About the Archive
One collector, thirty years, and a refusal to let the machines that built the modern world disappear quietly.
The Ancient Computer Collection is a living tribute to the pioneers, innovators, and visionaries who laid the foundations of the digital world we live in today.
Born from a deep passion for the history of computing, the collection brings together a diverse range of vintage computers, calculators, peripherals, documentation, and related artifacts — each with its own story and historical significance.
What began as a personal journey to rescue and preserve forgotten machines has grown into a broader effort to celebrate the creativity and ingenuity of early computing. Over the decades, many once-groundbreaking systems have disappeared, discarded as obsolete or lost to time. Recognizing their educational and cultural value, the collection was established to safeguard these artifacts not merely as nostalgic objects, but as tangible windows into the technological imagination of their era.
The mission of the Ancient Computer Collection is to make the evolution of computing accessible, engaging, and meaningful to everyone. Each artifact is carefully researched, restored when possible, and documented with technical details, high-quality photographs, and stories gathered from users, engineers, and collectors around the world.
The collection continues to grow through community contributions, discoveries, and ongoing research. Alongside hardware, we are building a comprehensive digital archive of software, manuals, periodicals, and personal memories. Through high-resolution scanning and long-term digital preservation efforts, rare publications and technical documents are made available to researchers and the general public.
This website was created and is maintained by Michele Perini, Sysop and vintage computer collector based in Ontario, Canada.
This is a personal website. All artifact and publication images have been photographed or scanned by me; other images may be AI-generated. Every effort is made to respect copyright and fair-use principles. If you believe that any material on this site infringes on copyright, please contact us so the issue can be promptly addressed.
A working machine is a story you can still run. Lose the machine and you lose the story.
A Brief History
The Collecting Begins
I've always been drawn to computers and computing artifacts, but what started as casual curiosity became a genuine passion in the 1990s.
ancientcomputer.com Is Born
To make sense of everything I was accumulating, I started archiving and cataloging each item. Once I had a small database up and running, it felt natural to make it public and share it with fellow enthusiasts.
Life Gets in the Way
As it often does. Life had other plans, and I found myself without the time to keep collecting seriously or maintain the site. The project went quiet.
Back Online
After a long hiatus, the passion came back — and this time, so did the time to act on it. ancientcomputer.com returned, and so did the collecting.
A New Website
This year I set out to build something worthy of the collection. After months of planning, the new version finally launched in June. Many artifact images are still missing, but work is very much underway.
This Only Exists Because People Help
There is no institution behind this archive. No grant, no endowment, no staff. Just one person and the community that decided this history was worth keeping. If that’s you, there’s a place for you here.