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This month, I’ve strayed away from writing about Linux to bring you a small glimpse of Syd Bolton’s Personal Computer Museum. Everyone starts somewhere in computing so I thought this would be an interesting retrospective for some of our readers.
The Personal Computer Museum is located in a farm-like building behind a very regular looking home in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. The museum is a couple of stories with the majority of computers on the first floor, an approximately 20-foot-high wall of old software on the right side of the building, and a few precious relics like a NeXT Cube on the top floor along with some comfy seating for the theatre (projector) showing various documentaries above the wall of software.
Like the computers in the museum, the building has a bit of history behind it – it was built in the 1930s using bricks from an old opera house.
Working Computers line all four walls, and both sides of a table in the middle of the farmhouse. Among the computers active when we visited were: an IMSAI 8080, an Amstrad CPC 464 colour computer, a number of Amigas, a few different Commodore PET computers, a Texas Instruments TI99/4A, a Hitachi MB-6890, a Magnavox Odyssey 3000, an Atari 2600, Apple computers covering several generations (III, IIgs, an all-one-one iMac G4), a Heathkit H89, several ATARI computers (400, 800, a 130 XE), an Osborne I, a Kaypro II PC, an Alextel terminal, a NeXT cube, and my favourites: the Commodore PET, VIC 20 and 64.
A complete list of the computers in the collection can be found on the museum’s web site: http://www.pcmuseum.ca/computerDetails.asp
When we arrived, just after lunchtime, the museum was very busy. Most of the museum visitors were children. Some of the computers were there just for historical significance, but most were set up and loaded with some kind of video game for the younger audience to play. You might think that children would be bored with old games, but they all seemed not to notice the age of the system they were playing on at all - a good game is simply a good game. The fact that the museum isn’t just a “show” museum, and allows children (of all ages) to play on the computers, makes it all the more interesting.
Space at the museum is at a premium. The museum makes use of the space wherever they can find it. There were computers below all of the desk space, on shelves, even suspended above the centre row of computers (smaller computers).
We didn’t see a lot of *NIX-based computers: there was a Sun Sparcstation 5 that was semi-functional (it was sitting in the SPARC BIOS screen), and the NeXT Cube (upstairs on the second floor shut off), but with all the computers tucked into every imaginable corner, I’m sure we missed several. Doom, Doom II, Quake, Heretic, Hexen (all iD software games) were developed on NeXT computers as well as the first web browser, so from a *NIX standpoint, NeXT holds a special importance.
Syd mentioned that the majority of computers were not displayed, but in storage. After our visit, he said that there was a Unisys ICON on display – a QNX-based computer used fairly extensively in Ontario schools in the mid-eighties. My first exposure to a personal computer at school was the Commodore PET followed by the Unisys ICONs, so they have a special meaning for me. I almost got expelled for software I wrote on the ICONs, but that’s a funny story for another time.
Syd also took us on a tour of his gaming collection which consists of thousands upon thousands of games for a variety of consoles. I didn’t see my families’ first console, a Coleco Gemini (a clone of an Atari 2600), but Syd assured me he had one hidden away. One of the more interesting game consoles I spotted tucked near an Odyssey 2 was Nintendo’s Famicom (Family Computer).
Syd’s collection of game software covers the walls of several rooms and spans a wide range of software - and this is just the non-duplicate software he has on display. Among the collections are walls of games for the Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Playstation, Coleco Vision, Coleco Adam, Sega Genesis, and Atari 2600 – just to name a few.
Back in 1983, I had the chance to play the stand-up console version of Dragon’s Lair while visiting Orlando, Florida. Syd proudly proclaimed that he has the largest collection of Dragon’s Lair games with versions for almost every console and system (we didn’t see a stand-up arcade console, but Syd mentioned one was on the way). Certainly the shelves of Dragon’s Lair games and memorabilia, and the fact that Syd’s published a book Collecting for Dragon’s Lair & Space Ace, seem to confirm this.
I remember Dragon’s Lair fondly. I played Space Ace when it finally arrived where we were living, but it never felt as cool as Dragon’s Lair. A version of Dragon’s Lair exists for Steam Play (Windows and Mac OS X), but not Linux. There is an emulator called Daphne that runs on Linux for the hard-core Dragon’s Lair fans: http://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread.php/66519-Daphne-configuration-and-single-credit-play
We wrapped up our visit to the museum after the game console software tour. Syd’s Personal Computer Museum is open from 6pm to 9pm every non-holiday Monday, and on special select Saturdays, so check the website before heading down. The museum website also contains a lot of information about many systems from the eighties and nineties so, even if you can’t make it in person, you can visit virtually.
*NIX Related Links: Personal Computer Musem - http://www.pcmuseum.ca/ NeXT Computer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer Unisys ICON - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON Sun Sparcstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation