Cambridge - Centre for Computing History

Today we returned to Coalville to try on some more motorcycle gear that had been ordered in for me to try. The return trip to Coalville is 300 miles (483km), mostly on dual carriageways A11, A14 and M1 with a few local roads at either end. Basically, a whole day on the road. The speed limit is 70mph on nearly all of these roads, so we moved along at a good pace, and the traffic wasn't too bad except for some areas near Cambridge where there were road works.

The trip was not for nothing, I really liked one of the jackets and made a purchase.

On the way to Coalville we drove for 3 hours non-stop. On the way back, bang on midday, we peeled off the A14 at Leicester to a huge Sainsbury's, where we filled up with Diesel (a very good price here), grabbed some drinks in the supermarket, and also had lunch in their cafe (well actually mine was a breakfast meal with sausage, egg, bacon, hash brown etc).

Fed and watered, we stopped at Cambridge for something different. Online I had found the Centre for Computing History and wanted to take a look. Helen and I are computer and gadget geeks from way back, and expected to see a bit of computing nostalgia.

Upon entry, the first room contains The Megapocessor. I was mesmerized by this. These days we take microprocessors for granted and they are in everything we use from computers to cars to kitchens. They are small, fast and inexpensive. But what if you want to see the inner workings of a CPU? The Megaprocessor was created by hand to achieve just that; make a CPU entirely out of individual transistors and LEDs so people can play with it, and see it working. There's a good article about it on The Register. Quoting some vital statistics:

• ~42,000 transistors
• ~10,000 LEDs
• Over a million solder joints
• 4 years in the making

This is very, very cool and the website is well worth a read to fully appreciate how impressive this is.

Looking around the rest of the museum, they had a huge array of old home computers, business computers, etc, many in working condition. Here's some things I saw, which we either had at home, or friends had, or I read about in magazines and always wanted (I'm sure Dad remembers me wanting lots!), or I used at University.

BBC Micro, created in Cambridge...

Atari 2600...

Commodore 64...

Commodore Amiga...

Apple IIe and Apple Macintosh...

Check out this old Toshiba laptop with monochrome LCD display, what a clunker!

Original IBM PC, next to Commodore CPM...

NeXT, first time I've ever seen one of these...

Digital VT101 "Dumb" Terminal...

Technology is moving so fast, it's important that old equipment like this is kept to remind us where we came from. Some of the things we saw today, in computing terms is as old as Rome or Stonehenge. This place is well worth a visit for any geek, and it looked like further exhibits were being created so its future looks even brighter.