59 points npollock 1 hour ago 15 comments

nizmow 55 minutes ago | parent

I recently moved to Eindhoven and have been meaning to get to the museum in Helmond. This has prompted me to make the trip this weekend!

hananova 42 minutes ago | parent

And just last week they opened a store diagonally across from the museum where you can buy their surplus.

nizmow 30 minutes ago | parent

Likely a very dangerous temptation :)

gijsnijholt1980 41 minutes ago | parent

It’s truly a great museum! A trip down memory lane and they do their best to keep most machines operational. That’s no small feat. Enjoy!

pkal 41 minutes ago | parent

The DEC barn seems interesting, but I don't gather where it is located or how you can visit it?

smokel 38 minutes ago | parent

"SAMENGEST TEKEN" is most likely an abbreviation for "SAMENGESTELD TEKEN". I guess it's a translation of "COMPOSE KEY" and they ran out of rub-on letters somewhere.

JSR_FDED 36 minutes ago | parent

Damn, I just came back from a trip to Amsterdam…if only I’d known

dr_dshiv 28 minutes ago | parent

Do these still exist? How are they funded?

teekert 27 minutes ago | parent

I went to the Bonami SpelComputer Museum in Zwolle, I spend > 5 hours there. Loved it, you could touch everything, oh the long lost satisfaction of putting in a real floppy floppy! I played pong, I played on an MSX (used to own one), the NES, old Sega's, Atari's. My son also loved it, I parked him at the Playstation's and Xbox's at the end, then did another round, starting from the 60's Star Trek style computers to the now. At the end we played some pinball machines, and some old arcades as well.

The whole place felt like a drab 80's office, but also felt like a lost home, it had a special charm.

Btw spelcomputer means gaming computer, but I don't know why they call it that, there are some classic gaming machines, but they mostly have regular computers, like rows of old Toshiba laptops for example.

NBJack 25 minutes ago | parent

R.I.P. Living Computer Museum (yes I am aware of its formal name). They took such good care of the systems there, and basically everything could be played with. It's technically not the only museum like it around Seattle, but it was incredibly memorable.

mahirsaid 19 minutes ago | parent

wow this museum captures so much beauty from early computer era. The quality is lost compared to these items.

vouwfietsman 17 minutes ago | parent

Only a tourist would call Helmond and Zwolle closeby, that's like half the Netherlands!

estomagordo 14 minutes ago | parent

Only a person from a country larger than a floppy disk would call them nearby.

fuzzythrowaway 12 minutes ago | parent

The computer sections feel warm and sort of anchored in place, whereas those shots of the arcade gave me the "liminal space" heebies. I wonder why.

Are there any places like this in the US?