On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:31:47AM +0100, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: [...] > For millennial-age geeks, pre-32-bit computers are antiques. They _might_ > just barely remember back to Win9x. So for them, a DOS machine is a voyage of > discovery into some of the more arcane pages of history. The idea of > computers or OSes that can't boot from CD blows minds. For them, only elderly > historical kit has 3½" floppy drives.
Realistically, computers made before around 2010 *are* antiques: something where the main value is due to its age rather than its utility. The lack of intimate knowledge of machines from before one was born is not surprising. You only learn it to that depth if it was current kit in your youth. So us GenXers know rather more about 1980s Sinclair and Acorn machines than is healthy, and earlier kit is a orange-and-wood-grain mystery. > So yes, there is a little bit of demand, I reckon. Not highly commercial, > though. It's a nostalgia market, and the stuff that's peaking is when those who are starting to hit their mid-life crisis are getting nostalgic for the stuff of their youth. That's now the 1995-2005 era, and 16 and 32 bit consoles are flying off the shelves. There's a shop opposite Amsterdam Centraal station which is packed to the rafters with second-hand games for 16 bit consoles, and quite a few mail-order dealers dotted around villages here in the Noord-Holland peninsula. Are you feeling old yet?
