Take a walk down memory chip lane
20 October 2003

Old computers have won some new fans, write Chloe Veltman in California

Fifty million personal computers are thrown in landfill sites each year as the high-tech industry persuades businesses and consumers to dump their old systems for the latest technologies.
However, for a growing number of hardcore computer enthusiasts, owning the latest Apple PowerBook or version of Microsoft Office pales in comparison to the pleasure of taking home one of Sir Clive Sinclair's 48k Spectrums.

At the sixth Vintage Computer Festival, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California this month, an audience consisting largely of balding men with greying ponytails and beards cooed over ageing computer systems and yellowing manuals.

Meanwhile, Festival organisers expected a rare prototype of the Commodore 64 - the chunky old home computer whose shelf-life expired 10 years ago - to fetch several thousand dollars at auction.

In its heyday, the Commodore 64 was, according to The Guinness Book of Records, the world's most popular computer. About 30m units were sold between its launch in 1982 and its commercial decline in 1993. Now in retirement, the Commodore 64 is enjoying something of a comeback.

"The Commodore is a great little computer," said Sellam Ismail, festival producer. "For many people it represents their first computing experience, and when the nostalgia bug hits, that's what they'll go looking for."

Many hobbyists admit to being fascinated with defunct computers for nostalgia reasons. "For me, it's an appreciation of the past," said vintage computer enthusiast Bryan Blackburn, whose home is crammed with home-built and restored 1970s-era computers.

Even for entrepreneurs like Vince Briel, a Cleveland, Ohio-based computer technician who has just launched a line of $200 Apple I replicas - the machine that launched Apple in 1976 - the interest isn't entirely commercial. "I just want people to relive the 8-bit computer experience and get more people involved in the history of computers and collecting," he said.

"There will be more and more interest in vintage computers, because the commercial computer industry now spans more than 50 years," said David Weil, executive director of the Computer Museum of America in San Diego. "More people are exposed to, rely on, despise and/or make their living with these tools than at any other time in our history."

Whether out-of-date computers will offer investors a way to make decent returns, as they can with fine wines and art, is less clear.

Copyright The Telegraph Group Ltd