Vintage Computers - Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum Warehouse a peek inside !

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Bugbooks

I seem to be spending lots of  time in our museum warehouse inspecting items for the expanded museum display --so I though it is a good idea to give you a peek at what I am dealing with. This is 45  years of collecting and it has been fun. I remember many of the items but sure can't remember them all. We do have the inventory on an excellent software data base 'Past Perfect'.  I can locate many of the items with a database search.   Their are about 10,000 entries however this does not tell the whole story of the collection. Most boxes have every piece in the box on the inventory however some entries are only of the box  general description and not all the contents.  This could easily double the number of items. Of course I would like every item to be on the inventory but this was not always practical. A good example was 16 years ago when I retired from teaching at Virginia Tech I packed up 44 file boxes of papers and other goodies. For example I had a small museum display in my office of 100 or so small items - like old core memory - special IC chips, and bits of pieces of this and that.  Only one entry in the database for each of the 44 boxes and the box contents is not inventoried.

Here is a peek at our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum"  ware house.

             Click photo's to enlarge 

Bugbook Museum Warehouse 

This represents 45 years of collecting.  The collecting is only a part -- setting up the warehouse- cleaning, checking & packing for storage has been in progress for the past 25 years.

Bugbook Museum Warehouse 

Time line of 45 years of collecting vintage computer memorabilia. 
-1969/74 I was able to store the collection in the house.
-1974/82 years it filled up the basement of house.
-1982/94 purchased a warehouse to store collection.
-1994 built new warehouse & moved inventory- the one in photo
-1994/present - clean,check,pack items and make a  paper inventory.
-2000/today, enter inventory into museum database "Past Perfect"
-2010 set up small museum in Floyd, Virginia.
-2014 moved museum to larger space - in progress now.

44 boxes from Dave's VT Office 

My office material,books,letter's & historical documents packed in 44 file-folder boxes  and stored in the museum  warehouse. Represents 1967 to 1998 - 31 years as faculty member at Virginia Tech - teaching "Electronics, Instrumentation, Computer Interfacing & Data Acquisition". The post just before this blog has 3 documents I retrieved  from these boxes of info. It is very difficult for me to think that this office material has been stored for 16 years. Golly !!!

Commodore Computers Bugbook Museum 

This is end view of part of Commodore collection - inventoried and packed for the long haul. Must be 100 or more items here.

Apple computers Bugbook Computer Museum

View of part of Apple computer collection.  Here we see several Lisa computers and a Lisa in the original packing box. That is an ASR33  Teletype in the front wrapped in packing material. Without looking at our museum database I have no real idea how many the Apple items in the collection. The Apple 1 computers are stored in a commercial Bank Vault.

Old Radio's Bugbook Museum Warehouse

I am not really a historical radio collector however it seems I have several hundred old radios.

Bugbook Computer Museum Inventory

Here is part of "Digital Group" Computers and if you look at inventory numbers you will see this is one set that goes together of 13 packed parcels.

Wall of memories Bugbook Museum Warehouse

This is the a part of 100 foot wall of memories in the warehouse. No computers here just lots of personal family things, old radio items and other fun stuff collected over the years.  Much of the items are from our foreign travels.  Just fun things - one of my family members calls this "Dave's Toy Box"  That is correct for sure.

You can see I have a few items to work with in my collection of vintage computers. My goal is to have the

warehouse empty and all the material on display and in the hands of interested folks.  Maybe I will have a museum here in Floyd that can do this - of course that is my fondest dream.  Other museums are just fine also .  Any ideas or suggestions please pass them on to me. Have a great day -- it was beautiful here in Floyd today.

 ^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}     Send Message    Like us on Facebook  My Blog about hometown Floyd VA