My relationship with computers began before computing became invisible. You had to understand the machine, its limits and often its peculiar personality. That friction is a large part of why I still collect, restore and use older systems.
When computers invited you inside
I started with machines such as the Commodore 128 in the 1980s, when experimenting meant typing programs, reading manuals, swapping hardware and occasionally discovering that the documentation was more aspirational than factual. Those systems rewarded curiosity because there was very little distance between the user and the machine.
Old computers are not interesting because they were better. They are interesting because you can see the decisions that made them work.
Preservation through use
I’m interested in more than putting vintage hardware on a shelf. Restoring and operating it preserves a kind of technical literacy: why memory maps mattered, what clever programmers did with limited bandwidth, how display hardware shaped software, and how entire ecosystems evolved around constraints modern systems largely hide.
Hardware
Original systems, peripherals, displays and the strange interfaces that document how personal computing evolved.
Software
Operating systems, applications, development tools and media that are often as historically important as the machines themselves.
Context
The engineering compromises, business decisions and forgotten standards that explain why technology took the path it did.
Retro computing also feeds directly back into my modern engineering work. Constraints force clarity. A machine with kilobytes instead of gigabytes makes waste obvious, and old systems are remarkably good teachers of architecture, interfaces and unintended consequences.