The living computers museum in Seattle was amazing. Volunteers maintained all kinds of computing devices there. Visitors to the museum got to interact with any of the devices.

https://livingcomputers.org/

Another cool place to visit is the RE-PC on 6th street in Seattle, where they have a small retro computer museum. Years ago I got to watch the old guy who ran the place boot the PDP-8 there by toggling the boot code from (his) memory using the switches on the front.

There's also a re-pc in tukwilia near sea-tac with a small museum section. The unaffiliated recycled PC store in Tacoma has a bit of a museum section too, although a lot less inventory.

I still miss weird stuff in sunnyvale, but this will have to do.

This place was shut down by Paul Allen's sister after he died, in case anyone was wondering.

Yeah pretty sad story, can't have cost that much to keep this going. Greed is sad.

Also in seattle - https://sdf.org/?tour/museum/index - SMJ giving tours himself at times. Most equipment functional, some even still continuously connected to the internet (at least through SDF's bubble). Been four to five computer generations since I've visited it tho..

Neat.

Reminds me a bit of the community tool libraries. And maybe could serve a similar purpose.

Like if you find some old media that you'd like to read. Or want to use an old device with a rare connector.

I have such a bitter sweet relationship with retro computers. By that I mean the actual hardware itself, it is really cool to keep these things going but more and more the maintenance on these is a losing batter or it becomes a ship of theseus scenario in which so much is replaced the original is almost gone.

A few years back, I saw that a lot of my retro stuff was beginning to fail simply due to aging components. I donated what I could to those that could do something with it but it was kind of sad to see that non of this is going to be with us for a long time.

It is crazy in video games seeing stuff like PlayStation 1/2, Gamecube and Xbox DVD's are now starting to suffer from disc rot. It is looking like emulation or FPGA recreations by be the long path ahead if you want to experience as it was.

> If we were to gift this in the most optimum way for a person who would actually put this machine into service

Like "gift it to Africa" where we send them a crate of useless computers with a note "you guys will love these! it's what I used as a kid (40 years ago)."

There is nobody on earth that will benefit from possessing one of these machines. Just let some collectors take a few, and then break them down for parts and materials.

Those collectors have taken a high-tech brick (it depended upon a proprietary and defunct network to function) and transformed it into a vintage computer that many people are enjoying -- some from bootstrapping it and others from diving into an obscure corner of history. Something tells me those machines are worth far more than their parts and materials.

Naah, I'd benefit from having one in tucked away in a closet. Just let the museums have theirs first.

This website claims they would like old machines, although I have not interacted with them myself:

https://www.old-computers.com/corporate/donate.htm

> In our effort to preserve old-computers, and everything related to them, we are always looking for new systems (and seeing it in the museum doesn't mean we actually own one!). Every minute an old computer is thrown away somewhere in the world (sounds tragic, doesn't it ?!). Some are real museum pieces, and most deserve to at least be saved from destruction.

> Thus, we are looking for people willing to give us old computers, video game systems, books, or anything related to computing in general from the 70's to the mid 90's. Of course, we will pay the shipping costs !

> All systems received will be cleaned, studied and included in our database along with your name for acknowledging your donation.

> We are based in France (yes, in Europe) but we will try to collect donations from around the world, as long as we can afford the shipping costs... If not, we will contact other museums or partners near you.

> Our objective, as an addition to this web site, is to be able to open a real museum in the next few years.

A few years ago, my parents were downsizing and I wanted to find a respectful home for some of the amazing stuff he had in the garage, so we donated to the Vintage Computer Foundation: https://vcfed.org/artifact-donations/.

They don't take everything, but it felt better to give this to them than to have folks who didn't know these systems' import taking them to the dump.

Also highly recommend attending Vintage Computer Festival events if you get the chance.

We had a “boat anchor” (extremely heavy 286) in our garage for 10 something years.

When you pressed the power button it was attached to a steel bar that went over to the power supply. Not a wire.

No clue what my dad finally did with it. This is a guy that kept my old 1996 Gaming PC as his mainstay until 2019.