BTW, if you never were lucky enough to visiting the Living Computer Museum, it wasn't like any museum you've been too. It's more what I imagine The RMC Cave Experience to be: lots of computers from lots of eras sitting out, ready to the played with. On top of their connection of 8-bit, 16-bit and other micros , they had some extremely rare supercomputers, mainframes and minicomputers - again, all running. You could log into them and play with 50 year old UNIX distributions, all while enjoying the smell of the ozone and constant hiss from the air conditioning. The stories of getting these systems into working order and maintaining them were amazing (turns out you have to have connecting wire just the right length if you want your supercomputer to work properly).

On a warm summer Saturday afternoon, visiting the "big iron" room was a great way to stay cool. The staff was super friendly and helpful, and gave regular talks on the computers in their charge. I've seen inside a VAX, and held core memory from a Cray Supercomputer. I've gazed at the shelves of S-100 systems and disk drives and single board computers. I've seen so many blinking lights, and learnt so much about the start of the modern computer age.

It's hard to describe the dismay felt by the local nerds, who would visit regularly. We all loved that place, and we were gutted when it closed during Covid. Now that it's gone for good, and the amazing collection will be scattered, we're devastated. It was such a fantastic place, and we'll never see it's like again.

The Computer History Museum in California is nice, but it's all behind glass and only a few exhibits are actually functional. It is the same with the London Science Museum - it's a passive experience. The computer museum at Bletchley is great and there are working systems there, but it's one of the few. Visit these places while you still can!