The Difficulty of PC Collecting

Despite the title, I am not a PC game collector. I am not alone in this as many others don't dabble with older computers in today's age. The only YouTube channels I've seen that have huge interests in computers are the channel Lazy Game Reviews, which has picked up steam in the last two to three years with game and hardware reviews despite doing that for seven years, and Roadgeek, who is into Packard Bell type computers, mainly Windows 95. Why don't people get into this?

What can work?- This can be applied to any piece of ancient of technology like running a VCR or wood grained television set. When you deal with a computer, you have to ask yourself if it will still work. Certain drivers and cards could still work or be dead when you pick one up. Finding the required parts could have you spending way, way more than what you paid for today. Not to mention monitors depending on if these were required, keyboards and mouses, peripherals. Either way, some may not find it's worth the effort at least in the United States. Europe might have it easier due to PC being a bigger deal.

Formats- Certain computers ran on multiple formats. Say you had a Windows 3.1 or 95 computer. You could run games on CDs and 3.5 inch floppy disks. If you had a Commodore 64, you could run floppy disks, tapes, and cartridges if you had a few of the peripherals. That's one thing to be a little careful of, but it could frustrate a number of people.  This is one aspect that you should do research on as some games can work on multiple computers like Doom, which could run on PC's that had Windows 3.1 up to XP (although some glitches like the invisible Demon) and games that are only workable on one operating system.

Settings- Sure, it might be easier to use settings on DOSBox and Steam for some games today, but back then and even today, getting games to work is still a problem. Something like Doom pushed an early 90s computer to its limits, so there were options to lower settings to get them to work smoothly. No doubt in my mind, all games will work one day in the future on modern PC's, but it's going to take a lot of effort and time to make sure every game gets the care it deserves to be 100 percent on a computer.

There's a few other things such as games not being easy to find (what isn't as far as consoles and PC's go?) but that pales to those three reasons. Barring certain systems like NES, consoles are easier to maintain. They run on one format, don't have compatibility issues unless otherwise (unlicensed games for example), games working without tweaking settings. It's much more convenient to use abandonware sites and DOSBox. Even though it won't replicate what made them magical on the older computers, it will save you a lot of trouble.

In the end, it's up to you on whether you want to go the route of going after old PC computers or not. Just be prepared to have a good amount of time and money to take care of some of these.