A Trip Down Computer Memory Lane

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, August 19, 2007, 07:30 PM EDT

For an old-timer like me, C|Net's tour of the DigiBarn, a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains, about 90 minutes south of San Francisco, brings back a lot of memories. Late nights huddled in front of my C64 using Nibble-Copy to "backup" some games, hammering my way through Sword of Sodan on the IIGS and Shadow of the beast on the Amiga - good times.

"The DigiBarn, which is the pride and joy of NASA contractor Bruce Damer and his partner in curation, Alan Lundell, is what might be termed a temporary museum in transition. That's because, on the one hand, it is always growing as the aging lions of Silicon Valley donate their old playthings, and on the other, very wet winters force Damer and Co. to put everything in boxes every year to avoid losing it all to rust.

Yet, the collection is surprisingly broad, taking visitors from early 20th-century mechanical calculators all the way through modern Web appliances, stopping along the way to focus on several important elements of the computer revolution."

You can see some of my personal PC collectibles - including a signed Woz Edition Apple IIGS - in this HotHardware blast from the past.

Tags: memory, computer, LAN, DOW, rip, MeMo, IP, COM

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com