The 8-bit computing renaissance has been going on for quite some time. I think it's a combination of 1. the age & experience of the original audience, 2. tech changes that make it much easier to design, build and supply retro-inspired computers and 3. the appeal of a stand-alone "computer" where an individual can hold the entire design in their head without massive abstractions. There's a lot of sad, negative, stupid things in the world today but the state of the NEW 8-bit scene is amazing. If you're a purist for original 8-bit gear it is not as great.

They were also a LOT of fun to program as you could really learn every bit of the architecture. Being able to do edit/compile on a modern box and download to something like the Atari makes it a lot nicer than native development was in the day. (IIRC, back in the day, some folks would cross compile on DEC boxes for similar reasons.)

I'd probably do a lot more 8-bit work in my spare time, but bare metal embedded systems scratch similar itches for me and, well, folks will pay for that sorta thing. :)

If Nostalgia as a Service is a thing, this project could be considered an edge appliance for it...

One thing I've learned hanging out on vintage computer communities is that you can not use your lenses to understand the motivations of the folks who practice the hobby.

Commercial nostalgia has been around since classic cars, Happy Days, and 50's diners.

I do know that, on the whole, this stuff is not for me, and that's fine. But I still like to hang out and reminisce about the time of my youth and the foundations of computing as I experienced them. That said, I have a Model 100 that I can't part with.

A friend of mine has a small collection of vintage Macs. He has a very nice specimen of the G4 Cube that I dabbled with one day. It's a beautiful piece of hardware. But, oh my word, is that box slow. It is glacial. I don't know how good it was in the day, I have to assume it was competitive, which means everything we did back then was glacial, we just couldn't appreciate it.

But it's a nice piece of sorta kinetic sculpture, and it brings him joy, so who's to question that.

Hang out on vintage forums with folks with their racks of PDPs, assortments of beige, 90's PCs, old Apples. Trying to bring Windows 98 to life to play a game, connecting a pair of modems to call each other, rebuilding a power supply on some garage filling Data General Nova, etc. Just eclectic collectors. No different from Hummel figurines.

Maybe it's just that you've aged yourself into the target markets for that kind of thing.

I’m thinking it’s a generational thing: people who grew up with machines such as the Atari are now of the age where they’d like to re-experience part of their youth.

I recall years ago reading a magazine article discussing the (at the time) market bubble for either Lionel-style toy trains or baseball cards. So this was probably early 1990s, and it pretty much tracked with when the kids of the late 1940s/early 1950s had reached career endgame and peak earning potential.

They literally had a timeline predicting that eventually video game consoles would have a similar bubble. I want to say I think they predicted it in the 2000s though, so perhaps they were off, but maybe the infographic was just loosely designed.

Just like the resurgence of the Shelby GT500 in 2007.

If you were 12 in 1969 and dreamed of owning/driving one, in 2007 you were 50 with $$$ and nostalgia.