Why do people buy old PCs nowadays?

programming, restoring for a display piece, whatever else you could imagine using a computer for

fuck this guy for making every single old computer part now cost 10x as much

The immaturity of the computing market meant there was a lot more differentiation and more risky attempts at "innovating" that produced a lot of fascinating devices that stand out especially now.
Systems are generally pretty well built, they feel "denser" and nicer to work with, over-engineering was pretty common.
Everything has some kind of story you can dig up on it with enough googling, plenty of fascinating history in such a small amount of time.
Old technology is cheap and accessible, making it pretty easy to get into.
They can still be "practical" if you'd like them to be, just as they were when they were worth hundreds to thousands of dollars. They may not be able to solve every problem or solve them as fast as your primary computer can, but if you only value technology as a means to some other end then... why are you here?
People who grew up with a lot of this hardware are now old enough to feel nostalgic about it and interested in experiencing it again.
People who didn't grow up with it see it as novel for a lot of the above reasons, it's more exciting and different in an era of nothing but aluminum/black bricks.
And maybe most importantly to me, it just generally felt like it was designed and built by somebody who gave a shit about it, not just the profits they'd get from selling it.

In some business, people bought old computers as like replacement for their old computers that gone busted since the computer computer could be hooked up to their own equally old machinery without having to upgrade the machine

Sometimes it's hard to find the connectors to interface . Also, emulator isn't a good alternative since they're susceptible to bugs that could freeze the machine and affect production

It's called being a hipster, grandpa

Some games can't run on newer PCs even with emulation due to slavnigger programming. Pic very much related.

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Don't forget the hipsters.

haha fuck your secret club

so you think shitty wintel hardware is even worth playing around with?

About as much as shitty RISC gear most of you tards didn't know about until they became Jow Forums-cool fashion accessories.

Who do you think made them into a Jow Forums-cool fashion accessory? :^)

>everything that's not x86 is RISC
your brain is a fashion accessory

retro gayming and demoscene

you can access secret networks you cant access now and are untraceable.

Most of the people who make posts like that tend to be braindead RISC fanboys so I just took a shot in the dark.

What's your primary fetish, then, 680x0?

Dial-up bbs'? /s

>talking shit about RISC
RISC-V is the future!

I actually have a lot of RISC systems myself and would probably call them one of my primary focuses in collecting, I just hate the endless stream of retarded fanboys that seems to infest Jow Forums since around the POWER8 release especially. There's a lot of cool and nice high-end x86 hardware out there too that shouldn't be disregarded because of what is ultimately just a sticker on the case.

But you're one of the same people you're talking about
kys

20 year old boomer who were born in the wrong generation

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Its no single person doing this, but retro tech becoming more sought after in general hence all of the youtube channels and development picking up again.

I have a bunch of old computers but i might as well dump them because its useless junk

A few times I've actually noticed eBay prices going up after a video about a particular item, because I was up to date with the prices as I'd just bought one myself before the video came out.

Are you trying to make people mad or feel bad?
Usually people who dump things like that don't own anything particularly rare in the first place that wouldn't be available to buy from someone else. It only makes you look dumb to trash material goods that some people would pay money for and come pick them up from you themselves instead of you having to do the work of getting them out your house. It's your shit, you're free to do what you want with it.

just sell it if it's not completely worthless p4s

Not really, my interest is mostly in their overall engineering, novelty and experience, not just the instruction set they interpret. I have a lot of x86 systems as well that I'm just as fond of, and I'll freely admit the flaws of whatever I've got.

Shut up faggot, the Japanese don't question why they engage in hobbies, don't act un-japanese. I want to be a busty anime girl!!! >:U

Woow you're so cool user

Why are you so upset?

Thinkpads still just work and have keyboards that are nice to type on by laptop standards.

Just having a giggle

I guess I could just see where my posts probably sounded tryhard but fuck I just hate RISC vs. CISC/x86 shitposting

Just tip your fedora and keep being euphoric, user

*starts shitposting about x86*

*audible screeching*

same reason because people want to drive old cars again, to have the feel from back then

I just find them fascinating, and they look cool. I don't think nostalgia has much to do with it because the stuff i've collected is from before i was born and isn't IBM-PC compatible. I like getting broken stuff and trying to bring it back to life because you get to learn about how these things work instead of just running old games right away and forgetting about them like some hipster.

I also have an actual "nostalgia" PC replicating my childhood one, but playing with that feels different. It's a bittersweet mix of " 'member how fun this stuff was?" and "you're definitely getting old, son..."

It's probably like the millenial version of classic car collecting.

>Why do people buy old cars nowadays? Honest question, what is their purpose nowadays? There's even a general thread on /o/ for old cars. Could someone explain their use in modern times?

>Honest question, what is their purpose nowadays?
So I can buy all the shiny stuff I can't afford back in the day and play all the old vidya with comparability issues and proper surround sound.
Also I need something to burn dreamcast CDs since my new computer got no optical drives.
pin kinda related

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> The immaturity of the computing market meant there was a lot more differentiation and more risky attempts at "innovating"

that's why there's always a golden age of innovation
the variety of products in PC magazine was amazing. I remember issues with like 500 pages. the ads were actually entertaining to read too!

once consolidation happens (especially post iphone, facebook, and flat interfaces) innovation dies

>your brain is a fashion accessory
Fucking based tripsposter. I'm going to use this.

>buy old junk PCs
>sneakily hollow out the internals and put in a modern motherboard
who /devilish/ here

>There's a lot of cool and nice high-end x86 hardware out there too that shouldn't be disregarded because of what is ultimately just a sticker on the case.
Don't forget the backdoors you can't remove on most machines.

I have that Creative DVD, mine is 6X though

To make videos for youtube

escaping le botnet XD

Do old computers really help escaping the botnet?

old computers are more fun and so is old software
it is because the old stuff was made by professionals and this was also reflected on the price

modern hardware and especially software is made by retards

Actually this.

as much trouble as some brand new PCs give me some of those older but still good PCs dont sound like such a bad idea,

try buying top of the line with the latest hardware then try to find a linux distro that supports all that stuff, fucking sucks waiting around a year for the developers to put in hardware support for some stuff

and fuck windows, that OS still crashes

to experiences computers with soul

I do IT for a factory. We have a lot of older machines that run PCs with anything from 386 to P4s. DOS to XP Pro. It's cheaper to buy parts and rebuild those systems, fuck even replacing caps is better. Can't replace the whole machine because they can run $500k plus and retro fitting them is a pain in the ass.

Helps provide historical context for the way the world works now. Software back then had to be written more efficiently due to limited resources. Now it's throw bloat at the wall and see what sticks since everyone has ridiculously large amounts of RAM and overpowered CPUs running 500 javascript filled tabs of chrome and several word processors.

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They are like a fine watch. They have the aesthetics of a bygone era.

I find them fun to play with as I never really got into fully configuring PCs until the XP days, I never experienced IRQ shit so it’s interesting to see what people used to have to do. I obviously had multiple PCs with operating systems preceding XP but I never saw that stuff, my family always paid a shop to do it. Now that I configure servers and everything it’s interesting to see all that complicated shit you used to have to do.

Plus hearing MIDIs on a real ISA sound card is great.

Underrated

It's fun. It's pretty different from how today's PCs work. If you're bored of your PC and Smartphone, if you know all versions of WIndows inside and out, pretty much all Linux distros that are somewhat unique and maybe even Hackintoshed to see what MacOS feels like and you want to see something different, this is pretty much the best thing.

Collecting hardware is fun and putting it to a good use, aka playing games, is also fun. I had to give up my older computers (Apple //c, Apple IIgs, Amiga 500, Mac SE, C64) because my current apartment is the size of a shoebox but if I had the room I'd collect like a motherfucker.