| HOW DO YOU STORE SO MANY VINTAGE COMPUTERS? How I Manage, Maintain, and Upkeep Old PC's In a Small Apartment |
So, as the title implies, other than just another way to show off how I store my stuff. This page is more about people like me who have a large number of vintage computers and live in less-than-ideal conditions for owning a lot of vintage computer hardware. It seems to me, that the grand lot of us into vintage computing, tend to end up with a LOT of stuff. Some of us with collections as ginormous as LGRs where we need a storage facility, other ones of us, like myself, have what we would consider to be a large collection, but is quite tiny compared to extreme examples. So I'm mostly just talking about my method here, and reasoning behind how/why what I do.
To the left, we have an elegant example for laptop collectors, and something I kind of ran into on accident. See, I originally got some Amazon.com metal shelving for my storage shed outside where I do guitar work. When I got the shelf, it looked cool, so my wife said "keep it in here", and I got an idea...what if I put my vintage laptops on it, so they can be on display when not in use. This allowed me to not have them stored in the closet like before, where they would sit until I decided to use them (often ending up with me running just one most of the time), but rather, allows me to rotate them out and use them when I feel like I want the certain "vibe" of a particular machine. As of 8/16/2022, I got a second shelf, so now I can complete the collection of NEC Versa laptops (get my hands on an Ultralite), and then put a group of NanTan 486 systems on the other side (NanTan is my other favorite brand). I also did this as my M/75 has been sitting out of the rack most of the time.
How do I limit myself... 
I now have shelving for 10 laptop computers, and since there is a "theme" to them (NEC Versa PC-4xx models & NanTan 486 models), that limits the laptop computers to 10 total, which is way more than I need, but it looks VERY cool, and can be setup in some rather creative ways aesthetically - including having 2 5 port outlet strips per rack, and running all 10 at the same time with screensavers as a form of display method like a muesum. Eventually the plan includes having the specs and models listed with them like a museum. Laptops are also very small and the 2 racks together take up as much space as a small fridge, but if I ever had to go into a smaller space, shelving in a closet takes up less space than the same number of big box DOS games. I limit desktops by peripherals. I have FOUR CRT monitors that go with them. The Tandy gets the NEC MultiSync II, the GEM gets the old beat up Micron, the Compaq gets the nicer KDS monitor, and the 486 gets the larger 17" Dell because it has that hyper-insane high VRAM graphics card in it that makes it quite capable of high resolution modes in Windows. Each one has an assigned set of peripherals that goes with it, and each one is rotated out once a season. The Tandy gets it's proprietary kayboard and deluxe mouse, the 286 has a Generic 2 button mouse and a clicky keyboard, the Compaq has it's own Compaq mouse and keyboard, and the 486 has the Chicony 5661, Microsoft Dove Bar, the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepads. All currently share the same set of speakers, but later I plan to get one more set of speakers with the 486 having the nice NEC speakers, the 386 having the Altec Lanscings, and the 286 having a nice generic set. The ultimate goal will someday to be a nice "man cave space" where I can set these up on their own desks, and have them up and ready to go at a moment's notice. This will allow these systems to be walked up to and used as wanted, each with their own dedicated protection, and each one of them ready to go and on display. By that point I might be curating them more like an actual PC museum than as a group of vintage machines I use to play DOS games on.Software ~ My Methods For software, I have TWO devices now to store on, I have an FTP Share on my Router, using ReadyShare, and the other method is soon I'm going to offer the same service on my Raspberry Pi I use for RetroPi both for redundancy, and a much larger storage space, including ROMS and full O/S installs. Basically, RetroPie will become my new server, and it'll just live hooked up to my TV. So when it's not serving files, it's playing games using the same files. When PC's are first built out, the O/S is installed via floppy diskettes (non-originals) and CD-Rs. Once this is all loaded, the basic networking is setup, adn then all Drivers are pulled to the "F" partition or a special "Drivers" directory on the PC, and then loaded. This redaundancy allows me to rebuild a vintage computer in a matter of minutes once the initial groundwork is laid without losing any savegames, data, or projects on them (yes, I do still use 8088-80486 machines for actual projects and work sometimes). FTP allows me to pull all this stuff over, and it creates a nice "redaundancy" in that the vintage PC's are storing all the data/games/software I might want on another machine, and then I can restore from multiple functional "backups" if I desire. This ecosystem means EVERY machine is contributing in some way to data storage, and each machine is heavily protected against data loss. I tend to prefer digital copies of games to physical copies because, while there is a more authentic experience of using a physical copy, and having digital copies without boxes falls into the whiter side of that "gray area", it also means that I don't need to dedicate yet another shelf to vintage PC stuff - ie the LGR-style library of "big boxes". While It's really cool, and something I'd love to do, I'm not particularly big into moving geography just so I can buy a house large enough to have a small local library's worth of MS-DOS and Windows software in huge boxes that I will only visit once in awhile. I like to have my vintage stuff on hand, and use it, use it HARD. I'm a lot like Billy Squier about his guitars (and myself actually when it comes to guitars), in that these are not there to sit and look pretty, they are there to function, and be used, and I use them hard and really show that a machine from each age. |
For Desktop Computers, I typically keep those on a larger metal shelf in the closet and rotate them out depending on how much heat I need in my room. During winter months, I tend to use faster PCs and during the summer I use slower PCs. I limit this collection to 4 because desktops take up so much space (eventually you will see that I have downsized again once I'm done with the downsizing). Basically I rotate via the 4 seasons - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....usually opting for a moderate system in the spring and fall, usually using the Compaq in the fall and the 286 in the spring, and opting for the 486 in the Winter, and the Tandy 1000A in the summer, though lately I've been working "off season" and more with recording material. This also fits the use case since during the spring, I'm usually outside starting with music and guitars, summer I'm full guitar mode and not doing a lot of retro-gaming to warrant a PC capable of "long term" gaming. During the fall, as weather gets colder, I spend more time retro-gaming, so I tend to go towards my more capable, "long-term-gaming" desktops like the 386 and 486, and they offer a nice thermal benefit in that they generate heat, which helps keep the apartment warm, makes the heater work less, and just makes things more comfy overall.