It's all gone topsy turvey computer wise..

[#1]

So inspired by Steves nostalgia inspiring thread here about Atari, I found myself remembering the old days of a 520STFM with 4Mb of ram. I then found myself thinking it would be fun to have one again and found myself on ebay.

Have you seen the prices people want for those old things? - £80 up for a fully working one! I'm in utter shock! We gave ours away to someone for nothing back in 2000. I wish i'd kept it now lol.

What I don't understand is how a totally retro device like a ST which is heavy, bulky, unable to do much by todays standards and isn't really going to be any real world use now, can cost so much more than a tiny little RPi original model B (or any RPi for that matter) which can do so much more, and is far more powerful?

Are the people selling these old retro machines onto something or are they just chancers? - I would have taken the punt if i found one for £20.. but at the prices i've seen i think i'll forget it and use an emulator and treat myself to another RPi

[#2]

Buying stuff like that at a high price is just a fad ?

Say an article appears in the press which claims that old tin soldiers are fetching a high price it's a fair bet a number of other people will buy them on the basis I must have it as others are buying it and it's a good investment as the price is going up.

The sad truth is that a thing is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it and in many cases it might be a lot less than what you paid for it.

Of course there are exceptions, if it is a single and genuine article like some paintings, coins or whatever then the price is likely to increase but the average person is unlikely to have enough money to buy it in the first place.

[#3]

It definitely isn't a  ' fad ' @7up people prefer original hardware, apparently emulators are not as good as the real thing. The Retro scene has taken off. You need to be keeping your eye on the ball these days and snap something you want up while the prices are down. 

[#4]

Steve could be right. 3 weeks ago I sold an old 286 pc running win 3.11 and DOS 6.22, 4 meg ram and a 5 and a quarter floppy drive. I got £55 for it. 

[#5]

People want older computers to run things that aren't available on modern computers, aswell as document things (games, software, hardware, etc.) that could soon all be gone, and of course as a result, it's driving up prices for old computers, which is damned annoying 'cos of the amount of hardware I had to throw away as part of my job at a computer shop, all of it would be worth a mint now, if only I'd have had the room to hoard it all and save it 'til it was worth a mint...

[#6]

Have you tried the free Hatari emulator, it will emulate and ST on modern PC Hardware, you can get disk images of old games from the internet. There is an open source TOS Replacement ROM available too.

[#7]

Like everything "retro". someone, somewhere will pay a high price for it, which then gets other "chancers" on the bandwagon..  I have a collection of Morse Keys.. ( how retro is that  ? ) ( but I do use them all , at least once a day, for what they were designed to be used for )...

When I started,... some of the more "common" types were selling for about £5 or £10  cos people wanted to get rid... but 5 years on... and people are asking silly money for the same things... £40 or £50... some of the more recent keys, like the famous "NATO" morse key, people are asking in excess of £100... I have one in that has been Chromed, that  cost me about £90 .. but that is a "one off" and exception. . There is an Indian seller... who regularly lists about 20 to 25 different morse keys, and they are all over £150 .. PLUS post and packing from India...  ( I don`t think he sells many.. if any though)..

[#8]

I could be rich !

I have a couple of BBC computers in the loft, about a hundred floppy discs and a drive that takes 2 floppies at the same time, the cost of that drive at the price I paid for it all those years ago would get me a good basic computer these days.

[#9]

The rarer the item the more £££ you will make so get up in the loft, you probably have a gold mine in it.

[#10]

Despite its high price i am actually very tempted to get back into the Atari ST again. Very basic machines but also very reliable. The trouble is though that I really don't know what i'd use it for (other than some old retro games hooked up to the TV) that the RPi or PC couldn't do better (though that said the latter two don't have a modulator so the ST wins hands down already on that).

Did anyone ever do any programming on the atari? - I once had a copy of ST Basic given to me but i could never work out how to do any games related stuff and frankly the compiler being a separate purchase (to a 14 year old with no money) was a bit of a problem! I'd be interested to see what fun i could have with an ST from a programming POV today with so many disk images on the internet.

They were legendary machines in the world of music production too.. 

[#11]

I did quite a bit of ST programming in my youth. Steer well clear of ST BASIC it's blooming awful. I did most of my programming in GFA BASIC, the manual was excellent, I would see if you can get hold of a PDF on line. Apps with a Graphical User Interfaces were a complete ball ache in any language because of the way GEM works.
If your interested in writing some games, the also try STOS BASIC, it had some nice functions built in for making things whizz round the screen.
I also had a Borland C compiler clone but can't for the life of me remember what it was called.

[#12]

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@gleneagles wrote:

I have a couple of BBC computers in the loft

Same here and also including a floppy drive and the game Elite bought from Watford Electronics many years ago.

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[#13]

I achieved Elite rank much to the annoyance of some friends who never did