Late-comer to the retro scene

[emceebois]

Greetings, all! I'm Oliver, a newbie vintage computing collector from the United States. I was fascinated with computers from an early age but was born after all the chip wars had settled so until my teenage years I didn't really even know that anything besides Intel + Windows or PowerPC + MacOS had ever even existed. I'm sure like most of you my first love was video games, specifically the Sega Genesis (AKA the Mega Drive, since I know most of you live in PAL region where you got the much cooler name) and Sega Game Gear, though we only owned the latter (I only got to play the Genesis at friends' houses or on display kiosks in Best Buy and Toys R Us). As far as I was concerned all game systems were complete magic black boxes and I had no idea what a CPU was or did, but I knew that I wanted to know.

I studied Computer Science as one of my two majors in University and these days work as a software engineer. College brought the self-directed learning about computer architecture and computing history that I'm still fascinated by, and adulthood has brought with it the disposable income to own and play with those pieces of history, which I do very excessively and irresponsibly :lol:

As Atari, Commodore, et al go, I'm even greener than I am with respect to retro collecting overall. I only picked up my C64 about six months ago, but have been wary of using it since it came with its original box and documentation and looks to be in nearly pristine shape. Plus I haven't finished building the desk where I can actually sit down and play with hobby computers, so no sense letting it get dusty. I promise I'll get around to it before my Spectrum Next ships out :D

I recently learned who "Terrible Fire" is and like a moth to a terrible flame I'm here to read and learn, and hope to acquire some cool upgrades to go with the also-hope-to-acquire additions to my small but growing vintage computer collection.

I also collect retro game systems, like the aforementioned Sega stuff. I have a mostly complete US Dreamcast game collection and a handful of the dozen or so games that PAL region got but we yanks didn't, and a smattering of other cool things. And way more systems than I could ever reasonably play, but what can I say? I just think they're neat. My grandparents collected art, my brother collects Star Wars memorabilia, and I collect this. Not that I should feel the need to explain myself to a group as like-minded as many of you!

Looking forward to getting to know some of you, and getting to know a whole lot more than I currently do about Atari and Commodore :mrgreen:

[rubber_jonnie]

:welcomewave:

[Tomswork]

:welcomewave:

Tom

[JezC]

:swave:

Welcome to the forum!

[PhilC]

:welcomewave:

[stephen_usher]

:welcomewave: