Retro gaming vs expense

[moijk]

Originally Posted by Turrican2FTW

Hi, just wondering, at what point for you guys/girls does re-living the retro dream become an expense thats difficult to justify?
...
So my desire for retro hardware that started at £32 has now set me back £325

So at what point does it go from 'i will buy this' to 'i can't justify buying this'

I'll put it in perspective for you.

Let me take retro vs modern computing as example.

Firstly, because there are tons of nutters like you out there, your money is invested and not spent. If you decide to sell, you could either only loose a little, cover your costs or even exit with a profit. A retro machine doesn't loose half its value just when the sticker have come off.

Secondly, If you spent that much on a new gadget like a tablet (which is what they cost) - in a year or couple of years you'll probably want to upgrade your tablet but the a1200 is still as good for what its intended purpose is. The tablets value however would have greatly declined.

[spiff]

£500 for a trisync monitor is about the limit.. but if I could get a guarantee that it would have perfect alignment and no burn in I probably would have paid up to twice that eventually.

But I do find the flea market £2 bargain hunting just as fun, but fun in a different way.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Madcrow

O.O You threw them out??? Surely there were people around who would want those. Even if you couldn't sell them, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't give them away.

Of course not :-)

Couldn't let my miggys end up in landfill! I left them in the loft when I moved house.

D.

[deicidal]

Well I blame my parents for moving house a few years back, my old a500 came out of the loft and just about fired up before deciding to die.

This then got my thinking i had always wanted a a1200 back in the day so off to ebay i went and snagged one. Did the CF Card HDD thingy and thought I would be happy, I was wrong. So decided to get a a500 as well as to avoid to having to do all the dicking about to get stuff to get compatability, was made up though that I managed to get myself the same model I had back in the day of an ecs ks1.3 amiga .

Next problem was RAM as I wanted whload to run properly so then nabbed a 8meg card off ebay and had nothing but problems with it, turned out the simm in it was faulty but just as I got it working Jens announced the ACA1230 and it was coming up to Christmas with the gf saying what the hell do i buy you. So that sorted that.

Also along the way i picked another a1200 for nothing that fitzsteve spotted on ebay was is mint condition no yellowing, so that has now got the ACA1230, KS3.1 and a 4GB CF Card and I pretty happy with it. Also nabbed an a600 on ebay for £6 which turned out to be far from in good working order, faulty drive and kb. Fixed the KB from some parts from an old A500 and shoved a SD Card HDD in it and a 2MB SRAM card disk drive is still faulty though.

Also have a a2000 that needs quite a lot of TLC when I actually find the time.

[discomeats]

BARGAINS BARGAINS BARGAINS!

In amongst the stuff going £insane there's always something cheap that just slips by most peoples attention and I have to resist, or I'm just going to bankrupt myself buying old computers.

And even the cheap stuff adds up rapidly, especially with postage on bigger things, I probably already have all the stuff I'm ever going to use it's just there's always more goodies out there.

I don't want to think about how much I've spent and I'm in no way a serious collector

[deicidal]

Comletely agree discomeats, I want more toys than I have time to play with.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Turrican2FTW

So my desire for retro hardware that started at £32 has now set me back £325

Yeah, but what always helps is that it wasn't one big chunk..

If someone had said, hey I have this Amiga 1200 with all this great stuff you can buy for <insert what I have paid for my 1200 and all it's stuff>, I wouldn't have done it...

But buying smaller parts over time has made it possible. ;-)
It's almost like I don't notice how much I've spent that way..

(No, I'm not going to do the math.. I feel much safer not thinking about it..)

desiv

[FOL]

Originally Posted by deicidal

Comletely agree discomeats, I want more toys than I have time to play with.

Indeed its how it all starts, and before you know it, the wife is moaning cause your retro stuff is taking up space, .

[Dreedo]

At the rate i can afford Amiga stuff, everytime i buy a new Amiga part, another will break.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by FOL

Indeed its how it all starts, and before you know it, the wife is moaning cause your retro stuff is taking up space, .

Which is precisely why I left my Miggys in the loft when we last moved house - and plus it will make a nice surprise for someone sometime in the future...

To be fair, I spent shitloads on stuff for my Amiga habit back when it was a thing, but recently I've not bothered. Hell, it was about four years since I last plugged them in, and that was five years ago. So to be honest getting rid made the space I (or rather she) needed, and I've not lost anything into the bargain as I've still got WinUAE and my HDD stored as a hardfile!

D.

[Decker]

Whelp. Time came to either throw my 500+ away or actually do something with it, after fourteen years.


Original A500+ / GVP HD8+ / CM8833-2
This one was good to go. Just a few spares to make it near-mint and original:

• Replacement floppy drive 25€
• Kickstart 2.04 15€

Then it all went to hell, as I started building another system from scratch:
A1200 3.0 / 4GB CF IDE / ACA1230

• A1200 130€
• 4gb CF + Adapter 33.60€
• RGB scart 24.40€
• RGB to VGA 23.80€
• ACA 1230/28 65Mb 114.60€
• TAC-2 30€
• Competition Pro 15€

Pretty modest, but all in all that would be 411.40€ (or roughly 358£) this year. Worth every cent!

[Gribnitz]

I only buy new stuff when it is a bargain. My current problem is space. I have too much piling up that I haven't looked at in years, along with games. The games are taking up a HUGE amount of room and I really need to do something with them. Almost everything is available online now, but the printed manuals are nice to have to reference.