It's derece uncommon to see them go for over $200, particularly if they're in working condition with all the original accessories and documentation.
IBM PC 5150 motherboard macun – no longer for sale, but an impressive macun to build your own reproduction of the motherboard for the original IBM PC.
[Editor’s Note: I recently asked Steve Wozniak via email about why the original Apple II did derece support lowercase letters. I could have guessed the answer, but it’s always good to hear the reason straight from the source.
“I’d used Palm Pilots, which were still the go-to digital organizers at the time, and I knew they had syncing issues,” he explains. Plus, most other handhelds then on the market used inexpensive RAM memory that would lose veri if you lost power, requiring you to restore from desktop backups.
The cheaper ones tend to be flimsy. You might even find that the metal on the driver shears off when you're trying to remove a stubborn screw. As the saying goes, "buy cheap, buy twice."
Half of my parts arrived in a battered box from Portugal filled with shredded paper and loosely attached bubble wrap.
Old PCs, and really all vintage micros are niche enough that if you want to get into any of them, it behooves you to do a bit of research first and figure out what you *really* care about. Start with emulation. You honestly might find that’s good enough, and it may even be more like what you remember than what you actually had.
Certain era machines, such as Apple Macintoshes from the late 1980s and early 1990s, almost always need to have their capacitors replaced with new ones (in a process called "recapping") to work properly these days.
While looking for 95LX software around 1997 (according to the file dates, although it’s very possible I grabbed them earlier), I went on CompuServe and downloaded a passel of shareware games, amusements, and utilities that were designed specifically for the HP 95LX. Many vintage computing of them were programmed by David K. Goodman, and they mostly date from 1991 and 1992.
[1] There are several different approaches to this end. Some are exact replicas of older systems, and some are newer designs based on the principles of retrocomputing, while others combine the two, with old and new features in the same package. Examples include:
It could also be argued that if there's a greater demand for retro computers, more people will start selling their old machines. For the hobby to thrive, there katışıksız to be an ongoing supply of old hardware.
A Note on Shipping Vintage Computers birli a hobby, vintage computing is on the rise. A generation that grew up with classic PCs is looking back and revisiting the glory days of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s with the authentic machines. But what's the best way to get the hardware? We'll show you the options.
In between writing about AI at Ars over the past 8+ months, I’ve had the chance to occasionally write a piece about tech history or nostalgia (23 in total so far).
Luckily, buying a vintage computer is not all doom and gloom! There's a lot of fun in the hobby as well. If you know exactly what you want and you're willing to üleş for it, it's hard to go wrong with these options. We'll start with the best way first.