A collection of Australian computing relics.

By Staff Writers on Aug 20 2018 04:50 PM

Digital Equipment Corp PDP-8/S.

On Thursday 9 August, Information Age travelled to Villawood in western Sydney following the news that the Australian Computer Museum Society was, in a matter of days, losing the facility in which it had stored its extensive collection. As efforts to find a new home continue, a team of dedicated volunteers came together to move the entire collection to a range of temporary facilities. While there was a level of organised chaos, we were able to take some photographs of parts of the collection and have included those here. If you would like to know more about the Australian Computer Museum Society you can visit www.acms.org.au.

Australian Computer Museum Society

A collection of Australian computing relics.

on Aug 20 2018 06:50AM

5.25” floppy disk drive made by Cipher Data Products.

Genicom 4440 XT Line Printer, Black and White printing through a Serial Interface. Mid 1990s.

Kennedy Model 9000 Digital Tape Transport with Pertec interface. c.1977.

Digital Equipment Corp PDP-8/S. The S represents “Small” and this was introduced in 1966. It cost around $10,000 – or around $80,000 in today’s money. The PDP used 'Flip Chip' cards, one of which is pictured here.

Digital Equipment Corp PDP-8/S. The S represents “Small” and this was introduced in 1966. It cost around $10,000 – or around $80,000 in today’s money. The PDP used “Flip Chip” cards, one of which is pictured here.

Olivetti DE523. A word processor considered innovative for the integrated design, including a monochrome monitor and two tape drives. Built c.1975.

Singer Model 40 Disc Drive. Capacity of a single removable pack 10M character drive. It sold for $12,500 in 1972 or the equivalent of $75,000 today.

Digital Equipment Corp Vax 11/780. Introduced in 1977, it was the first minicomputer to use the VAX instruction set architecture.

IBM9404 AS/400 – Designed for a 'quiet office environment' this system offered 32MB RAM with a potential for up to 4.8GB of storage. Discontinued in 1991.

Unknown. If you can identify it, let us know!

Mansfeld Prozess Controller. A rare example of a computer produced in East Germany, prior to 1989. It contained 256KB of RAM and was used in offices in the German Democratic Republic. Around 1,600 were produced.