Younger collectors: What brings you into the hobby?

[Trixter]

The majority of vintage computer enthusiasts are as old, or older, than their areas of focus. This is likely due to nostalgia, or something related. Using myself as an example, I was born in 1971, so I can relate to anything from 1978 onward (essentially, anything I have memories of). So that is where my collection activities lie: I want to have the same fun I had when the systems were new, and learn more about them, and do things with them that I wasn't able to do when I lacked the skill or resources.

Occasionally, I see posts like this:

Furthermore i am trying to recreate the experiences I would have had as a kid. Since I was born in 1993 I experienced the early IBM computers long after they had come and gone.

I'm a 20 year old college student. I was talking to one of my friends who's a big vintage computer enthusiast, and I mentioned how I always wanted to get into the hobby. He shot me over here, and I'm pretty pumped about learning this stuff.

I'm a young guy myself (19)

I am fascinated by this, and would love to hear from vintage computer enthusiasts who are much younger than their areas of focus: What brings you to the hobby? What is it about vintage computers that are twice as old or older than you are that is interesting or compelling? Are your vintage hobbies limited to computers, or are you fascinated by other vintage areas?

 

[luckybob]

As a child of the mid 80's, i used a LOT of hand-me-downs. My father was really good at choosing the WRONG pc (and mac), compared to the general population. So I missed out on 99.9% of the popular games and devices, and could only lust after them in catalogs.

 

[AkBKukU]

I'm in my 20's so I'll probably be one of the younger collectors on here.

I was attached at the hip to my Pentium II Dell Inspiron 3500 as a kid. I would always take everyones junk computers before I was even a teenager. I put the parts together in different ways to build new systems and play around with them. All this was Win98 and up though. I had never experienced anything older. But I've always had an interest in computers. To this day I still have everyone I know run their old computers through me so I can salvage the useful parts for tinkering

I started out collecting with video games from when I was a kid(years ago before the market exploded thankfully). As I got all the systems I knew I started going for the older systems from the same manufactures. Given my interest in PCs in general, the move from vintage game consoles to vintage computers was pretty easy. Vintage computers are more rewarding than video games. So I'm becoming more interested in those than video games over time.

Another reason I really like them is as a software developer I enjoy seeing how these technologies have evolved over time. It's a learning experience as well to see why and how decisions were made that have set the course of computers for decades.

 

[PgrAm]

I'm pretty young I guess (born in the 90s). As a kid I always played older games on the family 486 because my parents were quite frugal and I had a big family which was a constant source of hand me downs. When I got a little older and wanted a computer of my own my Dad pointed me to a bin of old hardware from his business and I put together my first computer. Fast forward to a couple years later, I had just gotten into programming (Visual basic, ugh) and was over at a friends house when we stumbled across his father's commodore 64, we immediately set it up on the tv and I was of course captivated by this mysterious machine, this experience inspired me to revisit my own "roots" and started looking for those old dos games again. Fast forward again and I had purchased numerous old pieces of hardware and learned to be a pretty good programmer and finally understood how these things worked.

The thing I love about old computers is really the simplicity, someone can actually understand the entire inner workings of one of these machines. I attribute my interest in vintage computers to my breezing through my computer architecture course in University. Most people were still trying to come to terms with what a register is when I had read Abrash's books in highschool and written games for dos. I don't think I would have any idea of how a computer works if I didn't start with figuring out the C64.

Vintage computers have also taught me how to solder which has been invaluable in my other hobby: maintaining vintage instruments and recording equipment.

 

[dosfan95]

I'd definitely fall into this category, as I was born long after all the machines I own. I think for me, it really started with videogames, as did most things. We had an ancient (at the time) Dell running 98 until I was 8 or 9 and I spent a good portion of my time playing dos games and other things on that. While my family later moved on to Macs, I kept an older toshiba latop as a daily use machine until just last year, when the motherboard gave out. The vintage part probably stemmed off of my videogaming love. I started by collecting Gameboy stuff (still have my backlit SP) and eventually I just migrated gradually into emulation and other things to play the games I never had the money to buy.

I discovered virtualbox, and began playing around with that, first Win95, then dos, OS/2, the whole lot. Eventually I decided real hardware was the place to go, and I've been gradually started assembling a small, wide variety of computers to use. Collecting is an interesting endeavor because I haven't got a lot of money or space for dozens of machines. That means whatever is cheap/free is priority, and I usually have to do some repairs. Nevertheless, I've got what I think is a respectable collection in progress and I foresee myself in this hobby for quite a long time.

As for what actually draws me to vintage computers, I find both the design and the experience of using them much nicer than new electronics. Old computers have personality. Given that I was born after the fall of Commodore, TRS, and many others, holding a piece of computing history and discovering how it works is incredibly rewarding. I've never had more fun and learned more than I have with old computers.

 

[EvanK]

What really blows me away is the number of 20- and 30-somethings in our hobby who collect/restore S-100 and minicomputers.

 

[Trixter]

Evan: I agree! I mean, I can understand S-100 as those are sort-of "proto PCs" but the minicomputers surprise me.

I want to thank everyone that's responded so far. I'm starting to see some common threads between "we were there" and "we weren't there" enthusiasts, such as:

• We like to tinker
• We want to experience stuff we wanted when we were younger but couldn't have

In a way, I envy younger enthusiasts, because they didn't have to live through the agony of defeat when their favorite platform (C64, Apple II, Atari, Amiga, etc.) lost the home computer wars. It is easy for the older folks to get stuck wandering the maze of "the way it could have been", while the younger folks just get to simply enjoy the vast diversity of the landscape without the burden of "turf war" memories.