Computer Museums in the U.K.

The U.K. has a number of dedicated computer museums while a few other museums have permanent computer history collections. If you're interested in the history of computing the following are definitely worth a visit:

The National Museum of Computing

During World War II Bletchley Park was home to Britain's secret codebreaking activities. The National Museum of Computing is based at Bletchley and has a collection which includes an Elliot 803, ICL 2966 and the Colossus. The museum is open Thursday and Saturday afternoons. Admission is £12 for Bletchley Park plus £5 for TNMOC.

Museum of Computing

The Museum of Computing is close to Swindon's town centre and specialises in home computers and games consoles. The museum is open on Friday and Saturday. Admission is £2.

The Science Museum

London's Science Museum has a collection dedicated to the history of computing. The museum is home to a variety of notable systems including a Cray 1, Ferranti Pegasus and Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. Entry is free.

The Centre for Computing History

The Centre for Computing History is based at Haverhill in Suffolk. The museum has an extensive collection of home computers, manuals and magazines. Admission is free but by appointment only.

The Museum of Science and Industry

The calculating and computing exhibition at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry includes a rebuilt Baby, the world's first stored program computer. Entry to the museum is free.

Classic Home Computer Fonts

Anyone who owned a home computer in the 80's would have been intimately familiar with the character set. Although it was possible to redefine the font, it had to be loaded from cassette and was restricted to an 8×8 pixel grid. Love it or hate it, you were stuck with it.

Fortunately for anyone who misses their 8-bit computer a selection of classic fonts are available online. Here are a few of my favourites:

Amstrad CPC font

Atari font

Commodore font

ZX Spectrum font

Which home computers did you own and what did you love / hate about the font? :-)

8 Bit Home Computer Benchmarks

Over the years I've collected quite a few 8 bit home computers. Out of curiosity I decided to write a simple prime sieve benchmark to compare their implementations of BASIC.

10 LET W=500:DIM F(W):LET P=1:LET A=3
20 LET F(P)=A:LET P=P+1:IF P>W THEN STOP
30 LET A=A+2:LET X=1
40 LET S=A/F(X):IF S=INT(S) THEN 30
50 LET X=X+1:IF X<P AND F(X)*F(X)<=A THEN 40
60 GOTO 20

Here are the results from a few of the machines I have to hand:

System	CPU	Time
Acorn Electron	2.0MHz 6502	138
Amstrad CPC464	4.0MHz Z80A	140
Commodore C64	1.0MHz 6510	254
Commodore Plus/4	1.0 MHz 8501	267
Tandy 64K CoCo 2	0.895MHz 6809E	271
Atari 800XL	1.8MHz 6502	316
Sinclair Spectrum +3	3.55MHz Z80A	388

Let me know how long it takes to run on your favourite classic computer. :-)

Five Computers I Longed to Possess in the 1980s

Back in the 1980's I owned a couple of computers, a Commodore 16 and a Spectrum +2. However, this didn't stop me wanting to own a whole range of other machines.

1. Jupiter Ace: I loved this from the moment I read about it. A Z80 based micro with a built in Forth interpreter, what more could I desire? Only about 9000 machines were manufactured and I've been waiting patiently ever since for one to come up on eBay.
2. Sam Coupé: a Sinclair Spectrum clone with 256K memory, a 6MHz Z80, optional internal disk drives and a 25MHz Z80 processor upgrade. Somewhere in the region of 12000 units were sold. A few years ago I picked up one of these at a car boot sale for a fiver! ;-)
3. NeXT Computer: from the moment I saw screenshots and read about this workstation built around Motorola's 68030 I knew I had to have one. After seeing the hefty price tag I knew I never would. Even now these sell for a small fortune on eBay.
4. Dragon 64: the Dragon's 6809 processor looked amazing compared to the 6502 used in most computers of the time. It boasted two stacks, plenty of registers and on chip multiplication. Whenever I wrote code for the 6502 I'd secretly hope to write for the 6809 one day.
5. KITT: a sentient, artificially intelligent computer built by Knight Industries and installed into a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Unfortunately my diecast model came without William Daniels' voice and the cool red lights. If KITT is ever on eBay I'll likely sell my house to buy it!

Let me know if you think I've missed off any cool machines :-)