I didn't explain myself well. What I am trying to say is that the younger generation of people who are coming into the hobby. The ones who grew up on PCs and not Ataris, Commodores and Early Apples. They are here now. They are going to want to be represented. They are going to want to show off their machines. I think it's time to welcome them.

Yep! And what is happening is there are tons of "lets play" videos on youtube and videos of people doing thrift store hunting of older stuff. This entertainment is probably triggering people who are younger and weren't into MS-DOS games and such to start hunting them. You could say part of it is the flipper mentality that has sort of taken the country by storm (from American Pickers to coat of paint = $100,000 house flipping shows.) A *LOT* of the console games from the Nintendos and such have very very high prices on the games now. Stuff like Conquors Bad Fur Day go for more than new (Nintendo 64.) Same thing has hit the pinball machine world. I'm a bit different than a lot on this list, starting off on Atari 800XL then going to MS-DOS PCs. But when we were kids we would wardial around to find cool systems to play with that were UNIX and other random things.

On 03/11/2016 10:54 AM, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

There are people who will be nostalgic about their PCs.

Those are the people who I think we should welcome.

They are like us, but younger.

I have to agree here. I know many such people around here. I used to laugh at them because they ask me where the 486s and Pentiums are in my vintage computer museum, but then I began to understand that they just have a very different frame of reference. They always "get it" when I explain the difference in focus.

Also lets be honest. There is PC history.

There is PC history, but almost no PC personality. That's where I'd draw the line. YMMV. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

Long meandering reply here as I wait for some especially slow things to happen at work... On Fri, 11 Mar 2016, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

What I am trying to say is that the younger generation of people who are coming into the hobby.

I'll take this opportunity to finally introduce myself, as this is Relevant To My Interests. I ran into the VCF table at NYC Maker Faire but didn't really have time to chat. I'm Jameel Akari. I live in Troy, NY, and am employed as a systems engineer in IT infrastructure for a local company. Graduated from RPI, Computer & Systems Engineering, 1999. I've been into computers of every vintage since my father brought home a SYM-1 6502 SBC from a work training class when I was in 2nd grade or so. I'm that baby engineer from the Dilbert cartoon.

The ones who grew up on PCs and not Ataris, Commodores and Early Apples.

So I'm right on the edge of this. I had friends with Ataris (just as game consoles, and kitted out as home micros), C64s and VIC20s, and a variety of Apple ][ variants. Computer class in grade school was taught on ][s. It was a big deal when myself and other classmates started to turn in typed and printed reports in 4th grade, having just been taught cursive the year before. But at the same time, IBM PCs had been out for 5 years or so, and many of our parents workplaces were IBM shops. PC clones of various sorts were everywhere, and that's what we ended up: a Tandy 1000SX, because in theory my father could work on it like his office computers. In practice it all ended up in my room and things follow as expected from there. (I wish I still had that Tandy. I have the receipts!)

They are here now.

They are going to want to be represented. They are going to want to show off their machines.

Not in a whining and stomping our feet kind of way, but yes. :) When I try to explain why I have old computers around, I compare it to people who collect classic cars. Somehow people "get" that more readily. But often, they first think about 60s muscle cars. Meanwhile 80s and 90s cars like Mitsu Starions and BMW E30's show up, being restored and collected by a younger crowd. "Those aren't classics!" Sure they are. It's the same thing between these hobbies, with the same kind of "split," though that's a poor word for it. Time moves forward, and the slider that defines vintage and antique slides with it. It just happens to be remarkably compressed when talking about computing history. Now I happen to also really enjoy the entirety of said history. I was thrilled that there were "history of information technology" classes in college that counted as humanities credits. I collected any unusual-to-me hardware I could find, and read about the ones I couldn't. My main historical interest is that of DEC; I had a VT100 with modem just to BBS with, and my first Linux box was a DEC Alpha Multia. My father's work built a lot of things around MicroVAX and VMS, so when those manuals showed up around the house, I fell into them. I've got various pieces of PDP-11s these days, some more functional than others. There's a bunch of Alphas, a DECstation 3000, a MicroVAX II. I was excited to see pictures of VCF East, with these machines I only saw in magazines actually running, by people who really knew how they worked. Back to the topic: So yeah, people my age know how early-to-90s PCs work, and have some feelings about what PCs have personality and which don't. (Many don't. Some do. I collect those.) The software that goes with PCs is engrained in our heads, if a little dusty. Somebody mentioned Winsock and I twitched; maybe I can get you a nice FTP Software(R) stack that can get you NFS onto your PS/2 running WfW. Then there are UNIX workstations of every flavor, which definitely have personality to them. I have... more than I can display at once. At the same time you've got the rise of Macintosh, which turns out to be somewhat notable. ;) I know more than a couple my age and younger who are into now-vintage game consoles like the original NES. And of course there are arcade video games. Not general-purpose computers, but as they age, people have to maintain and repair them just the same. To do so sucessfully requires at least some knowledge of how they work. I know that there's just no way to cram this all into one museum space today, but my inflation-adjusted $0.02 is that it is important to show the whole span where possible. Last I read there was a nice "golden age of 8-bit home micros," jump to a 386/WfW, and then... ? There's another big jump from that to the computers/devices/Internet of today, and there is just as rich a history there as any point. And back to current events: My best friend in middle school had an AdLib sound card, "As Seen on eBay." And that got tossed in the parts bin as soon as the Sound Blaster Pro came out. I took a screenshot of the auction to troll him with. ;)

I think it's time to welcome them.

Hi, everybody! </DrNick> -- Jameel Akari

Final price on the Adlib Gold 1000 sound card was $3400. Sheesh!