More Swedish computers!
Having a volunteer who's born in Sweden, gives some nice insights in the Swedish computing history.
Since he loves to get the old Swedish computers, he tracks them down and after fixing them, brings them to the museum.
It all started with our ABC 1600 which is very rare and we have the complete package. That one is currently being repaired (and reverse engineered) so we can show that one eventually in the museum.
So, now we want as much as possible to make our set complete. We recently got an ABC-80 complete, and now we have this ABC 806 and a neat Compis . We're going to explore them and see what the Swedish (home)computing history was like.
Did you have one of these? What did you do with them? Any tips on what to show?
#Museum #Sweden #Interactive #Helmond #computinghistory
A real fancy mouse there!
It's a mouse from early 90s and for the Apple Macintosh. It uses a ADB port. Compared to the boring beige mice from Apple, this really stands out.
We searched a bit, and it seems Sicos made all kinds of fancy mice. Also for Amiga. It looks really nice, that's for sure!
#museum #interactive #history #mouse #apple
Can you guess the both songs that are being played on this Atari 1040STE with Roland SC-55 MIDI interface?
This is basically how 90s music was made!
Also, unfortunately we are closed tomorrow (Thursday May 15) because it's a Dutch national holiday.
#museum #interactive #atari #computer #history
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition nor the HomeComputerMuseum expanding..
But we did it! For the next 5 years (and option to extend), we will have 465 m2 (roughly 5005 sq ft.) extra space where we will move our entire repair department, warehouse and shop to. It's the other side of the street, diagonally opposite the entrance of the museum. We will also be the very first official Commodore shop where you can buy all new Commodores.
It's a big step to further expand the museum and improve it.
We're very thrilled we can finally shout it out, barely anyone knew and even inside the museum it's been kept quiet.
We expect to open the store somewhere end of summer. The exact details, including what we're going to sell in the shop, will follow soon. We hope many people will visit!
Meanwhile, the museum remains where it is, only having more space to show more computers!
#Museum #Expanding #Grow #Interactive #Commodore
This looks brand new!
We received a box with a Timex Sinclair 1000 and a Tandy TRS-80 Colour Computer 2. The latter looks brand new even, no yellowing at all. We love it when people really take care of their computers.
The Tandy CoCo 2 is probably bought somewhere between 1983 and 1985 since it still has the Radio Shack branding on it, where later models only had Tandy on there. These use the Motorola 6809E CPU running at 0.895 MHz and have either 16, 32 or 64K memory.
They were not particular popular in the Netherlands, but they were available. Its successor, the Color Computer 3, was never available in Europe.
#Museum #Tandy #nofilter #ComputerHistory #Sinclair
Our Exidy is a little sick!
For a yet unknown reason, the Exidy Sorcerer doesn't want to boot from its floppy drive. It's one of the very rare situations where one of the interactive computers breaks down. We get the question a lot where people ask us whether it's not damaging the computer if it's powered on. In a way, sure, but having a computer collecting dust is even worse. Especially when there are capacitors, batteries, motors or drive belts in the computer. If a computer breaks, like the Exidy Sorcerer in this case, we will notice it relatively quick and can repair it immediately. In some cases, even preventing more problems in the future.
So, that's also one of the reasons all computers are working. It's actually to preserve them.
We will figure out the Exidy. It seems it's the S100 bus or the disk controller. The hardware address BC00 where the floppy drive sits, just doesn't respond. For now, the basic cartridge will do :)
#Museum #Interactive #Exidy #ComputingHistory #ComputerHistory
Portable media from years ago.
To transfer data without connectivity between devices, people have used several methods. From simple writing on paper, or punching holes to floppy disks and USB-sticks. But there were also these things, Exchangable Disc Drives.
These 2 Data Recording Exchangeable Disc Drive Series 30 are huge (3,5" disk for scale) and can hold either 12 million bits or 24 million bits per disk (depending if high density is used). The disc rotates with 1500 revs per minute and can transfer data up to 1440 kb per second.
In order to change the disk, we had to remove the cover. According to the technical documentation is to prevent the disk being ejected while it's still spinning at 1500 rpm.
We don't have much information about them (yet), but we assume these are from before 1974. As we are going to redesign the museum a bit, we will add these in the museum to show how storage has changed over the years and people should be very grateful you can have gigabytes of data on something as small as your little toe's nail :)
#Museum #Storage #Harddisk #ComputerHistory #ComputingHistory
Meet our youngest tourguide, Lisa!
When she has time of from school, she actually give tours to her age group. Every now and then she comes in to update the tour with all the new old stuff we have. This time, she was testing the tour to our slightly older tourguide Ton who you may have encountered. He usually walks in the museum, giving either tours or sharing stories.
Lisa really likes our Zanussi Ping-o tronic and usually challenges other children to play with her (which she wins).
Yes, our museum is fun for young and old, both as guests as well as volunteers :)
#Museum #Volunteers #Young #Interactive
Technology as art, the beauty of early silicon.
Some see circuits as components. Just wires, transistors, and logic. But look closer!
The Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 chips are not just pioneers of computing; they are masterpieces of human ingenuity, etched in silicon.
These stunning circuit art plates, generously created and donated to the HomeComputerMuseum by CPU_Duke, transform the invisible into the visible. They show the elegance hidden within the first commercial microprocessors, turning code into canvas and chips into sculpture.
Technology is not just functional, it is art. It tells the story of how far we’ve come, and how creativity and innovation walk hand in hand.
A big thanks to CPU Duke for this incredible donation which we'll give a nice place in the museum.
#Museum #Art #Technology #TechnologyMuseum #history
Most people have never seen a keyboard like this.
This is a Velotype, a chorded keyboard designed for ultra-fast typing. Instead of pressing one key per letter, the user presses combinations of keys simultaneously to form syllables or even entire words. It looks unusual, but in trained hands it can keep up with spoken language in real time.
Systems like this have been used for live captioning, court reporting, and transcription, long before modern speech recognition became reliable.
Have you ever used one? Should we try?
#museum #interactive #computerhistory #history #HomeComputerMuseum
