RE: What is the joy of old computers? Why do we buy/repair/renovate retro machines?

I was looking at some old C64 books the other day and it was understandable! Lift its lid and you knew what every chip did like an old friend. Read the instruction set and it was logical. You didn't need a team of programmers to make it actually do something and the old computers with 'proper keyboards' were sublime to use. The keys pressed and there was a tactility that's missing from every keyboard since.

As for the old disk drives, they made a noise! I could play tunes on my 1541 and when I saved up for another, I did the bravest thing I have probably ever done in my life and cut the jumper on a £200 disk drive (A fortune in the early 80's) to make the new drive device 9!