Retro Computers

Up and running and on display at the Centre for Computing History is the BBC Domesday System. The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England.

Although the Centre for Computing History already had a complete system in its collection it was sadly non-functioning. A recent donation from Carl Elkins of another near complete non-functioning system allowed volunteers to swap parts, fault find and tease a system back to life.

Thanks to Carl we also now have a larger number of interactive laserdiscs on a wide range of subjects including robotics, business systems and pre-school learning. We even have the original BBC Domesday System promotional disc which we will be digitising and putting online very soon.

Preservation
The Domesday System was part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project and is an important record of British life in the mid-eighties. The Centre for Computing history will be looking to collaborate with other organisations in order to preserve this information and make it available to th general public if possible. However, the scope of the presevation project may be limited by copyright issues.

Volunteers
Projects like this are made possible by the hard work and commitment of our volunteers. The museum regularly holds ‘Volunteer Sundays’ where like-minded enthusiasts, engineers and programmers get together at the museum for a productive day of tinkering and fixing of retro computers as well as helping create new interactive exhibits. If you would like to be involved, please contact our volunteer co-ordinator : Andy Taylor(Me!) : andyt@computinghistory.org.uk

You can read the original post here.

Next week sees the annual “Gadget Show Live” event at the NEC in Birmingham. Last year, the event saw more than 30,000 visitors. This year, the show is 50% bigger.

The Centre for Computing History has been asked again to provide the “Gadget Hall Of Fame”. We ran this display last year, and it was voted one of the top attractions of the whole show. You can see a video of last years event below.

This year, its going to be bigger and better! The stand will feature exhibits including Electric Dreams, Music on the Move, Computing Gets Personal, Telephones Unplugged and Photography Goes Digital as well as the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s displays that we did last year.

If you are planning to go to the event this year, make sure you come over and say hi. I will be there for the whole week.

Ive updated my “About Me” page. Feel free to take a look.

http://retrocomputers.wordpress.com/about-2/

The folowing info is taken from the BBC news website. Unfourtunatly, I dont have the original Macintosh in my collection, closest thing I have is the SE/30!

The Macintosh – the first Apple computer to bear the name – turns 25 on 24 January.

The machine debuted in 1984 and kicked off a product line that were Apple’s flagship computers for many years.

The Macintosh helped popularise the combination of graphical interface and mouse that is ubiquitous today.

The machine was unveiled using a hugely expensive TV advert, directed by film maker Ridley Scott and shown during the US Superbowl on 22 January 1984

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Here is the recording of the news item from Anglia Tonight about the Centre for Computing History museum in Haverhill, Suffolk (East Anglia).

Centre for Computing History – News Item