MusIF presentation at Teatrum Anatomicum (Waag), Amsterdam
Computer museum, restoration and conservation
Running a Computer Museum in Sicily since 1997
You are kindly invited to attend an evening presentation and discussion hosted by Waag Society about the experience of one of the oldest computer museum in Europe: the Museo dell’Informatica Funzionante (MusIF)1, started in 1997 when Gabriele Zaverio, better known to the Italian Hacker scene as Asbesto Molesto, started collecting hardware from scraps and dump areas in Sicily with the purpose of restoration and conservation of our digital past.
Gabriele is today the director of the MusIF, a museum which became of prominent importance for its sector2, having collected a remarkable quantity of working exemplars and being regularly visited by experts and amateurs worldwide. Main activities include hosting some core nodes of the RETRO DECnet3, the hardware restoration of circuit boards and, recently, the reconstruction of an Apple 1 computer exclusively using original components.
The MusIF initiative is growing thanks to the support of many voluntary donations, of the Italian hacker community and of the Dyne.org foundation based in Amsterdam. The MusIF is also twinned with MIAI Computer Museum (Museo Interattivo di Archeologia Informatica) in Cosenza (Italy) , in a true spirit of friendship and knowledge sharing.
Evening program
- 17:30 – Doors open
- 18:00 – Introduction
- 18:10 – Restoration activities at MusIF and challenges ahead
- 18:50 – Open questions and answers
- 19:10 – Open mic for on-topic announcements and networking
- 19:30 – Conclusions
- 20:00 – Doors close
The language spoken will be English.
Entry is free, donations for the MusIF are welcome.
Acknowledgements
| The event is curated by Denis Roio (Waag Fellow) and Federico Bonelli (Trasformatorio) |
| Photos included are made by photographer Luisa Civardi, Copyleft (c) 2013. |
| The MusIF is currently located in Palazzolo Acreide (Siracusa), via Carnevale 17, Italy. |
| The MusIF website is visible at the Internet address http://museum.dyne.org. |
Heartfelt thanks to the supporters and volunteers of the MusIF throught all these years: Paolo Orecchia, Giulia Cappuccio, Alessandro Polito, Antonio Radici, Pierluigi Maori, Andrea Lo Pumo, Fabio Bardella, Alessandro Fossato, Giorgio e Marco Zaverio, Mike Willegal, Corey Cohen, Interlogica Srl, Mangrovia.net Srl, The Applefritter Forum, Giuseppe Moscato, Armando Peluso, Andrea Milazzo, Lee Felsenstein, Steve Wozniak, the Byte Computer Shop, Giuliano Brunetti, Francesco Ferrario, Stefano Roveda, Antonio Giudice, Sebastiano Gennarini, il Poetry Hacklab, Aurora Salemi, Alex D’Elia, Celeste Tabita, Vincenzo Nicosia, Henk Buursen, all donors and people supporting the MusIF and more Freaknet/Dyne operations.
Macintosh 128k, naked.
Footnotes:
1 Italian for “Museum of working informatics”, term often used to indicate computer science. The name refers to the fact that every computer exhibited in the museum is fully functional.
2 The MusIF is one of the oldest member institutions of the IT history Society http://ithistory.org/membership/institutions.php
3 DECnet is an ancient network protocol developed by Digital E.C. and used for PDP-11 computers and VAX VMS systems. Node list: http://decnet.ipv7.net/nodetab-en.html