About

Old Tech Geek is both a personal hobby and a public editorial platform — and the two are the same thing. The collection is the content, and the content is inseparable from the collection. It exists to keep the machines, the software and the stories around them in one place, explained well enough that someone who was never there can still follow.

It covers retro computing, classic video games, old PCs, consoles, storage media, operating systems and the cultural history around them. The hobby side — collecting, restoring, experimenting — feeds the editorial side (articles, guides, logs, videos), and vice versa. The ambition is wide by design: a curated, meaningful archive that grows across platforms, eras and formats without losing coherence.

Who it’s for

The core audience is people interested in old technology, gaming history, retro computing and classic hardware. But the content stays readable for newcomers and younger readers — explaining, without gatekeeping, things like what a floppy disk actually stored, why games loaded from cassette tape, why that took so long, and how RAM, storage and CPU limits shaped software into something very different from today.

The tone matters. Old Tech Geek avoids becoming dry, insular or purely nostalgic. Humour, visual jokes and playful comparisons to modern tech are welcome — as long as the technical detail underneath is correct.

How the platforms divide up

• Website — the main hub and permanent archive: articles, guides, how-tos, companion pieces, restoration logs, collection-journal entries, and the hardware/game catalogue. Built for readability, internal linking and long-term organisation.
• YouTube — the narrative and discovery platform: feature videos, historical explainers, hardware episodes, restoration and setup content, collection updates with strong storytelling.
• Instagram — secondary and lightweight: announcements, quick acquisition and workbench photos, teasers.
• Discord — the community hub for workbench chatter, acquisition tips and questions.

Content families

• Feature stories — deep dives into hardware, software, platforms, companies and technical turning points.
• Collecting journal — a continuing record of rebuilding the collection: what was acquired, why it matters, what it cost, what condition it arrived in, what was repaired.
• Restoration & repair — cleaning, troubleshooting, diagnosing, recapping, cable and storage-media problems, compatibility fixes.
• Translation content — old concepts explained to newer audiences with accessible framing.
• Collection reference — structured entries for hardware, games, people and systems that make up the archive.

How it comes together

Everything starts at the bench or with an acquisition: a machine is bought, opened, cleaned, tested, and its condition written down. Those notes are the raw material — they become a restoration log, a companion article, a catalogue entry, a video script.

Nothing is published in isolation. A GeekDex entry links to the guides that keep that machine running and the articles and history that place it in context; a feature links back to the hardware it talks about; the collection is just the owned slice of the same web. The goal is one connected archive that gets denser over time, not a feed of unrelated posts — and it is never “finished”.

OTG definition of retro: a platform is considered retro once its commercial lifecycle has ended and it has been discontinued by its manufacturer.

The rules it plays by

1. English is the publishing language — all public-facing content stays in English for consistency, reach and identity.
2. Video and text are paired — if a subject is covered on YouTube, it also exists here in text form: a companion article, technical appendix, restoration log or structured summary.
3. The site is the permanent archive — YouTube is the discovery engine and personality layer. The website is the long-term archive, index and knowledge base.
4. Instagram is support, not the centre — it keeps the project visible between uploads. It never becomes the main publishing burden.
5. The collection may be broad, but not chaotic — every acquisition fits at least one of: historical relevance, personal relevance, editorial usefulness, technical interest, restoration or documentation value.
6. Accessibility without dumbing down — old concepts are explained so newcomers can follow, without collapsing into empty nostalgia or trivia.

Who runs it

Old Tech Geek is written, filmed, restored and maintained by one person — Tiago Almeida. It began with a long habit of taking old machines apart to see how they worked, and the conviction that the stories around them deserved somewhere permanent to live.

More about the person behind it — and anyone who contributes along the way — is on the profile page.