Vintage Technology Collector

Jeremy Mehrle has turned the basement of his St. Louis home into one of the best private Apple Macintosh computer collections that I am aware of. All of these machines are fully-functional so you can see how the old operating systems worked. Some of the highlights of his collection are an Apple Lisa, a 20th Anniversary Macintosh, and a NeXT computer.

silicon.com reports: "Bletchley Park was the secret home to Britain's top codebreakers during World War II. The base is now home to the fledgling National Museum of Computing, which features a rebuild of the world's first electronic codebreaking computer - Colossus." This is the best information I have seen on Colossus computer. I have new respect for this machine. Watch the video .

TechRepublic reports: "When it comes to dinosaur computers in the luggable category the first name that should always be mentioned is the Osborne 1. We can talk about innovation with the Air, but we should first consider a PC that was truly revolutionary back in 1981. The Osborne 1 was the first completely self-contained portable computer. Coming along a few years later was the Radio Shack TRS80 Model 4P, which refined the concepts laid out by the Osborne 1 and made lugging a computer from here to there a common every day reality for many." I have a Osborne 1 in my personal collection, but I never heard of a Radio Shack TRS80 Model 4P. I like the TRS80 Model 4P keyboard design, it was much better then the Osborne.

nintendo8.com lets you play classic 8-bit Nintendo video games online, and no software downloads are required. The site is pretty slow, but if you're patient it will load. The games do require that you have Java installed on your computer in order to run them.

A rare interview with Jonathan Ive. The main designer behind Apple's most famous products from the early iMac to the iPod.

Register Hardware reports: "The MP3 player is ten years old this month. The first commercially released personal music player capable of handling MP3 files was the MPMan F10, manufactured by Korea's Saehan Information Systems and launched in March 1998." Here is a history of some of the very first MP3 players.

MSN.com reports "Yes, the Xbox is more high-tech. But a new wave of game players is bringing home something even more special -- old-style arcade games. When David Ellis was in high school, he, like millions of other teenagers, became mesmerized by video games. That was back in the 1980s, however, when the most popular place to play a video game was in an arcade." Every few months I read more and more articles discussing the popularity of collecting vintage technology. So you want to finish collecting what you want while you still can...

TechRepublic reports: "Remember the legendary Motorola StarTAC? Released in 1996, it was the smallest cell phone available, and the first to feature the now-ubiquitous clamshell design. It was also the first mobile to sport the vibrate option. In addition, in 2005 it was number six on PCWorld's 'Top 50 Gadgets of the last 50 years.' Not too shabby. Naturally, we had to crack one open." Want to see the inside of a Motorola StarTAC flip phone? Now is your chance.