I've wanted to start this thread for a long time. I feel the same way as Franko. I mean what is the point new amiga setups (sam boards, pegasis)? We all realize that modern machines are capable of these things. How is that impressive? To me the whole point is pushing the old hardware to its limits, and redefining what is possible. It's about the nastolga. Also, I don't like emulators, because its still just your pc doing all these things. Again, whats so great about that? To me, its classic hardware all the way...
Computers don't really wear out too much. I mean other than capacitors and motors on moving parts what else can fail? I suppose things like mice & joysticks, but usually that is a simple solder job. Capacitors are simple too. Chips should last hundreds if not thousands of years before they fail (do to electron mitigation). Chips should last a good long time as long as they are treated well (that is also presuming they were designed within their specifications) I always say that chips don't die, they're killed.
Also, if you want to tinker around with pcs, then I encourage you to try linux. It puts you back in control of your computer again, and gives me that same hacker-computers-are-so-cool spirit. There's a certain good feeling you get building your system from the ground up in software, and tailoring your OS for your system. Linux distributions like gentoo are really good at this particularly. Just don't let the popular Ubuntu linux distro ruin your test of linux. It is so buggy, convoluted, and inefficient, then people blame linux. It's not linux as a whole, just that distro. It's a good one for beginners though because it is simpler than most others.
