bloodline...
I apologize for the entire tone of that post you responded to.
Its far to arrogant.
As to my past endeavors, a few may have seen them. Delmar Company gets brief mention at the end of the Wikipedia listing on the Tandy Color Computer.
And the systems were based on Peripheral Technologies' PT68K4 and PT68K5 boards (which may be a little better known), the former was part of a long series by Peter Stark on construction and then use under Star DOS.
Our systems were either set up for four or more terminals or as a console system with a keyboard and mouse (via the addition of an ET4000 based video card) and ran on Microware OS-9. We also had a X-Windows based windowing system (at a time when Win 3.1 was new).
The Amiga had some neat hardware, but we could support four to five users on our base systems which started at under $1000.
But, as to hobbyist computing, you never have to justify it.
One system I'm building right now uses a 33 MHz Z80 offshoot the Z8S180.
Why, eh, I wanted one.
The Rocketchip box?
I just lucked out on a low bid (that's been happening a lot lately) and those chip have somewhat dodgy wifi.
And why in the world am I so fascinated with RISC?
I don't completely agree that PPC have died out, withered back quite a bit, but they are still being developed.
ARM is just fascinating.
And I really want to try Sparc.
And while I still have and use them, X64 boxes continue to underwhelm me.
As to the Pi, I like the expansion options on some versions.
I have a fondness for small mcu boards with similar expansion capabilities.
Why else would I have both a Cortex M3 and an M4 based board?
I think one of the MorphOS developers recently refereed to all this as "recreational computing".
Good term.
Oh and as unreliable as my old GT-6 was, I'd take it in a heartbeat over a Ford Pinto (hey, both hatchbacks).
Edit - OK...I just used wubi to install Precise Pangolin.
We are giving Ubuntu another shot!