In the winter of 2023. I decided it was time to find a home for the old personal computers (1970s and 80s) which I had been storing in my loft for several years. My motvation was that if I kept them for long enough they might be of interest, either to computer museums or to private collectors.
Here’s what I had:
S-100: Designed in 1974, the S-100 bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders implemented drivers for CP/M. These S-100 microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in early home computers until the advent of the IBM PC.
Nascom 2: This was a single-board computer kit issued in the United Kingdom in 1979, based on the Zilog Z80 CPU.
Atari: The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of memory, was the first home computer with a cost per kilobyte of RAM under US$1/KB. The Mega was release in the same year and included a high-quality detached keyboard, and a stronger case to support the weight of a monitor.
Apple: The Apple II was a personal computer released in June 1977. It was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products and is widely regarded as one of the most important personal computers of all time due to its role in popularizing home computing and influencing later software development. The Macintosh Classic II was sold by Apple from October 1991 to September 1993. The system had a compact, appliance design with an integrated 9″ monitor.
Nintendo NES: The Nintendo Entertainment System was an 8-bit home video game console first released in 1983.
I prepared a website describing what I had – this material forms the bulk of this website – and emailed a number of computer museums that I had identified on the web. From the replies that I got (or didn’t get) I decided to donate to three of them. Alex and I dropped off computers in York and Durham in the summer of 2024; the computers for Swansea were sent by courrier. My children remembered the Nintendo NES with great affection! It still works and was given to my daughter Isabel – as she was judged by the other two to be too young to play with it at the time …..