Computer Museum Visitors - love the retro game stations

info click

Sorry I have not written a post in the last several weeks . My wife and I got the flu bug about the time we returned from our mission trip to Dominica and it has really shut down our energy and ability to do hardly anything.  We are feeling better now but still very low on energy. I have not felt like this for years - in fact we always comment on how we hardly ever get sick - but this was different. Sure hope you don't get this - some of our friends have been effected for 4 to 5 weeks.

Had a great day at the museum with friend and museum donor Nathaniel Frissell.  Nathaniel brought three of his graduate student associates from Virginia Tech. I always enjoy telling the history about various computers in the museum and 2 computers really caught there interest.

Click on photo to enlarge

Autonetics REcomp computer 

The first one to stop them in there tracks for more information was this Autonetics Recomp 501 computer. More information here "CLICK"
This model is reported to be the first commercial transistor computer - 1958- and we have  serial number 003 and we may have the oldest commercial built transistor computer in the world.

Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal 1971

The second stop for the group was the 1971 Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal. The story of this  terminal built around an 8 bit computer is a fascinating and many retro computer people do not know this important history --- This was the  origin  of the first 8 bit microcomputer - The Intel 8008 in 1972.

This story is well told in Lamont Woods book about Datapont. Read more here "CLICK"
I will be posting more about this fascinating and important story in future blogs.

Bugbook and Blacksburg book display 

Hunter Burch (L) and myself by the Bugbook and Blacksburg series of books that I and several others produced in the 70's and early 80's. Hunter has a friend back home in Alburn Ga that has some of the books and asked Hunter to be sure to talk to me about the books.

Nathaniel Frissell & reto game stations

Nathaniel Frissell is proud of this photo. He should be as he made a large donation of Commodore and  other computers to our museum. All three of the operational retro game stations we have in the museum are made from his donated computers.
The game stations are a real popular and everyone loves playing these computer games that are 25 to 30 years old.

Visitors from Virginia Tech 

Here is Nathaniel and his friends from Virginia Tech in front of our Apple-l display.
L-R Brian Dowd - assistant museum curator, Nathaniel Frissell, Deirdre Beggs, Hunter Burch, Andrew Kinlz.  Brian is a student at Floyd High School and Nathaniel and his friend are all students at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech(VT) brings back many fond memories of my 31 years as a faculty member their teaching "Instrumentation and automation".

David Larsen

The  museum visitors from Virginia Tech were a real pleasure. Nathaniel donated a large group of Commodore computers last year and they were used to set up our retro gaming stations. He was very happy to see them in use and tell his friends about them. I am happy to greet all visitors however it is special when they are from Virginia Tech where I spent 31 years of my professional career.

           .^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian} 

     Follow museum on Twitter   You can help me with a like on Facebook - Thank you