This hobby was made by guys and gals who held on to
[...]
My personal advice is: chill out.
For many years I built most of my life (certainly all my spare time) in
an effort to archive obsolete software from certain minicomputer systems.
PDP-11's, -10's, DG Novas, etc. I had lots of fun. A small fraction
of the world seemed to have some appreciation for what I was doing, and
that was enough.
But in the past 5 years the "data archiving" world has gone big-business.
Defense contractors/aerospace companies are collecting good chunks of
a billion dollars for doing nothing. Museums go off and do their stuff
and the world never sees the results (if any) publicly. It frustrates
me every time I think about it. But what can I do? The world at large
doesn't care about sharing the results of old digital archives, and I'm
in effect airbrushed out of the picture.
So I find something else to do. I've got a day job running a $10 Billion
peripheral that keeps me busy most of the time. There's enough
frustration and heartache there. (Also some satisfaction, too.)
The rest of my time is spent tinkering with complex electromechanical
systems for fun, definitely not in any attempt to make the world a
better place. I am having fun, for the most part. The most frustration
comes when I decide to "look back" and see how nothing that I did made
any difference in the end. Oh well, it was fun at the time. Look for
that instead - don't focus so much on acquiring/trading/valueing stuff
in your case.
Tim.