On the first part... yeah... It's a shame to lose contact with the Authors.... it's even worse in the Atari community as many have passed away or moved on to the PC realm. :( Most of that is lost forever. I'd kill to have registered versions of some of this stuff.
Yeah, we've entered the same era that people passionate about old cars, old typesetters, old vending machines and you name what old that is long gone in memories of most lacks of parts, manuals and other stuff required to renovate, restore and keep working as it if was in its genuine time.
Preserving is part of that in our ecosystem, and for that single reason I'll never judge data hoarders, regardless of the legal status of their data.
I trust the community more than any Google indexing service.
But if something is lost (and a lot is preserved), plus we have much more knowledge than in the past, I take it also as an opportunity to recreate.
To the second part... If only, right? I'm old enough I want to spend my days working on the hobbies in the name of nostalgia... too young to retire. Too broke to retire ever unfortunately. :(
No, you're note alone :) and if you can afford spending time on it.. you're not that broke as you think. Remember, the most valuable currency is time!
-h1
... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a mere copy.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o for beeRS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)