When Having a Computer Was Weird

I just finished up the first weekend of my vintage computer exhibit for Portland Design Month entitled When Having a Computer Was Weird: A showcase of early personal computers. I had two fun groups of visitors and I plan to run another date on October 18, plus others as time permits and interest demands.

I have eight vintage computers from my collection on display, working and ready for people to try:

All of the machines are kitted out with various accessories such as game cartridges, CRT displays, cassette tape program loading and saving, disk drives and floppies, joysticks, musical keyboards, manuals, and contemporary books and magazines. Visitors can play games, write documents, try applications, or craft programs.

A computer museum

This exhibit is a stab in the direction of something I’ve wanted to do for a while, which is to create a space locally where people of all ages can experience yesterday’s computing technologies firsthand. Eventually I would love to see a space like this with many more examples, staffed by local volunteers, experts, and enthusiasts.

Aside from my own experience with this era of computing, I intend this as an homage as well to the old, old Powell’s Tech bookstore, back when it was on the North Park Blocks here in Portland.

Circa 2007 (Flickr user the_impression_that_i_get)

While the computers there were merely decoration around the shelves, seeing them in person evoked a strong sense of technological history when I first experienced it over twenty years ago.

These days, Powell’s Tech is folded into the main site on West Burnside and these computers have scattered to the wind, like so many before them. We are only ever seeing less and less of these older computers, especially in their full usable glory.

Some Powell’s Tech interior photos from 2010 (Flickr user caseorganic)

Right at home

I decided to host this event at home, having moved earlier this year and now having a large garage workshop for this sort of thing. I used some hanging drop cloths to block out the distracting parts of the building and I setup table displays around the room.

And I’m pretty happy with the end results.

Being at home, I was also able to make some last-minute repairs and tweaks on various machines as needed.

I’ve leave you with some closeup photos of things setup and running, along with their rough thematic groups from the original exhibit proposal.

On The Living Room TV

The Rise of Commodore

Going Mobile: Walk Before You Run

The Ascent of Apple

Special thanks

I’d like to give a shout out to Tyler Morrison for table, chair, and BlueSCSI lending, Jared Boone for CRT TV lending, Andrew Kreps for late-game 3D printing, Travis Smith for his excellent TeensyROM and its prompt delivery, and my peeps at NSPDX for moral support, ideas, and general hilarity during projects.

The exhibit is ongoing

If this is something that interests you or someone you know, there’s still time to see it. I have one other definitive day of exhibit groups on October 18, plus could add more if there is interest. Please spread the word.