Spend An Hour In The Virtual Radio Museum

You have an hour to kill, and you like old communication technology. If you happen to be in Windsor, Connecticut, you could nip over to the Vintage Radio and Communication Museum. If you aren’t in Windsor, you could watch [WG7D’s] video tour, which you can see below.

The museum is a volunteer organization and is mostly about radio, although we did spy some old cameras if you like that sort of thing. There was also a beautiful player piano that — no kidding — now runs from a vacuum cleaner.

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Travel The World Looking For Retro Tech, Virtually

For those who have a passion for vintage hardware, whether it be a classic computer or a war-surplus ham radio rig, finding the things without resorting to paying shipping fees on eBay can sometimes be tricky. Your best bet is to find a local fair or swap event, but it always seems they’re the kind of thing you find out about the weekend after they were held.

Looking to make these sort of events more visible and easier to keep track of, [RobSmithDev] has created the Retro.Directory. Scrolling your way across the globe you can see markers that indicate places of interest for the retro aficionado, such as museums, repair shops, and old school arcades, as well as upcoming events. Continue reading “Travel The World Looking For Retro Tech, Virtually”

Help Save The National Videogame Museum

The National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, UK, houses a unique collection celebrating all decades of video games and their culture, and as the lockdown has brought with it a crisis threatening its very existence, has launched a crowdfunding campaign with a video we’ve placed below the break. As a relatively young organisation, they have yet to build up the financial buffer that a more established one would have. It’s important that this and other heritage sites live to open again another day, so we’d urge you to take a look.

On their website they’re providing a page of activities for the bored youngster in your life, but to whet your appetite should you wish to visit them in the future they also have a selection of pages about the rest of their exhibition.

One of the sad features of living through  a pandemic comes in knowing that some of the businesses and organisations we hold dear might not make it through the crisis. We’ve put in a few orders to smaller suppliers over the last week or two to shove a bit of extra business their way, and no doubt you have too. What is not so easy however, is when the threatened organisation is a visitor attraction; we can’t make the trip during a lockdown. The NVM is unlikely to be the only such attraction facing the pinch, so we’d urge you to look out for those that are close to you as well.

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