BEST COMPUTER MUSEUM EVER? - Centre for Computing History | Octav1us 

I LOVE the Bubble Bobble background music! :)

8:26 - "microwavy bad lad", lol - never stop being you, that was a great line :)

The Centre for Computing History is quite possibly my favourite place in the world. I love the fact that you can actually switch on and use the machines there (there are many old systems I never thought I’d see in person, let alone actually sit down and use...) Long may it continue!

Octav1us, I liked your analogy to your great grandma's sewing machine- very apt and nice to hear what it means personally. I've been to Cambridge and looked around the Centre for Computing History myself a couple of years ago- it's a great day out for people that can get there. As for old computers, I still love my Acorn Electron and BBC Master from my 80's childhood, both of which still work and I have a mess around on in my spare room to this day!

So jealous, you got to go in to the archives. Great video, and love the personal stories.

Great video as always you and nostalgia nerd make a great team

Yes, I think your observations about the stories behind the computers and the connection to the sewing machine drill right down to the heart of it. A sewing machine is a personal machine. It can be used in a factory setting, but it's still very different in nature from some vast assembly line component. Likewise, microcomputers are personal machines. Like the sewing machine, they can be used in a vast, soulless wasteland of corporate domination, but they also have usefulness outside that context. You can take a stab at forging your own livelihood with a sewing machine or a personal computer, and laying off your managers and bosses. That huge desk-sized thing that retired with its user may be pushing the idea to its limits, but the tools we learn to use make an impression on us, and shape who we become. I remember as a kid taking typing classes with these horrendous manual typewriters. When I got my first word processor program for my TRS-80 Color Computer (after upgrading it from 4K to 64K and adding a disk drive and printer) it completely transformed the experience of typing for me. I've got hundreds of vintage computers now, but I still have that original CoCo, and it still works. Thanks for sharing your observations.

I think this might be a great birthday trip for my older brother (he's 41, I'm 34, and he introduced me to computers at an early age) and I next year. Intriguing video, thanks. 👍

Love this video - what a great intro to your channel and sense of humor :)

One of your best videos; well-written, charming and has a helluva lotta heart ;]

You are really awesome Octav1us, thanks for the video I'm sure to visit this museum when I visit London! My grandmother had one of those sewing machines as well. Cheers from Portugal!

Best video i've seen this month. Love the nostalgia!

Decided to do a 5 year Anniversary channel marathon so here is my HI to try and make the algorithm be nice. Fun and great no matter how many times i have watched them.

You lucky devil, I am jelly! It sounds like you really had a blast there.

Loved the vid. Well impressed at the quality of the restoration. Like the day they were first made!

I like the way your videos are produced. The editing, the background music, the humour, love it. :)

Awesome vid. Love old computers. love your clip about your great grandma and the sewing machine. does make you think.....thanks for sharing.

Fantastic video. I’d love to go there some time. And yay! for Nostalgia Nerd! Also, I absolutely emphatically did not giggle childishly at the PS2 with “tool” written on the side. Honest...

I've also got a singer sewing machine that has been passed down the family through generations. I refuse to throw it away, even though no one uses it. My first computer was a PET CBM 4013, which my dad upgraded to an 8032, it was bought a year or two before I was born, but my dad wouldn't get a new computer as it still worked... According to various sites online, the RRP was $1299, which allowing for inflation is equivalent of around 6 grand nowadays! Absolutely NO idea how they afforded that, we weren't rich. I spoke to my dad about it the other day and he only remembers it costing about £100 - but he bought it new on the high street so he must be remembering that wrong. Probably blocked out the memory of wasting so much money on a thing that just a few years later was completely obsolete! My friends had Spectrums, CPCs or C64s, but I had that hunking great lump of metal woth no colour or even graphics. Strictly green text only!

5:30 - The 1970s room; Wow, they even added an authentic nerd! He looks so life-like! :)

That was kind of beautiful. Thanks for this.

fantastic video, I just loove old tech put on display like this.

Octavius is now uploading more frequent! I am happy. Keep em coming 👌

Aww, sounds like you enjoyed yourself - after the eventful journey of course 🙂 Thanks for sharing 😊

What a great experience! Just recently stumbled on your channel and I love it. I love your enthusiasm for vintage gaming and your highlighting a completely different realm compared to what I grew up with in the USA (consoles over computers over here). Great to see Nostalgia Nerd here as well. :D

I used to have an IBM 286 and an Apple III (both ruined by rain while in the process of moving them from storage to my new apartment). Both were hand-me-downs, but I was still upset over it. YIKES that Apple III was rare!

I simply love this!

My mum had one of those old singer sewing machines. To this day it's the only sewing machine I ever felt comfortable using. Something really links you to the past turning the wheel like all the others did before you.

That was a great watch! Cheers

I'm so jealous... And to spice it, I can ear the bubble bobble music on the background... grrrrr Magnificent video.

You have a nice way of making the background stories lurking behind this tech "tool", housed within this museum come alive!

Would love to take my son to that museum and show him all the sorts of computer tech I grew up with.

But do you like the 70s office??

I loved Granny's Garden. The best bet was what would now be regarded as a horrendously offensive stereotype character called Ah-Choo, who would ask you what your favourite food was, and then state when he had it he would start to sneeze. I got a detention for typing in rude things...

Your story about your grandma's sewing machine made me cry. I don't have children nor plan on having any and sometimes I look around at the things I own (old consoles and computers, funko pops, various Nintendo collections, Star Trek ships, etc) things that I treasure and have brought me joy and I wonder if they'll end up in a garbage dump somewhere after I die... no longer loved or wanted... their story over... and I forgotten.

Great vid, and the Bubble Bobble music in the background was cool too :-)

Why your life is so exciting and mine is like the ground-hog day? You made me proud drawing that Horace in an Apple. I love your reflections on the history of those machines and the ghosts of their owners. Good video, thanks.

Thank you for this lovely trip to Cambridge. So many cats!

Another great video OctK..

Lovely writing in this.

That was fantastic thanks! I would be in absolute HEAVEN in that storeroom, bet I could spend weeks in there just looking at all that :)

Great editing! The call back to the magic tree made me laugh out loud

I used to have nightmares about granny’s garden. Ok, I was a pretty wussy kid and there’s still some residual wussiness now, but all the same it’s really scary when you’re 5!

Great video, and from watching the Livestream it seemed like **you** were invited to the archive. My great grandmother had a similar sewing machine (foot operated though). I'm glad yours is getting used!

man that was some explicit french content from the Nostalgia nerd :p great video as always.

It was nice to see you during Peter's live stream! That place looks great. Must give it a look someday.

That's a crackingly excellent video!

Awwww, bubble bobble music in the background :)....Great vid Kitty, welcome back!

Really great video

Queen Octav1us has returned!!

I feel so old - I used to fix computers, TVs and videos from the 80s and 90s. I've still got a rare HH Tiger computer designed by Tangerine of Oric fame knocking around somewhere... Great to see such a collection preserved and thanks for sharing!

Amazing video. I really must visit that place someday

"heheh tool..." I laughed out loud at that xD Thanks for bringing us along :)

My most favourite video so far awesome, must check that out totally Brill xx. Keep up the great work. Your inspiring

" London is confusing " - Octav1us, 2018

Hello! I just discovered your channel this week and want to tell you how i think the world about it : ) It's fun, informative and you're super witty! A french fan

Brilliant!

I would love to go there someday after all this messy covid business is sorted out. Great video, brought some gaming memories back and I really liked how it was put together!

The Great Granny story made me smile about the memories and then TOTALLY creep me out about the storage areas. The whole vid is charming.

New Octavius is always good news 💕

I LOVE this place

Love the fingertip ghosts idea.

i love the sewing machine segment :D

It’s so cool that you went there! I visited this place 2 years ago when visiting my sister living in the UK. It was there where I learned about those 80’s PCs that you feature in your videos. My sister spent too much time on the Mr Do! machine. I played quite a bit of Sonic 2 on the Genesis there. It was also my first experience with the Oculus VR headset.

The Bubble Bobble music was very nostalgic for me. I worked on a couple of computer magazines in the 80's, and some of those machines brought back happy memories. And I'm as crap at getting up in the morning as Octav1us :D

If only there was a sewing machine that COULD actually let me sew back together my grip on reality!! I burst out laughing at that point! Great video!

Another great vid

I'm going to have to go there now. Would be in my element. I can remember using some of those machines, OMG.

Well that's my next family day out sorted.

Best video I've seen on this amazing museum. Looks genuinely amazing there. Note to self: get off your arse and visit that place!

OMG that machine from '63 was so awesome in a weird retro future way.

Yay for the Bubble Bobble tune in the background :D

This is such an awesome museum. This is coming from someone who was invited to work at a few technical/computer museums but actually declined because I hate computers being stored away to rot (while having salvaged cases with emulators on display) or those caged behind glass being non-operational.

really awesome

I'm an old fart I remember so many old clunky computers, yea punch cards those were fun. I first used a Hard Copy Terminal and thought that was a big waste of paper and was much relieved when they got the CRT Monitors working. Today everyone has a computer in their home but back then very few had them and when I got my first compute only 5% of the households in the USA had computers. When I was in college I remember having to wait to get access to a terminal to enter my programming assignments. Yea type the programs in, print out the code, compile them and fix the bugs at home then come back wait for a terminal, fix the bugs (maybe) print, compile and repeat the process until the damn software worked. At the time just to have a computer in the home was a major luxury so terminals at school was your only option.

That second last time you showed the magic tree scene, right before the one where you completed it, was when it finally got funny :)

Yeah thanks, now I have the theme to Bubble Bobble looping in my bwain and it bedtime here in Australia. Great video as always. (Cat ears not required).

You do find the coolest things. I especially loved the 1960s pre-VDU machine hooked up to an actual monitor and playing games and music, and the kit machines in custom wooden cases (I only wish I'd payed enough attention in CDT to make one for my laptop).

Great writing happened here.

So cool. Hope to visit it some day :) . Contacted them about a retro PC project I was doing and they couldn't have been nicer. Have way to many old computers around me, maybe not as many as Nostalgia Nerd but still wayyyy to many. Plan on sending a few to a museum here in Ireland some day. Keep up the road trips and adventures Octav1us.

I love the look at the old equipment - as you said each piece of hardware has its own story. If you get chance go to the computer museum at Bletchley Park as colossus is something everyone with an interest in computing needs to see at least once Love that sewing machine as well - let's hope it's around for many years to come

This place. I must visit.

Oh wow I so want to go there

What a lovely video! I must go and visit it. It was nice to see the ZX81, my first Nokia phone and my red Astro Blaster game! There are some cool machines in the IBM Hursley Museum, but it's not generally open to the public.

Great to see you doing new vids. Well jealous of the museum! Are you going to do any combined vids with Nostalgia Nerd? I noticed he's been in a few of your vids lately and I'd love to see you both do a combined vid!

Being a Gen-X-er, one of the first computers I've used in the school days were TRS-80s. The Model 1s were the first ones I've used. A couple of years later, I also used a Model 3. There were even times when I could use one of them in Radio Shack (as long as an employee doesn't mind). The first computer I've owned was the Commodore VIC-20. A few years later, I have a C-64. They're stored in bins right now. I hope I'll have enough room to set them up. If I do, I might even buy new devices and software that you can get today(!). Oh yes, my first time playing Space Invaders goes *waaay back* to my pre-teen years!

wow grannys garden that takes me back

So many machines that I owned/ worked on / fixed in one place.

Great video! I wish I could go, but it's a bit of a trek to get there from Australia xD

Fantastic

Great vid, was waiting to see if they had an Amstrad cps 464 in there. I'd had one as a hand me down as a kid, when everyone else had snes and commodore 64. I remember harrier attack well, fun times.

And there is Bubble Bobble music running in background :)

That BBC Micro room is so cool. Someone needs to build an equivalent in America filled with Apple II's playing The Oregon Trail and CrossCountry Canada.

Great story-telling! Really enjoyed listening to your narrative here, Octav1us. Informative, funny, and insightful. I really want to visit the UK soon. When I get there, I definitely want to spend a day at the Centre for Computing History as you did. It’s especially appealing that it’s so open. Seeing you relive childhood seated at the BBC Micro was a nice moment. It looked like you and NN had the place to yourselves. How did you get so lucky?

ah the bubble bobble theme tune going on in the background ....much feels.

Oh god. My primary school was using those RM Numbus PC-186s right up until 2001.

love it!!! Nice QL...was that a Dragon 32? Sweet. I now need to convince may wife to visit Cambridge... Cheers Tony (former ZX81 and various Speccy iterations owner)

OMFG! Granny Garden on the Nimbus! ALL THE CHILDHOOD FEELS!!!!!

Great video!

I remember having the BBC Micros at our high school from 1989 to 1994. Would have been much older than that.