Retro PC's are they really worth 100's?

Retro6

Retro6

Retro6

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I wanted to create a thread about retro PC desktop computers as many people seem to want an awful lot for them
but are they really worth the money?

With all things to take into consideration like aging electrical components and failing mechanical parts of drives, fans the chances of your vintage PC lasting decreases like a ticking time bomb. Effectively your buying junk for a lot of money. Its the same with old CRT monitors.

Many of these old PC's that people want a lot of money for haven't even been cleaned let alone serviced and the few that have been supposedly serviced normally means they have had just a dust off with Windows 98 chucked on them. They like a ticking time bomb to hardware failure and vintage parts are hard to find and often expensive.

First I'll start with the power supply they are normally one of the first things to go bang or just stop working due to aging electrolytic capacitors and other components, other components can be taken out in the circuits when caps go bad. Its the same with old motherboards and finding the correct value replacements isn't easy.

Drive belts in CD Rom drives always need replacing these days as well as giving the CD drive a good clean, and checking that parts are moving and operating correctly. Floppy drives also need a clean. There is no guarantee that you'll get a machine with a working floppy.

Ram can go bad and replacement Ram can cost a lot

Hard disk drives... hard drives are almost always dead or on there way out in Vintage machines. Its hard to impossible to find a 100% working replacement. Some people use SD cards which fail pretty quickly I've seen it happen so many times. CF cards are better but have to be setup properly and often isn't a permanent solution as Windows 9x systems don't support SSD or have Trim. Maybe ok for MS-DOS. Maybe ok for Windows 3.11

There are a lot of things that can go wrong and often do go wrong with vintage PC desktop computers.

What are your opinions on old desktop computers demanding high prices?
 
Things are worth what people want to pay for them. Currently retro PCs and components are in vogue, as such they are currently inflated beyond where they had plateaued a number of years back. As always, the high-end, rare or interesting kit is worth a premium over the common or garden stuff (think Voodoo 5 5500 is worth more than a Voodoo 3 2000, or that a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is worth more than a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra worth even though the 5900 is faster and “better”).

My GPU collection amounts around 100 cards now and is easily worth twice what I paid for them collectively, but I’ve got some interesting and hard to find pieces and very few run of the mill cards.
 
Goodness me @Retro6. Are you deliberately being antagonistic?! Do you live under a permanent grey cloud.

I have lots and lots of retro PC. So far. Not one PSU has failed. Not one CD drive belt has gone. Yes Floppys get a bit iffy, but it's no show stopper.

It's supply and demand. Much like the Pristine Vauxhall Nova SR on Pistonheads selling for thousands. Much like the magic 35-40 year age group that gets nostalgic for their childhood but have the means to overspend on their hobby.

I only got my Amiga recapped out of courtesy to it.

I've got enough spares to last my lifetime.
 
Supply and demand
Retro hardware in good working order (boxes help) are becoming rare.
The 'aging electrical components' as you put it work perfectly well sometimes 20+ years later. My retro machine I sold recently had the same PSU since it was made in March 2000 and had no issues at all. Similar with most of the internal parts, monitor and speakers. Hard drives and CD drives were good as new

If anything, todays modern hardware will age quicker as it'll have poorer build quality than in the 90s

Sort of wish I hadnt sold it but need to downsize my collection. I swapped it for a vintage (2001) high end laptop and have recently purchased a PSP Go which i'm steadily building up peripherals. Needless to say i've been looking at old CRT TVs again for it and adapters to hook it up :rolleyes:
 
I think its incredible that some hardware parts can last that long. I have a small collection of old computers I've had more that died than ones that have stayed working... all I'm saying is that its a real gamble. Lets imagine somebody just paid 250 quid for an old desktop and then the motherboard goes bad within 2 weeks that would be quite sickening to have to fork out lot of cash for another motherboard. It happens.

I bought a nice old IBM once and it started dying within a couple weeks. I didn't pay much for it about 20 quid. I got a replacement sent of the same type and the same thing happened to that. Maybe I'm just incredibly unlucky if its not happened to anybody else.

I just bought a 486 for 35 quid for my Windows 3.11 project :) hopefully fingers crossed its gonna be a good one.
 
I have old stuff and some of them are rare.

7Y53677.jpg

This is a Dual Pentium 133Mhz - Asus MB

A Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
https://i.imgur.com/DeAwICd.jpg

My first CDR bought in 1995 if I'm not wrong, it is SCSI.. I think I paid around £1000 for it and each CD was about £10 back then. https://i.imgur.com/TOZbZOA.jpg

A few old CPUs: https://i.imgur.com/qWTfDAk.jpg

I have loads of old sound cards, modems and etc, but I've binned a lot of stuff as they were at my parents taking space.
 
Drangueos said:
I have old stuff and some of them are rare.

7Y53677.jpg

This is a Dual Pentium 133Mhz - Asus MB

A Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
https://i.imgur.com/DeAwICd.jpg

My first CDR bought in 1995 if I'm not wrong, it is SCSI.. I think I paid around £1000 for it and each CD was about £10 back then. https://i.imgur.com/TOZbZOA.jpg

A few old CPUs: https://i.imgur.com/qWTfDAk.jpg

I have loads of old sound cards, modems and etc, but I've binned a lot of stuff as they were at my parents taking space.
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Thats a nice board.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
Stuff doesnt die as easily as your making it out to.
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It depends on what it is.

I've had a number of PC's that have died on me over the years.

Pentium III COMPAQ small form factor PC that worked well for a long time until it died in 2012 I used to love that machine.
The two IBM Pentium II computers I got on ebay both died
I've had several Pentium 4 machines that died over the past 10 years.

It is disheartening when you have old machines that fail and maybe all the ones I had were not very good quality but the good stuff is impossible to find now for a good price.Some of the early Pentium 1 & II computers were pretty awful, not all old computers were good quality. Some of the good quality PC's last. a lot of the 486 computers were pretty solid but as time went on from the Pentium Pro's in to the PII era the quality of a lot of PC's started diminishing "not all but a lot". .
 
Drangueos said:
7Y53677.jpg
Click to expand...

shaq-shimmy.gif
 
paradigm said:
Things are worth what people want to pay for them. Currently retro PCs and components are in vogue, as such they are currently inflated beyond where they had plateaued a number of years back. As always, the high-end, rare or interesting kit is worth a premium over the common or garden stuff (think Voodoo 5 5500 is worth more than a Voodoo 3 2000, or that a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is worth more than a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra worth even though the 5900 is faster and “better”)
Click to expand...

Basically this.

But there are of course alternatives to the things that go wrong. Modern powersupplies with -5v rails. Gotek drives. Noctua fan all the things. CF card adapters which themselves appear to be being replaced by essentially disposable SD cards. You can pursue period correctness - and pay for it - or you can use alternative options for a cheaper, quieter and more reliable retro PC. I think both approaches are just as valid.
 
I've also found individulals hoard specific retro hardware (E.g. GPUs, Soundcards, PCMCIA adapters)
These hardcore collectors whilst, pursuing their hobby, do end up driving prices up as others will pay more as they become scarce. It's sort of a shame that one person may own 20 or whatever number cards that sit in a bedroom in packaging instead of being used.
That said, at least they are preserved in great condition. No doubt these will sit un-used for 30-50 years, then be sold for peanuts in house clearances in 2060

In the end I gave up looking
 
Guest2 said:
I've also found individulals hoard specific retro hardware (E.g. GPUs, Soundcards, PCMCIA adapters)
These hardcore collectors whilst, pursuing their hobby, do end up driving prices up as others will pay more as they become scarce. It's sort of a shame that one person may own 20 or whatever number cards that sit in a bedroom in packaging instead of being used.
That said, at least they are preserved in great condition. No doubt these will sit un-used for 30-50 years, then be sold for peanuts in house clearances in 2060

In the end I gave up looking
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I'm kind of in that camp for GPUs. However they don't go unused, they get used in rotation, and (once I move house and have more space) they will be on display in my office/cave.
 
paradigm said:
I'm kind of in that camp for GPUs. However they don't go unused, they get used in rotation, and (once I move house and have more space) they will be on display in my office/cave.
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Think of how sad they will feel not getting used once in the display cabinet :(
 
Guest2 said:
Think of how sad they will feel not getting used once in the display cabinet :(
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They will still get rotated in and out of machines. Once I've benched them all with a few different CPUs/Platforms it'll likely be time to thin the herd anyway.

At which point only the rarer stuff (or stuff that holds some kind of emotional value) will remain. Or, you know, the stuff that looks cool on display!
 
There are people who put high price tags on things just because "there vintage" regardless. Pentium 4 for example those computers have gone up to the price you'd pay for a better machine like a PII or PIII. In my opinion I don't see any real use that a P4 would have today because its not old or very compatible to run Windows 98 properly or for playing old games and its not new powerful enough to be an XP machine when there are better systems to run XP. Unless I'm missing something here?

Some P4 machines run pretty well on Windows 98 but a lot just aren't very ideal when a PIII computer from that era can do it better. A lot of these over priced Pentium 4 machines are nothing special but just because they are not current people are selling them as "vintage" with high price tags.

Fair enough if you have one lying around and you want to play about on Windows 98.
 
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Retro6 said:
There are people who put high price tags on things just because "there vintage" regardless. Pentium 4 for example those computers have gone up to the price you'd pay for a better machine like a PII or PIII. In my opinion I don't see any real use that a P4 would have today because its not old or very compatible to run Windows 98 properly or for playing old games and its not new powerful enough to be an XP machine when there are better systems to run XP. Unless I'm missing something here?

Some P4 machines run pretty well on Windows 98 but a lot just aren't very ideal when a PIII computer from that era can do it better. A lot of these over priced Pentium 4 machines are nothing special but just because they are not current people are selling them as "vintage" with high price tags.

Fair enough if you have one lying around and you want to play about on Windows 98.
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A cheap P4 build is pretty good at Windows 98 duties but that is on the basis that you can (sometimes) still get them for dirt cheap money. I wouldn't pay big (retro) money for one!

It is funny when you see things listed as vintahe when they're just household junk, like old DVD players and a 2012 Ivy Bridge office PC (not saying Ivy bridge is household junk)
 
It wasn't that long ago like less than 5 years ago P4's were dirt cheap. I had a couple in the attic and couple more in storage all of them worked when they were put away but on two of them, the caps were all bulging on the motherboards and they wouldn't power on the other two were still good so I put Windows 98 on both of them One runs Windows 98 beautifully but the other will do funky things and I get crashes on a lot of games. I repaired the other two boards but I chucked the cases away I only keep old retro white cases and all my PC builds are in old 90s cases even my modern builds.

Dual Core 2 will be next. Another 5 or 10 years and they will be going for big money I have lots of them including boxed unopened due core motherboards / processors and other stuff. They'd make good Windows XP machines. Windows 2000 can run on them pretty well so I've heard but I have never tried Windows 2000 on a dual core machine myself. I have a few iMac G3 computers but the iMac's don't seem very desirable.
 
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It's all a niche market. The majority of people don't care for old computers though. Personally I don't get the attraction of wanting to run old crappy games on Windows 95 or dos.
On the other hand, I have a collection of old computers - Acorn Electron, BBC Master, several Acorn Archimedes machines, C64s, Spectrums etc. Likewise, the majority of people will have no interest in these and won't be excited to run old crappy games on them such as Granny's Garden on the BBC :D
 
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