Systems

Personal Computers

When I build machines, I try to keep the parts faithful to the era, but it depends massively on the availability and costs of those parts.

When building a replica (a rebuild of a machine I used to own), I use parts that are either identical or similar, but again, it depends on whether I can find them.

And if at all possible, I try to procure brand new, original parts ("new-old-stock") whenever I can get them.

Honestly, given the way prices are right now on the second-hand market, a lot of things that I want are just "unobtainium".

I don't know what's happened, but prices are astronomically high; maybe it has something to do with the pandemic and people taking up retro-computing as a hobby?

One thing I do know is that there's a lot of price scalping going on, and I refuse to pay those prices for 20-plus-year-old parts