Even apart from nostalgia, there's very solid arguments to be made for actual hardware music gear, no matter how space-convenient a DAW is. Plenty of emulators don't do more than loosely approximate the sounds of hardware synths (and the SID filter in particular has never been emulated more than approximately,) and even with the Amiga UAE just doesn't quite have the same tone to it as the real thing.
I dunno, if you throw 2ghz worth of 32bit x86 at the latest reSID it can handle stuff like the SFX in Star Ranger or Hubbard tunes like Lightforce very competently.
I have 2 C64s with different SID revisions of the 6581 variety and one sounds nicer (in a way I can't describe in words) and one sounds worse than the latest VICE using the latest and most accurate reSID settings. The nicer sounding C64 unfortunately is one that would sell for about a grand on ebay so very few people will be able to appreciate that particular version (most SIDs are broken out there but they still produce sound so people assume that's how it was......until they have a go on my C64 I use daily).
I put feelers out for just a free A2000 motherboard with postage paid by me ages ago, got no joy (because most people in the UK are also up sh!t street too I guess) so I had to shelve my Ruck Bogers game sadly. As long as I get to write it before I go senile it's cool though, it is after all just I game for myself which I would have given free to the community to enjoy too if they like that sort of 2.5D space based shmup arcade games (this also means Gradius AGA, Gauntlet 1200 and my 2.5D Oblivion engine got shelved too). I'm currently working on Donkey Kong Jr and Vanguard for the C64 which is a real great laugh and it's great to be coding. Even did a tongue in cheek VIC-20 game I called Stardust V.I.C. too which is 80% complete (3 bugs I can't find in my code grrrrrr)
Luckily things picked up for me business wise and I've managed to get myself in at the grass roots of what will be a huge business in the very near future so I'm sure I won't baulk at £200 for the yellowed POS 1500s which don't even work on ebay lol
I hope things pick up for the OP too, sucks when you are creative but finances don't allow for purchase of tools to do anything with, I feel for you buddy...been there too myself for a couple of years before.
(I was of course grateful to the two forum members who offered me a free A500 but sadly I need a HDD for the constant compiling and also they were both on the other side of the Atlantic/Pacific so postage alone made it best to let those machines go to people on their home turf of course)
