Nope, 44 here and I still love this hobby. Easy Games & Pirated Women 4 Life =P

Still enjoying old hardware and software. It helps to just have a limited space to keep your stuff in. Whenever I get something new, something old of less value (emotional and financial) has to go. This way my collection grows in terms of quality but not in size.

Give it time. I gave up gaming as I approached 30, now I have found the interest again in a strong way as I approach 45 🤣

Personally I found playing on real hardware was the thing that spurred me on. DosBOX was like so much meh...but building a retro PC...booting into DOS...and hearing games come alive over the mighty Sound Blaster give me chills to this day.

Not bored with retro computing in general, but I'm definitely done "collecting" (or amassing spare parts in my case.) I'm selling off tons of stuff right now. I realized I've built every machine I could possibly want, and the accumulation was getting to be a real drain. Ultimately I want to use these things, not have rooms and rooms of dusty crap on shelves that will never get plugged in. I'm keeping basically enough diverse boxes to do anything I might want to do (backing up floppies, interfacing with old gear, gaming, music creation, running demos, coding, etc.) but the rest of the parts hoard can go so that others can have fun with them.

I've actually decided to get rid of most of my pre-ATX gear and keep the newer stuff. I can play DOS games just fine on a P-MMX or PII, and once you're in that "era" the machines become an order of magnitude less of a pain in the ass in every way. Onboard IDE controllers, PCI & AGP slots, bootable optical drives, USB ports, and "large" HDD support make the tinkering fun instead of a huge exercise in frustration.

My end goal is to have one corner (i.e. large U-shaped corner desk thing) in my living room where all my active machines & gear can fit - which is how it was before I started working a couple floors up from a very active IT disposal spot. 😜

THAT SAID, I'm glad there ARE some high-profile collectors out there, who to lengths to get their hands on the really interesting stuff and show it off. I'm also glad one of them is not me.

xjas wrote:

I've actually decided to get rid of most of my pre-ATX gear and keep the newer stuff. I can play DOS games just fine on a P-MMX or PII, and once you're in that "era" the machines become an order of magnitude less of a pain in the ass in every way. Onboard IDE controllers, PCI & AGP slots, bootable optical drives, USB ports, and "large" HDD support make the tinkering fun instead of a huge exercise in frustration.

God I am so glad to hear I am not the only one who has these exacts thoughts. And to add to the list not having to mess with horrible AT cases built like a tank that need a mechanics toolkit to disassemble. PS/2 ports for which brand new keyboards and optical mice can be bought. Brand new power supplies that plug straight into ATX power sockets. And the biggest irony is a MMX or K6+ can actually go slower than a 486 due to setmul etc, meaning they can be better for earlier games than some AT systems.

quite on the contrary, I'm getting sick of new operating systems, software and what people consider good web design nowadays, everything is becoming so cumbersome and unintuitive for power users, not to forget the downfall of most of the gaming industry with microtransactions... I am looking forward to be doing more with old computers and the OS actually doing what I want it to and play games that work without an internet connection and don't bug me to get new DLC all the time.

Interest in specific aspects of this hobby comes and goes but messing with computers is just what I do - what are you doing with your spare time now @King_C?

Dunno about the community thing - retro games and hardware are definitely more mainstream these days but in saying that I don't work with anyone who's in to it. Still pretty niche I think. I do appreciate all the great YouTube content and hobbiest projects that are around - those are examples of positive modern developments.

Im half and half on this one... when the mood strikes, i dip into my retro machines with a vengance reliving the glory days of past, then like a light switch being turned off, i go about my buisness dipping into other hobbies, like RC car/truck tinkering and looking into upgrades for my 2005 gmc sierra 1500 truck.

I haven't given up on my retro computing/gaming hobby, it's still as strong as before - I'm just doing it much more quietly behind the scenes (and away from prying eyes).

What I have given up on is the computer/video game industries as they are at present. Nothing but a sea of greed, arrogance, grandstanding - and a bunch of underwhelming products/services (all IMHO of course).

I'm also seriously considering giving up on VOGONS, the forums have been very lackluster for me as of late.

I try not to collect, instead I try to refine my "collection" to make it as space, time, and money efficient as possible.

I'm still working on it - for example right now I have some laptops to sell, that I don't need any more because I only need one "representative sample" from each era of 90's laptops.

I have not given up on the hobby and I don't think I ever will. But my ultimate goal is that my work will eventually consist mostly in tinkering and programming on the machines I already have, and not buying anything new.

Heck no. In fact, the desire to spend a couple of hours every Sunday morning playing DOS games on the old 486 is stronger than ever, now that I'm in my mid 30s. I don't see myself giving up on the hobby anytime soon. 😀

I have not given up at all, as someone mentioned above I believe that having limited time to dedicate to it is "positive" in the sense that I can fully appreciate every moment I spend on it. I have seen many cases of people that dedicated most of their time to a hobby (not just retro computing/gaming) and they ended up giving up due to burn out as it became more like an obsession to them.

I rarely buy retro stuff anymore unless it's something that really interests me or specific parts for repair, I am not a collector and at this point I have pretty much everything I need, including spares, for my period of interest (1990 to early-mid 00's).

In my mid 30's, still collecting. I am about to expand to my basement because my 12'x10' computer room is packed too full already. (have about 27 or so full computer builds and 20+ Mobo/CPU/RAM/VGA combos -- only 2 or 3 are setup at a time though) My 2 year old son already loves it.. he always says "Dada! Computer room! Doom!" because he wants to watch me play Doom, haha. I'm going to have him learn DOS first, then graduate him year after year to a new OS and set of games once he's a little bit older and can play something.

Nah I still enjoy it but it’s never been constant. I put a lot of time into my current setup tinkering and playing games at the start of the year and stepped away until a few weeks back.

As with retro gaming in general I always need to be careful about buying too much stuff and periodically let stuff go even if there’s a chance it'll become more expensive in the future.

Knowing when to move on is no bad thing though, you can always come back if you feel the need to.

-edit-
I’m 34 going on 35.

imi wrote:

quite on the contrary, I'm getting sick of new operating systems, software and what people consider good web design nowadays, everything is becoming so cumbersome and unintuitive for power users, not to forget the downfall of most of the gaming industry with microtransactions... I am looking forward to be doing more with old computers and the OS actually doing what I want it to and play games that work without an internet connection and don't bug me to get new DLC all the time.

100% agree with that, literally everything you said. 🤣 I have kept a few Pentium Windows 95/98 machines for this reason, I do honestly like that era of simplicity it just is nice it's just that I don't use them nearly as much as I would have liked which is why I got rid of everything deemed to be kept for value alone rather than interest. So until I've gotten rid of everything I guess I shouldn't say I'm done with it, it's going to be waiting for me to dig them out and dust off my boxed games but right now I'm feeling more of a yearning to collect 8-tracks, books and records like I did when I was a kid before I had the internet or computers in every room. 🤣

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

I haven't given up on my retro computing/gaming hobby, it's still as strong as before - I'm just doing it much more quietly behind the scenes (and away from prying eyes).

What I have given up on is the computer/video game industries as they are at present. Nothing but a sea of greed, arrogance, grandstanding - and a bunch of underwhelming products/services (all IMHO of course).

I'm also seriously considering giving up on VOGONS, the forums have been very lackluster for me as of late.

Why lackluster? Just the same stuff over and over being talked about? Cause that's kind of how I felt at the beginning of my veering away from retro computing. 🤣 It was always just more of the same stuff, old computers. Either they were too old to do anything interesting / useful or too new to be interesting after a while. I also live near chicago so I was quickly buried in every kind of old computer I could ever want with only looking a little bit, most of which I got for free. Kind of killed it quick once the hunt wasn't even fun anymore. Plus as someone else has said I dedicated like ALL of my time to the hobby outside of work so after 5 years I feel very much sick of everything computer related.

@badmojo Well as for what I'm doing now, I'm still trying to get rid of stuff and simplify. But I converted my old computer room into a quick music room/ sitting room I'll try and clean it up and take a pic tomorrow so you can get an idea of the transformation that's happening. 🤣 But mainly I've shifted my focus era from the 80's and 90's to my old favourite when I was a kid and a teen: the 1970's. Infact I just bought a shag rug for my room and I've been slowly getting together period correct mid century furniture on the cheap. I'm currently working on refinishing a dresser but it's taking a little longer than I had anticipated thanks to the rain. 🤣

Here's how my room has transformed...

Here's how it was at the height of my 90's obsession.

and here is how it is at the moment (hopefully soon to be even cooler when the new dresser is done and this cheap one is gone!)

here's a pic of my new "desk" chair. 🤣 (It's a chrome craft kitchen chair from a kitchen table set but only this chair was in goodwill and I just love the way it looks. 🤣)

Pity you didn't have room for both! As much as I like the sound of bongo drums in the morning, I think I would have to take the wall of big box games and weird desktop cases 🤣

I know the feeling and that's the reason I change my hobbies every few months or years.
Cars, electronics, computers, woodwork, steelwork, renovation.. it's a long list.

1. I get interested in a hobby.
2. Getting all the information, forums, etc.
3. I spend like crazy to get what I need.
4. Having fun and spending most of my time with the hobby (wife angry).
5. Here comes the slow "burn out" phase and I get disinterested (wife happy).
6. I find a new hobby (wife angry again).

The hardest part for me is to properly store everything until I get interested in the same hobby again. Sometimes I just sell or throw everything out and regret it years later.