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Home computing revolution museum

Gabriele72

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2012
Messages
111
Location
Italy
Or "how to turn your home into a vintage computer museum and survive your wife" :)

I would like to introduce our small museum dedicated to the personal and home computer revolution that changed the world between the end of the '70s and the beginning of the '90s. So no big machines here, nor servers or workstations, but a selection of machines that turned computers from exoteric and hyper-specialized instruments into common mates of phones and TVs in our homes.
Unfortunately, due to lack of time, the english version is still into my fingers, sorry...

I know it's just one among many others but I hope you'll like the pics at least :)

http://www.museopc.it
 
Found an error :)
The AIM-65 page says it was introduced in 1979, but that should be 1977 (or 1976, must check), We used them in school in 1977.

-Tor
 
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Thanks, everyone.

Unfortunately the site is still far from completion, several pictures and descriptions are still missing, the peripherals section is at 0% and so does the english version... hope to gather the necessary time (sooner or later :) )

Tor, are you absolutely sure about dates? In the beginning I had entered 1977 too, but then I noted that all of the manuals are dated 1978 and they are Rev.1 which should be the first so I took them as a base for datation... or is there a Rev.0 ?
 
Tor, are you absolutely sure about dates? In the beginning I had entered 1977 too, but then I noted that all of the manuals are dated 1978 and they are Rev.1 which should be the first so I took them as a base for datation... or is there a Rev.0 ?
Well, 1976 (as I've seen on a couple of sites) must be too early. The AIM-65 was plug-in ready, and there weren't any that early afaik. And the 6502 chip was barely out. But 1979 is too late, because in 1979 I had moved to another town and the polytechnic where I used the AIM-65 was in my hometown. So 1978 at the latest (and they must have been reasonably available by then because the school (in Norway) had acquired a bunch of them). The AIM-65 page here on VC says it was "announced" in 1977: http://www.vintage-computer.com/aim65.shtml

(Later: Been looking for docs)
It's surprisingly difficult to find vintage advertisements for this system though.
About Rev. 1 - technical documents are these days typically numbered "1/0" or "1.0" for the first non-draft version, but back then the first version didn't have a revision at all - so "Rev.1" would be the first _revision_ (=update) of the original document. I have shelves full of docs from that period which follow that practice. I found scans of some old Rockwell/AIM-65/6502 docs from 1978 and 1979 (and one physical book in my collection - from 1979) and from the look of them I'm sure it's an update to an earlier version. There's a Rev. 1 from August 1978.
(In one document it was spelled out: 'Revised March 1979'). Unfortunately the Rockwell docs don't seem to follow another practice: Keeping a list of earlier versions and dates before the introduction page..

-Tor
 
That is really cool; I had to translate the page since unfortunately I don’t speak or read Italian, but that was no big deal and well worth the effort I feel. I especially enjoyed you’re welcome page intro; however, I got a big kick out of your use of “a protagonist of the information revolution” down in the help donate section. I have not had time to translate and read thru your entire site yet but it is definitely up in my favorites on my Panasonic CF-29 laptop so I can get back to you easily. Again, it is a cool site and for darn sure an awesome undertaking you have took on while doing a fabulous job at it. As we old AC/DC fans say, "For those about to rock, we salute you!" Thank you for sharing.
 
That is really cool; I had to translate the page since unfortunately I don’t speak or read Italian, but that was no big deal and well worth the effort I feel. I especially enjoyed you’re welcome page intro; however, I got a big kick out of your use of “a protagonist of the information revolution” down in the help donate section.

Hi, thank you for your appreciation.
I hope to be able to put online an English version as soon as possible. Unfortunately, automatic translators can be very weird, up to completely reverse the meaning of a sentence ( :-? ) so I'll have to take care of it myself. I can only hope the one you used didn't produce too confusing results :)
The image I was trying to convey in that sentence is as if the computing revolution was a book or a movie and each machine was a one of the characters of the story. Therefore it should read more or less as "...perhaps in your garage, in your attic, in the warehouse of your company, an actor of the computing revolution is resting. If you own one of such computers...."

As we old AC/DC fans say, "For those about to rock, we salute you!" Thank you for sharing.

Great! :thumbsup: And as we old Iron Maiden fans say when we're up to solder: "Up the Irons" ;)
 
A (very) preliminary and incomplete english version is online. Please bear with my english, and if you note some too weird sentence you're welcome to report it to me.

@Tor
year changed to 1977 ;)
 
As long as your stuff is all in one room and displayed neatly on shelves and you dust them off every now and then, I don't think any wife could complain. It's when you have them stacked to the ceiling in no particular order and in 3 different rooms that they start to complain.
 
Yup. ;-) I think anyone is happy when you're happy so the trick from my perspective is to enjoy the equipment and show them sometimes what it does (they probably don't care too much so don't show them everything all the time or it becomes an eye roller). If my wife sees me using it she's fine, the books she's not as keen about since she doesn't see me researching things as often as I used to so that's an item of debate right now on why I have so many bookshelves of computer books and references. I do need to declutter though and get things back to a publicly displayable mode. Some books I'm ready to start finding another home for things that I'm not likely to start doing anytime soon like VSLI design or writing anything in Delphi, etc. I can see her point on that sort of stuff where I have a dozen old C programming books and really only need one or two good references but again at the time I was collecting (prior to meeting her) I had also been hoping to have a literary computer library in the museum as well.
 
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