So this page is getting back into the task of working with said "not quite vintage" but "not modern" hardware. The Caveats, the Pitfalls, the Possibilities, but framed for the current era. When I started doing this, a 486 was at most, a 11 year old PC. That is well within the scope of what I'm talking about here. Today, a 486 is a vintage computer, and even then, it's still quite a capable machine surprisingly enough (though very very very slow for the job, LOL, unsurprisingly), so we're cutting things made before 2010 at this point, which makes this page a far easier thing to write than I had in 2001.

Why is it easier to write? Well, take a look at the GEM 386 above that's actually a 1.5GHz PIII with 512MB of RAM and Windows 2000 Pro x64 on it - back then, we were dealing with form factors, multiple CPUs, GPUs, figuring out ways to find more affordable RAM to use, because even a Pentium III PC-133 DIMM was $1 per Megabyte still. Today I just bought, for my latest build which I have not announced yet - 16GB of RAM on DDR4 PC4-2666, 2 sticks of 8 - for $13.00! Today, it's like HEAVEN for people like me working on PCs in the aftermarket. And after the Orange Shithead I refuse to call my President put all these dumbass Tariffs on everything, I think the "Mad Max" (or Mad Mike) approach to computing is going to become far more relevant for the next four years. Also, maybe some of the republicans can smile since it's now just money that's already in the country changing hands in the country anyway - when it's not free.

The first place I find these things, of all places, is DUMPSTER DIVING. Yes, People still throw away their old computers in the trash. THis is kind of how people like me get into the hobbyist low-end computer thing I've been doing for the last 20 years. We walk out to take out the trash at our apartment, and suddenly, there's a HP G50 and HP G70 laptop sitting there, good screens, all intact, and just looking for a new home - remember, you're cold, they're cold. And the greatest part is a lot of these broken machines are really not all that broken. Most likely it's some moron who wastes all his money on O.F. chicks and downloading Malware, and probably has the technical skills of a chimpanzee who was hit on his head, hard, many times early on. So chances are, you might score a good PC. That said, not all things in the dumpster are misfires of decomissioning, sometimes these things ARE truly destroyed, like the tweeker who tried to wire his Laptops AC Adapter port directly to a 120vAC outlet cord (OUCH!!), assuming he hasn't burned the complex down due to a gross misunderstanding about electricity, that HP is probably fried beyond repair.

The second place I find these old things the most often, is family and friends. People know I like messing around with old computers, and thusly opportunities present themselves with each upgrade. This goes double if you are from a "well to do" circle who isn't very tech savvy beyond the basics. Nothing against not being tech savvy, but some people would rather throw down a few thousand on an expensive Apple or high end gaming rig, just to trash it the minute they see an infomercial telling them their 3 year old Ryzen Thread Ripper is a security risk and they need to buy a new computer to run Norton 360 AntiVirus/AntiSpy/AntiIDTheft/AntiAI suite. Who am I to tell people what to do with their money or technology? So I end up sometimes with some nice stuff through here, or at the very least, a good base-platform to build something great off of.

The third place - the THRIFT SHOP/Flea Market. These days, you might find it harder to find devices this way, but back in the day, this was my primary way to go about it because in the late 1990's-mid 2010's, before "retro PCs" took off, and everything became retro as long as it was too old to run the latest version of macos or Windows, they stopped selling them as much. Actually Dell/Goodwill performed a mass comptuer genocide during that time when they struck a e-waste program deal. I saw many collectable 70's - 90's machines needlessly destroyed and probably send to a third world country for gold recovery just because "it might have data on a (non existant) hard drive (that didn't exist in 1979)" - yeah, I'm thinking of a nice woodgrain dual 5.25" half height floppy Cromemco or somethign like that I saw the Lynnwood Goodwill wrapping and dropping in a bin for recycling - BASTARDS!