Yes, what you’re looking at is the current entrance to the Australian Computer Museum Society, located in the depths of Sydney. When I first called John, I didn’t know what to say. A friend had sent me a document revealing that the museum is having trouble relocating. They are running out of time as their current location is set to be demolished in two weeks. It said that the society had run out of funds and was looking for people to take their pieces of history home. However, when John spoke with me, he said that wasn’t exactly true.

“That’s not exactly right”, said John, treasurer of the society. “We’re looking for people to home these items until we have a permanent location.” Being a collector of antique computers, I became more interested in the situation and asked a couple of questions. And I was more than happy to hold onto some computers until the museum found it’s feet.

I was told they don’t know what inventory they have; pallets of floppy disks, old IBM, Dell, HP computers. Pallets they can’t reach until more pallets are removed. I was welcomed to come down and have a look. So I did.

People were being asked to leave their name and number, and what items they had taken. There was a pad by the door, but it was pretty much empty, aside from one other person. They had added their name and email address, but no mention of what items were taken – I’ll get back to this later.

I walked in and was not greeted by anyone. Someone was rummaging around the main pathway, so I called out. “John?”. No, he was in the office just around the corner.

John at first tells me he just got off the phone to someone who will be able to help, and store all of their items. Great, except I just drove hours to get here. After i spoke to some of the other (who i assume) were volunteers, things looked different.

I could tell that the others weren’t happy with how this whole society was treated. As an enthusiast, this was amazing – They had a 1959 IBM 1401. They had piles of antique hard drive platters. They had tapes, cassettes, all disk formats, and maybe a hundred monitors with all different cable types. Boxes of keyboards and satellite communication boards. But this isn’t how any of these should be stored. The monitors had fungus growing between the glass and the tube. There was no categorization – just endless piles of donated electronics, just sitting out with no protection. Keyboards were stored right on top of each other, some had their insides buckled out while others had their keys falling off. There was a an IBM Model F I could see in the pile that was in pieces.

Apparently the roof at the last place collapsed, and damaged a few computers. Unfortunately bits of roof and wet-now-dry cardboard were still coating a lot of machines, never cleaned off.

They had an analog EAI 680 computer complete with it’s last patch board wires still in the machine, but it was behind a bunch of boxes and junk so you couldn’t really see it. Strangely, this was the only machine with some semblance of a description written on it:

“This computer was originally acquired by BHP Newcastle. It was subsequently used by BHP Central Research Laboratories Melbourne and The Department of Mechanical engineering, University of Queensland.”

Surely something worthy of a glass cabinet in a museum. Instead, this machine has been slowly rotting away in behind boxes and pallets of junk.

The vibe I started to get from this place right from the entrance was “Dream turned nightmare”. With the right people, this collection could be culled and curated into something amazing. But all I could see was hoarded computer parts with no idea what is there, crumbling into rubbish. Computers literally destroying each other under the weight of more computers on top of each other. I had to try to save something from this fate, so I wandered around for a while, trying to figure out what I should home and hopefully, get working again.

This is when I noticed what others were doing. I saw at least 2-3 people walk in, take a few items, and leave. They didn’t speak with the volunteers or john. Someone walked in looking for buckling spring keyboards, took one that I found earlier and placed it in plain sight, but was after another. He told me the location had been posted on a keyboard lovers forum, i assume with a note of “take what you need”. He was going to take another model F keyboard that had most of its keys missing “for parts”. I don’t know if it wasn’t made clear enough, i mean I had to ask John what was going on when I entered, but if someone read online to come take what they wanted they could have done so without john noticing at all. And that’s what was happening.

I asked a volunteer if I could look after a Macintosh I found in the back. It’s a late 1996 model so I thought if I had any chance something could still be working, it would be something like this. “Does it have a pink sticker on it?” he asked. Apparently, pink stickers meant they didn’t want an item taken. But this wasn’t mentioned anywhere, and for the people just wandering in and taking things, they would have no idea. I went and checked, and there was no pink sticker. In the end, I homed two Macintosh computers from 1996, a scratched up giant HDD drive platter and a small packet of 8″ floppy disks. I’ll be taking them apart and cleaning them up before checking if they work, but I haven’t got to this yet. I did notice one is missing at least a hard drive…

I understand they are in dire need of funds. Getting a sponsor would be the best situation, but they seriously need to ‘clean up their act’ before a sponsor will get involved. Maybe they need to sell some of their more common items for cash. Or maybe they need to contact a much larger museum and donate to somewhere more professional. I don’t think BHP or the University of Queensland (whoever donated the switch board) would be happy to know what’s happening with their antique piece.

I’m really sorry guys, but it was a shocking experience and quite saddening to see. I really hope someone can come and pull it together for you. Perhaps an investor or curator who can help turn this into something the public would pay to see and enjoy.