Swift's thread on the "ones that got away" got me thinking about another source of guilt/regret common to the classic computer collector:
Systems we've neglected or failed to boot recently. I've had a re-jig of my storage, and whilst it was great to uncover gems that I'd forgotten I even had, it also brought some regrets for the systems I've neglected - lots of them not booted in 10 years or more. Because they were easily accessible I pulled out my Colour Classic and G4 Cube (is the latter on-topic through the "10 year rule" or are we sticking to pre-millenials?): https://www.dropbox.com/s/2c70f4flucjo3f6/IMG_7576.jpg?dl=0 Quick check-over and they both booted just fine! The systems I'm feeling really guilty over neglecting are: SGI Crimson VGX (skins perfect but needs some TLC before power-on) Micro PDP 11/83 (same) Maxed-out Acorn A3000 (my home-brew external SCSI Podule needs finishing) And I have a vast box of Sinclair Specturm games on tape that would probably take the rest of the year to load if I fired up my +2 and played them sequentially! -Austin.
