• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Are you an Active Collector or a Passive one?

Are you an Active Collector or a Passive one?

  • I'm an Active Collector

    Votes: 33 84.6%

  • I'm a Passive Collector

    Votes: 6 15.4%
  • Total voters
    39
B

Billyray

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2007
Messages
186
Location
NE Ohio
I'm a passive collector. All of my collection consists of old PCs that I bought new and just kept and upgraded etc.
 
I'm an active collector. Specifically, I have gone after systems that were far too expensive for me to acquire back when they were new and being offered for sale. Now that I'm thinking about it, some of those systems *still are* far too expensive for me to acquire...

8-)

smp
 
I'm a bit of both. I have items I collected since they were new, and I have items I have acquired by asking others and offering to "dispose" of old technology they have sitting around.

Once it was established that I had interest in re-purposing old technology, I'd receive calls to come pick up items or they'd bring them to me.
 
I didn't keep much of my equipment through the years so I had to be active. I have most of the hardware I want and I generally wait for a good deal before buying something that I'd like to have. I guess that puts me in between. I'm very active with collecting new devices for my retro gear. :)

Heather
 
Technically I am a passive collector.
However, for certain demo projects I have actively hunted down specific hardware, and will probably continue to do so in the future.
 
I cannot categorize myself into one of the choices. I have hardware that I kept over the years from old PC I owned. I also actively search for new parts on forums or ebay. I spent way too much time and money on stuff that nobody understand why I am interested into. I don't know, I just love old piece of technology. It feels good to see that PC came a long way before what it currently is.
 
Both.

I still have my first computer in its box (Timex 2068). I sold off my next few machines to get new ones (C64, Packard Bell 286, new built 386 and 486's) then when The Pentium era came around I just kept the machines and parts since there was no real resale value.

I hunted down all my Amiga/ST/Mac gear after 2001 and also purchased a bunch of retro PC stuff I never had when it was new (IBM PS?2 series for one) plus a Sun and MicroVAX for fun.

You could further break this down into people who want specific models and those who just snag what they can get for cheap or free.
 
I guess I have to say "active" since most of the computers that I collect were new when I was an infant or not even born.
The first computer that was my own was a used 486 which died of battery corrosion but I still have the parts.
That said, I don't usually look for specific models or parts. I just buy what I come across at a fair price.
 
Both, as I have my old Nascom I.. and some other old stuff, I don't usually let go of things. In later years I have acquired some more. And I still wants an ND-100 (and -5000)

-Tor
 
Active. Currently I am buying Magnavox (Philips) MS-DOS PCs (found 3 so far) and IBM PS/ValuePoints (found many, bought 6 so far). All these are pretty cheap (>$100 typically) and relatively uncommon (so I do not buy that often). I used to collect Roland, IBM PS/2s but sold most of those.
 
Last edited:
Active.

I think only two of my machines were passively collected - the Apple //c that my father got in 1984 and that I grew up with (which is scattered into component parts, but I still have most (all?) of them, and a couple of them are in my actual working //c), and a //e clone that my family got when I was quite young (when it was still just obsolete, not vintage).
 
You guys know about Clarke's law? "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." My wife has a similar line I call Nolan's law. "Any computer more than three years old that works is an antique. If it doesn't work its junk".

So does that make me "active" or "passive"?

;-)
 
Considering most of my collection is older than me by several years, I guess I may qualify as an active collector?

Curently I'm focusing at the home computers, but in the past I've been very much focused on the IBM PC.
 
smeezekitty said:
That's insanely inaccurate. 3 years old computers are second generation I5s with 4GB+ of RAM with Windows 7
Click to expand...

Not really. She just comes at the discussion from a different direction. She manages several hundred virtual Linux servers on IBM Z system main frames for the local county government. Oh ya, she also spends more time than I would like trying to get me to clear out the "junk" in our garage: Heathkit H89/H17/H14, Polymorphic Systems Poly88, IMSAI 8080, a stack of Compupro 8/16 systems, DEC PDP11/23, DEC PDP11/23+, Heathkit H11/H27, two IBM 5150's and an IBM 5160. No doubt I have left out a few.

She sees computers from the perspective of an IT professional, tools to be used to solve problems, not as artifacts of a bygone era to be tinkered with, studied and preserved. Most of the time, we observe a truce on the subject.

Most of the time. ;-)
 
In the last 17 years, I've seen the life-cycle replacement for desktop PC's go from every 3 years to 7 years and above. A 1998 computer was leaps and bounds faster than a 1995 era pc. Later on, the noticeable gap in performance became less and less obvious unless you were doing serious number crunching. If a company was hurting for money, this was a good excuse to expand the useful life cycle period.
 
SkydivinGirl said:
I didn't keep much of my equipment through the years so I had to be active. I have most of the hardware I want and I generally wait for a good deal before buying something that I'd like to have. I guess that puts me in between. I'm very active with collecting new devices for my retro gear. :)

Heather
Click to expand...

One thing that was handy about my folks was that they never threw a lot of things out, so I was able to preserve the Tomy Tutor and the Commodores. That original Tutor is still working today. The ones we couldn't preserve were the ones where the magic smoke got out and were replaced with something else (the Packard Bell 386SX and the beige box 486 come to mind; both met sudden ends).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top