The Living Computers museum's tech collection is set for auction. Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer took a last look and mused on the theme of donor's remorse.

Plummer, who recently built himself a PDP-11 out of spare parts, noted that, despite the "abundance" of billionaires in the Seattle area who owe a substantial chunk of their fortunes to machines like the ones in the museum, "none of them were sufficiently compelled to become the patron."

Then again, as Plummer observed, it's up to individuals how they spend their money.

Despite this, the engineer said: "It's still a bad situation that all this hardware collected and working in one place and with a team to support it will be scattered to the winds of individual collectors, not unlike myself."

Plummer has quite the collection of vintage gear, although he's still looking for that perfect PDP-11/70 in the delightful burgundy color scheme.

The closure of the museum and the subsequent auction of its artifacts have proven controversial. The late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, started the facility almost two decades ago, and the doors were flung open to the public in 2012.

The goal was to allow visitors to get their hands on vintage technology that might otherwise be imprisoned behind glass and never used again. Allen died in 2018 and the museum was shuttered at the beginning of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. It never opened its doors again. Earlier this year, Allen's estate opted to sell off the collection.

Plummer's farewell tour of the collection is a bittersweet moment for tech enthusiasts. It's a last hurrah for the hardware - replete with auction estimates - but also a reminder that such a collection is unlikely to be as accessible and complete in the near future.

The situation also serves to highlight the importance of such institutions. UK museums such as Cambridge's Centre for Computing History and Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing have areas where visitors can get their hands on vintage hardware, and IT professionals of a certain age can wax lyrical about the good old days.

The engineer observed: "I wish it could have worked out differently. The other folks I feel sorry for are the people that donated computers or artifacts to the museum or sold them cheaply on the presumption that now they would have a permanent home.

"I don't know if there's such a thing as donator's remorse, but if there is, I suspect a few people are experiencing its sting about now." ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/27/living_computers/