One of the few interests I've had that has more or less stayed consistent throughout my life is obsolete tech. For whatever reason, even when I was little I was drawn inexplicably to "old" stuff and am fascinated with how people's relationship with technology evolved over the 20th century, the similarities and differences, etc. It started with retro consoles, but these days I've found myself branching into other niches like vintage computers and gadgets.

The main focus of this page is my PC9801-DA, which I purchased in 2018 and have been upgrading and tinkering with gradually in the years since. I learned a lot in the process of playing with it, so I set up a little shrine to share tutorials and resources. Click the PC to enter!

~PC-9801 Hub~

Some other junk I own below...

A versatile Windows 98 Pentium III machine with nice specs, but my apartment is too small to have it out right now, so I haven't gotten to mess with it as much as I'd like.

Sony Vaio VPCW119XJ 10-inch netbook. It fits in a purse! So cute! This was a compromise as I really wanted one of the P series pocket laptops, but those are expensive. Since those are apparently pretty impractical due to the specs and battery life, this may have been a better deal. It runs Windows XP, but it was made in 2009 when Windows 7 was already out, so even though it's a netbook and not really made for gaming, it's actually more than powerful enough for the kind of stuff you'd want a WinXP rig for, with 1GB of memory and 160GB of hard drive space. I know Vista's reputation is bad, but it's hilarious to me that they only sold this with XP or 7 installed and nothing in between. Like, is it THAT bad!? (I mean, I used it back when it was new and wasn't fond of it, but...)

Fiddling with VMs is a lot of work so it's nice to have something running XP as it's a good middle ground compatibility-wise for anything post-DOS and pre-Vista. Since it's so tiny, I thought it could also be nice to bring it with me places as a distraction-free workstation for simple text documents, but it's kind of TOO small to do a lot of typing on comfortably... as a right shift user the ISO-JP layout with that tiny shift key is NOT for me!!! :(

Vintage cameras that work off floppy disks instead of more conventional storage formats like flash media. I have two, FD7 and FD95. You can learn more about them in my photos section.

In recent years I collect a lot of CDs as vinyl is expensinve and playing it is kind of a hassle. When looking a CD player, I mentioned being frustrated that it's hard to find ones with the aesthetic appeal and form factor of cassette players, and an audiophile friend sent me a link to this one. The flamingo pink makes it seem a little more retro than it is; I was surprised to learn it was produced in 2010. For something so sleek and slim, it sure is greedy -- it takes 6 whole C batteries if not plugged into the wall, yikes! Anyway, the speakers sound surprisingly great, the speed-up/slow-down and shuffle functions are fun, and it can be operated by remote... which mine didn't come with, oh well. It shows up a lot with my PC98 photos and videos as it has a line-in so I use it a lot in place of computer speakers since I've been too lazy to buy dedicated ones, lol.

A birthday gift from a friend. I had one of these back when I was in middle school, but I only had 4 or 5 songs on it and they were all anime openings...

Most of these are either from childhood or from high school when retro games were still cheap and I would spend all my money at flea markets and such. I don't really collect anymore as it's gotten too expensive and I don't have the space to set the consoles up and actually play them... When I lived with my parents, I had a huge Trinitron in my bedroom and would play Dreamcast games all day, and I also had a small CRT on my desk that I would play NES and SNES games on. I have a lot of good memories with these games, and I really miss it. If I move into a bigger place, maybe I'll set up a cool retro gaming battlestation again.

Consoles I have are NES, Famicom, Master System, Mark III, SNES, PC Engine + CD briefcase unit, Genesis model 1, Game Gear, GBC, a modded backlit GBA, PSOne + lcd screen, PS2, imported white Saturn, Dreamcast, and probably more I forgot.

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