You can now view the Computer History Museum’s collection from the comfort of your own home, and it’s full of retro blasts from the past

I love a good museum, and I also love me some antique hardware. So, I was overjoyed this morning to discover the Computer History Museum has launched a digital portal (via Hackaday), which means you can enjoy its collection from the comfort of your own home.

The museum is based near Mountain View, California, which is quite the trek unless you live somewhat locally. Still, it’s got a fantastic collection of relics from a computer age gone by that you can now view online, including this wonderfully uncomfortable-looking mouse:

A three-button mouse from the Computer History Museum's collection, made by Silicon Graphics Computer Systems — (Image credit: Computer History Museum)

This little beauty was designed by Silicon Graphics Computer Systems and manufactured by Mouse Systems Corp. (remember when hardware company names made sense?) and features three whole buttons. Three! I doubt it has a specs sheet to make any of the offerings in our best gaming mouse guide tremble, but I’d still love to give it a home regardless.

The digital collection is broken up into several categories, including curator picks, stories from the collection, and the “discovery wall”, which allows you to free-scroll through a vast array of nostalgic hardware to pick out the weird and wonderful for yourself.

Which is where I found this, the “world’s first Lisp processor megachip”. It’s got a whole 553,687 transistors and 116,736 bits (yes, bits) of RAM, apparently. It now appears to have found itself entombed in glass, but I’d love to take a microscope to the little fella and see what that architecture looks like compared to something modern.

The "world's first LISP processor megachip" from the Computer History Museum's collection, encased in glass.

(Image credit: Computer History Museum)

Actually, the images on the site are of a decently high resolution, which means you can absolutely do a bit of zooming in to see the details of whatever takes your fancy. I’ve had a whole lot fun picking out my favourites, although at one point I found an original GameBoy that looks suspiciously identical to the one I have in my attic.

Yes, my childhood toys are now museum exhibits, and I have to live with that existential dread for the rest of my life. Anyway, if you’ve got a few minutes to spare (or a few hours, if you’re anything like me), it’s well worth taking a dive into computing hardware’s glorious past.

Turns out there was a whole lot of it before our current, RGB-laden, increasingly-overpriced hardware offerings of today. Who knew?