puzzle of restoration that you enjoy? Like you, I felt that simply collecting things for the sake of having them wasn't very satisfying, so I tended to sell things after a time. And like you, there are some things that have a real nostalgic resonance and I've kept...because they still give me pleasure to own. All in all a good video and a reminder to really think about why we collect, and let that guide how much and how long we keep things. (I DID buy and play around with a Toshiba Satellite 440CDX, which was my first laptop. I really did enjoy the nostalgia of it, and comparing it to a modern machine was fun, but after a couple of months, it was just sitting there, so I put back on the market. It had been fun to revisit, but I wasn't going to actually USE it, so I figured it needed a new home.)

Alan Grassia

I had a small collection of mostly “modern” Macs and PCs from the 90s that were rescued from e-waste when my company was recycling them. When the kids arrived I had to let them go. Back then, there was no retro computing community that I was aware of, so I had them recycled. Since the pandemic, I picked up repairing a PowerMac G4 QuickSilver and I have been slowly rebuilding my original collection again. I work on repairing them in my spare time and post videos on YouTube as a way to lie to myself that there is a purpose of buying all this “junk” as my wife calls them. If someone finds the videos and materials I posted to Archive.org interesting and helpful, that’s great. In the end, my enjoyment from restoring an old computer makes it all worth it in my opinion.