Retrocomputing Beginner's Guide

This is Datashed Retrocomputing's guide for the aspiring retrocomputing collector. The goal is to give a few basic hints to keep frustration to a minimum, and help the aspiring collector find a positive direction in this highly-rewarding hobby.

General Hints

Pick a Platform, and Focus

Choose a platform or theme for your collection, and stick to it for awhile. You can always branch out later, but the aspiring collector will benefit from learning one type of system well, getting to know its quirks and all the ways to work around them. This will avoid frustrating and costly mistakes. It's easier, for instance, to learn Sun SPARC hardware on its own, than to be learning Sun, Commodore, DEC, and Apple gear all at once. I've seen beginners amass large and varied collections early on, only to give up in frustration and sell everything, or worse, scrap everything.

Find a Community

A collector is only as good as the communities in which they participate! Following are some suggestions. If you are an intolerant person--especially if you are chauvinistic, transphobic, homophobic, or have a problem with furry culture or anime--work on yourself before getting into this hobby. Such bigotry is not welcome in any of these communities.

CCTalk/CCTech/Usenet

Avoid posting to Usenet newsgroups and the CCTalk/CCTech mailing lists as a beginner. Do subscribe to CCTalk and CCTech early on, as they are bountiful treasure-troves of knowledge. However, some of these gurus tend to be as vintage and cranky as the computer systems we all love, and many of them have little patience for beginner-level questions. Being mocked and told to RTFM can be quite discouraging for newcomers to the hobby. Better to lurk here until you have built a certain level of knowledge and confidence, and can hang with the graybeards.

Every retrocomputing community has its share of cranky gurus and gatekeeping behavior, but these mailing lists and Usenet have a particularly high concentration. This is nothing against them--the beginner will eventually understand the reasons for it. One positive side effect of this gatekeeping is that the signal-to-noise ratio is quite excellent.

Read this right away, but save the posting for later.

Facebook

Facebook can be a good resource. Check out these groups to start out:

• Commodore Amiga
• Vintage PC Enthusiasts
• Vintage UNIX Machine Enthusiasts

The difficulty with Facebook groups is that they tend to have a rather high signal-to-noise ratio, with a lot of silly flame wars (my platform is better than yours!) and low-knowledge trolls. But, with patience, and the right group moderators (such as those found in the aforementioned groups), they can be a goldmine.

Twitter

In my opinion, Twitter has the friendliest and most helpful group of retrocomputing enthusiasts on the Internet. Search for hashtags that are relevant to your particular retrocomputing interests, and be picky. Get your Twitter feed to only show you the good stuff.

Reddit

Typical retrocomputing subreddits (such as r/retrobattlestations) seem to have a signal-to-noise ratio that's somewhat better than Facebook, but somewhat worse than CCTalk/CCTech. As long as you comply with established rules in the subreddits you follow, and don't bother with those having capricious and overzealous moderators, a great deal of useful content can be found here.

Discord

Among modern chat platforms, Discord probably has the most retrocomputing resources, as well as the friendliest people. It tends to lean a bit gamer-centric, so if this is not your interest, it might be better to stick to IRC for chat, or just stick to less realtime-oriented platforms (forums, social media, etc.)

Finding a server can be challenging, but if you're on Reddit, many of its retrocomputing-centric subreddits have official Discord servers that dovetail well into their respective communities.

IRC

Freenode has a fair number of good channels for retrocomputing, but IRC overall suffers from a high level of gatekeeping and newcomer-unfriendly behavior. Freenode is somewhat better on this; EFnet is absolutely terrible in this regard. I have not dealt with UnderNet, DALnet, etc., so I cannot speak to their friendliness and/or usefulness to aspiring collectors.