Computer Museum Hardware Day March 5, 2024

The Computer Museum will be hosting a hands-on event with a variety of old computers and artifacts. 

We will have a guest speaker, Devon Merner, who will give a talk entitled "The PowerMac used to develop the Xbox 360" which covers the Xenon Alpha Development Kit, it's brief history and how the online community was able to recreate it.  Includes live demo.  Devon's talk starts at 2pm.

Mark your calendars! 

We have selected a wide variety of retro computers to take a look at – some we know work and others are unknown.  Here is a sample of the machines we will have out:

Apple II (working), Apple G3, “mini Mac”, Macintosh SE/30 (working), Atari 2600, Commodore 64 (working), Commodore 64 mini-emulator with lots of games, Commodore PET, Commodore SuperPET (working) plus multiple Commodore floppy disk drives, TRS-80 Model II, TRS-80 Model 100 (working), TRS-80 Micro Color Computer MC-10 (working), Timex Sinclair 1000, SupersPort model ZWL-194-02, Newton MessagePad 110 , NeXT Cube model N1000 , some typewrites – IBM Selectric, Smith-Corona Classic 12, Majestic 400, plus a display of old calculators and mechanical adding machines, slide rules, etc.

We also have some collections of software for the Commodore 64, Apple II, Macintosh on floppies or CDs that we’d like to test if we have functioning hardware.

We will also have members of the Computer Heritage Group, a group of local retro-computing enthusiasts on-hand who have expertise in reviving older hardware and some may bring one or two of their own machines to look at. They have monthly meetings, usually at KWartzLab in Kitchener.

A note about parking: if you do not have a UW parking pass, you can get a visitor permit which is $5 for the day.  The closest visitor area to the event is Q-Lot, near the bus/train terminal right across from the Davis Centre.  The visitor permit kiosk is on the west side of EC4.  Do not park in the plaza near the University - you will almost definitely get a ticket!