"Market" for old macs?

woodelf wrote: When you're 16 and broke (I had to go to a friend's house to use a 1200 baud modem when his Dad was out of the house -- "5 miles, uphill, both ways!"), you pirate. I did manage to scrape together enough to buy one or two games a year, but pirating helped me back then determine which games were worth paying for (usually games that came with high-quality materials in the box, like the thick informative glossy manual in Ancient Art of War, or the WWII history and tactics background novellas in some strategy games or flight sims). Now that I'm older and have cash, I still pirate: - Historical archival (old stuff) - Looking for something decent to buy (music, programs) and when I find something worth paying for, THEN I buy it Case in point: Four years ago I bought a DVD burner for $1000 to help me make a professional DVD for retail sale. I had some decent seed capital for the authoring software so I did some small research and bought Sonic DVD Pro or whatever it was called back then for $795. The reviews were way way off; it was such an unusable steaming pile of crap that I ended up not using it but WORST was I had to eat the $795 because I couldn't return it (it was an upgrade to bundled OEM software and Sonic only offered refunds for full versions, not upgrades). I went through two more programs before settling on ReelDVD which is what I ended up using to finish the project. My point is: Had I been able to pirate those programs, I would have saved myself $795 and 4 weeks of wasted time waiting for shipment->testing it->sending it back->waiting for refund->GOTO 10 etc. Early state of the industry or not, I'll always hate Sonic for taking my $795 (it remains my highest amount of "money thrown away" to date). Thankfully, most games and consumer-level software have demo copies that are somewhat functional, like the entire first level of a game, or a 30-day full-featured trial. That is one of the few things I like about the current state of hobbyist computing. Footnote: The very best x86 DVD authoring software in the sub-$5000 range used to be DVD Maestro -- but Apple bought the parent company and killed off the x86 division and products. There are people lined up around the block willing to drop $4500 for this software but it simply isn't available for sale. Fellow DVD producers I stay in contact with debate the pros/cons of pirating that software because it's unclear if it hurts anyone financially or legally. Then again, we're not lawyers :-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/