Is it pretty crazy that Windows 98SE laptops are now 400$ and up if you want it to actually turn ON and not be broken? Is Covid the blame for this shit spiraling out of control for anything vintage now?

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[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yep, I bought a 5.1 surround PC sound system back in 1999 or so from Creative. It was among the best available.

Interesting about that retro tech, I always forget about edge case users whose tailor made software isn't compatible with the new OSes.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I have a lot of childhood games from companies like Broderbund,Edmark,etc that won't see the light of day without PCEM/86box or heaven forbid a virtual machine which are slowly being killed off the market sadly instead of improving. XP is great for games of that era but before and some cases after that is where the light fails to shine however MS did try harder back then but by Windows 7 they were seeing a whole different future and it wasn't for the practical consumer. Ironically there actually WAS a 64 bit Windows XP and it was no good for most people and Vista quickly came out like a year later.......

[–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I got my first computer in 1980 so I recall all this easily... ;-)

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The sad thing is it shouldn't cost 400$ because you don't know how much the motherboard inside is failing. Over time inner parts will heat or melt or little things can go wrong you cannot see. This goes way beyond a CMOS/Ram or hard drive swap. And this is completely within the realms of normal. In fact if your computer lasts 6 years your lucky but then that means it may not work the next week.

'Oh it turns on' says the product listing but that doesn't mean it will turn on for long and it's 400$ down the f'king toilet where as for just a bit more you can have 5+ years of new hardware and with some tinkering you can emulate almost to true Windows 98 via 86Box as long as your host can handle it or go the virtualization route if it cannot though I REALLY DON'T recommend virtualization. I DO recommend 86box or PCEM.