TH2002
Experienced Member
Will be interesting to hear from those who have been collecting vintage computers for longer than me, I purchased my first vintage computer in 2014 or 2015 for a mere $7.50 from a thrift store, and to this day I think that is one of my best investments.
As for the worst, I will have to go with the $30 Compaq Armada 7400 I bought from eBay. This was an impulse buy because the initial asking price was $60 and the seller offered $30, figured for that price I could get it up and running and have a functional PII-based Compaq laptop. Bought a floppy drive for $20, created some Compaq BIOS boot floppies (since the BIOS is stored on the HDD with a lot of these older Compaq machines) and could never get it to recognize any hard drive. I think the original HDD was itself on its way out since trying to format it gave me a multitude of errors, but the real kicker is the guy I eventually sold it to. He actually sent me some pictures and it turns out the CMOS battery had leaked and killed the hard drive controller, meaning that effectively no hard drive would ever work in the computer ever again.
If I had bought it to use as a parts machine, it might have been a decent investment, but otherwise goes to show that cheaper isn't always better.
As for the worst, I will have to go with the $30 Compaq Armada 7400 I bought from eBay. This was an impulse buy because the initial asking price was $60 and the seller offered $30, figured for that price I could get it up and running and have a functional PII-based Compaq laptop. Bought a floppy drive for $20, created some Compaq BIOS boot floppies (since the BIOS is stored on the HDD with a lot of these older Compaq machines) and could never get it to recognize any hard drive. I think the original HDD was itself on its way out since trying to format it gave me a multitude of errors, but the real kicker is the guy I eventually sold it to. He actually sent me some pictures and it turns out the CMOS battery had leaked and killed the hard drive controller, meaning that effectively no hard drive would ever work in the computer ever again.
If I had bought it to use as a parts machine, it might have been a decent investment, but otherwise goes to show that cheaper isn't always better.