www.digitalheritage.de

A place dedicated to historical computing
and the preservation of digital computers





              If you :
  • are a classic computing enthusiast, searching for similar systems, information on these and/or looking for pictures and configurations
  • recently got interested in classic computers and were wondering, what kind of systems were built before today's computers during the last 40 years
  • own harddisks, you don't know anything about as they seem old and/or unusual, they don't have "reasonable stickers" on them, or seem weird to you as they have strange connectors
  • want to learn a little bit about the varity of disk drives which existed in the past, about the history of the disk drive manufacturing companys and their drives
                             then you're invited to visit my site!
                             Have a look at my collection of classic computers, computer peripherals and hard disk drives!



Merely any technological progress has been as fast as the progress in computer science. Computers have been making so many things possible since their introduction. Just think about the space conquest or the Internet. Today, life without computer support is difficult to imagine. Although computer development started off  more than 50 years ago, during which many machines with different approaches and architectures had been invented, today, a lot of people (especially the young among us) barely know of computers before the Microsoft/ Intel x86 era. Even computer systems based on other architectures than Intel x86, which date from the last 10 years, are often worth being mentioned to show that there are other successful and interesting approaches.

Today's computers owe much to their ancestors in terms of architectural development! Unfortunately, a lot of systems were thrown away and scrapped when they became obsolete. The larger physical size and recycling of valuable materials obviously played an important role.
Nowadays, computer museums spread all over the world try to rescue ancient systems which often were important from a historical point of view. In addition to the museums, many private enthusiasts do a great job in saving and preserving old computers. Lots of collectors try to bring these computers back to life if they aren't in working condition due to bad storage conditions, mishandling, material aging, or having been disassembled in order to obtain spare parts.




I have decided to split the presentation of  my collection into three parts: The computer collection, a peripherals exhibition and the hard disk drive collection.

The computer collection contains Mini - and Microcomputers.
My largest machines are from Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), Silicon Graphics (SGI) and IBM. The other systems amongst others are from companys such as SUN Microsystems, Hewlett Packard (HP), ONYX, Zilog and Cobalt. You can find information about them; their configuration, the specs, their history if known, as well as photos.









Peripherals are a crucial part of a computer system as they are the devices used for input or output of information to or from a computer, respectively. The peripherals section was added recently and shall cover magnetic tape and disk drives (fixed and removable ones) as well as paper tape and punched card systems











My hard disk drive collection currently contains over 800 disk drives, there's a bit of everything between 14" and 1" drives.
The online exhibition will additionally contain drives which are not in the collection. It's supposed to become a continuously growing database with the idea of showing all kind of different disk drives built since the invention of the Hard Disk Drive by IBM in the fifties.
Information found in the database contains their history, if they belong to my collection, some specifications, and, what's important to me, photos of each drive, so that people can identify drives they have but seem unknown to them.



Enter the Hard disk - Nirvana
(not up yet, under construction)

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D|I|G|I|T|A|L

VAX 4000-300

running openVMS


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