Our Little Computer History Museum at Home

Time flies! It was over ten years ago that I was giving my first Computer History course at my alma mater, the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

Back then, I had (hoarded 🙈) a big box of old computer parts at home. From it, I salvaged a couple of old CPUs and memories to show to my students.

My budget at the time was ridiculously low. But, somehow, I ended up browsing eBay and bought a couple more things that I felt would be interesting to illustrate some concepts in class.

I spent no more than 20 or 30 euros. Still, these few items felt like an exotic treasure. I kept all the chips among bubble wraps, in static shielding bags, protected by hard plastic boxes (actually, old repurposed CD storage boxes,) and tucked away from the elements in an old shoebox.

Fast forward to 2018/19. While I never really increased my budget for it, I had now gathered a large enough collection of memories and CPUs.

My partner, Helena Vilaplana, was super excited about the collection but felt it was a shame to have it hidden in a drawer. So she championed this crafts project to build together a proper display for them.

Welcome to our first computer history museum at home.
(All rights reserved © Ferran Poveda & Helena Vilaplana)

Each one of these shadowboxes was painted by hand, and the devices were affixed in different ways, with materials and processes carefully chosen to both preserve the pieces for posterity and to display them in an artistic and exciting way.

We are in love with it :)