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.
This reminds me of two museums I've visited and left with great impressions:
- Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California (yes very close to Google's HQ - Google's a huge donor). Absolute the best collection of Computer Science history both from theories to software to hardware.[1]
- Museum of Radio and Technology in Huntington, West Virginia. A tiny museum completely organized by volunteers and donors (some were WW2 GIs and 3 letter agency retirees). Not famous at all in an old elementary school building. But collections were amazing. [2]
[1]: https://computerhistory.org/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Radio_and_Technology
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.
It was really something to be able to go in and interact with systems from decades ago. Huge loss that it was closed.
Only a tourist would call Helmond and Zwolle closeby, that's like half the Netherlands!
Only a person from a country larger than a floppy disk would call them nearby.
Hey now, it's not about size but about how you use it.
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!
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!
And just last week they opened a store diagonally across from the museum where you can buy their surplus.
Likely a very dangerous temptation :)
"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.
Do these still exist? How are they funded?
Apart from entrance fees and relying on volunteers, the Home Computer Museum will repair your old home computer for money. If they have a lot of the same type of computer, they also sell them, as well as old monitors and other devices.
The DEC barn seems interesting, but I don't gather where it is located or how you can visit it?
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?
Damn, I just came back from a trip to Amsterdam…if only I’d known
wow this museum captures so much beauty from early computer era. The quality is lost compared to these items.
There is now also the Nationaal Videogame Museum in Zoetermeer.
Went there last year, pretty good! It's quite arcade focused.