COMPUTARIUM LCD

NEWS 2015-2011 2010-2007

25-Mar-24	M. Constant RATHS donated an OLYMPIA CPA 1200 priniting calculator (1975) and a COMPAQ ARMADA E500 laptop, both in mint condition. The E500 was one of the first laptops introduced in 2002 at the "one computer for each student" project at the Lycée Aline Mayrisch in Luxembourg, where M. Raths was assistant-director when he managed this huge project. You may read his article (in German) on this project here. Many thanks!
23 Mar 24	The huge report on the Python Cross-Compiler for the HP-65 created by Claude Baumann is now available. See the WORKS section for more details or click here. There is a HP65 emulator for Windows here. and a marvelous vintage training video here.

07 Mar 24	The Computarium auctioned on eBAY a nice HP65, with working card reader, new battery and an USB charging system: We (Claude Baumann and myself) plan an conference on the 50th anniversary of this first programmable pocket calculator, so that some working HP65's come handy for presentation.
06 Mar 24	Claude Baumann and I are working on a big HP65 50th anniversary project (which will remain in the dark for the moment...). Our only HP65 so far was donated by the late Jean Mootz, and it has some problems with several registers; this is a un-repairable CPU-board problem, possibly caused by using the HP65 on a charger without its battery-pack. Tony NIXON from Australia donated to the Computarium a replacement CPU board that he designed. The swap between the original (upper yellow board) and Tony's board (below) was easy, and the HP65 now works fine (except some remaining problems with the magnetic card reader). Many thanks to Tony, and look at his wonderful and unique website https://www.teenix.org which is a treasure-cove on vintage HP calculators and emulators
04 Mar 24	M. Angelos Ypsilantis, the ambassador of Greece in Luxembourg, donated 2 vintage IBM Selectric correcting typewriters and an original IBM TFT monitor. One of the Selectric's is in pristine condition, almost like new (see pictures below); the second needs some more efforts. Many thanks!
22 Feb 24	André Schwarz is a prolific writer of excellent biographies of scientists. He published in the WARTE of the Luxemburger Wort an article on Nikolaus WIRTH, the father of the PASCAL programming language, among others. The article (in German) has a picture of one of the Computarium's BBC model B microcomputers running OXFORD PASCAL. Link.
23 Dec 23	Raoul Tholl, a regular collaborator to the Computarium (for instance he helped to restore the Heathkit EC1 Analog Computer) is a restorer of vintage radios extraordinaire.. An article (in German) by him on the restoration of a "3 Generation" Radio has been published in the Funkgeschichte periodical. Click here for a link to the article (in .zip form due to editorial reasons), and here for his website www.vintageradio.lu.
04 Dec 23	Georges Mathgen, a contributor and a good friend, passed away the 1st December 2023. He was a friend of Jean Mootz, and we met many years ago when I visited Jean in his caring house, and became also friends..Georges was a very good engineer, a radio amateur, and a computer user since the days of Apple II. I add a picture from his last visit in 2019 in the Computarium, where we made his old Apple II run a very complicated program of thermal calculations that Georges wrote years ago. He will be badly missed.
03 Nov 23	A short lab report on the restoration of a vintage 1925 Burroughs Class 5 key punch calculator (by Francis Massen). See literature section, "Papers by Computarium crew members".
31 Oct 23	Our Labview specialist by excellence Claude Baumann wrote a new lab report with new original G-Code generation developments to solve complex and hard problems when using a CNC drill or laser cutter machine. The title is: Development of a Labview G-Code generation program for 2.5D CNC contour offset toolpaths. You find it in the literature section, "Papers by Computarium crew members".
09 Oct 23	The obituary for Robert MASSEN is now online. Thx to Claude Baumann and Florence Massen for proofreading and suggestions.
08 Oct 23	1. Our contributor Laurent EICHER donated a Olivetti Summa 15 printing calculator from ~1950: it only needed a bit of cleaning and a new ribbon and works now flawlessly. Many thx! 2. The Computarium acquired a THAT analog computer; this is a new development by the Anabrid company founded by Dr. Bernd ULMANN,the* German specialist in analog computers. See the WORKS section for a first image!
09 Sep 23	Sad news: our contributor Robert Massen (my twin brother), passed away the 1st September 2023, after many years of bad health which he endured with stoicism. An obituary will follow asap....
20 Jul 23	Our infatigable member Claude Baumann has written a large 34 pages report on the 25th anniversary of the Lego RCX microcontroller, which was the masterpiece of it Mindstorm series . See here! The link to the papers of Claude and other Computarium members is: https://computarium.lcd.lu/literature/COMPUTARIUM_CREW/index.html
29 Jun 23	Two contributors donated vintage equipment: Marcel Baumann a Burroughs "P" mechanical printing adder from 1953 ( see works section) Yves Schintgen an ATARI Portfolio (with DIP = DOS variant) and ARCHOS 101 tablet. Many thanks!
18 May 23	A House of Arts etc... The album of the 29 April 2023 event is here.
15 May 23	New short 2 minute video on our Retro Jukebox (YouTube)
10 May 23	The Computarium participated with two workshops to the 2023 LCD Science Deeg. We had an ABACUS workshop (managed by C. du Fays) and a Brunsviga calculator workshop (F. Massen). 7 students of the 4C2 class of the LCD were trained to hold these workshops during the day. The public were children from the 6th (= last) year of primary (= elementary) school; each workshop lasted 30 minutes, and had groups of 7 children. See album!.
29 Apr 23	1: a 7 person group of former students who finished their highschool (Lycée de Garçons Luxembourg) more than 50 years ago visited the Computarium. Among them was Roger Meyrath (at the right of the picture), one of the pioneers introducing computing in Luxembourg's secondary schools. Florence and Francis Massen were the guides (photo by G. Tescher). G. Tescher from the group made a few short videos of running electromechanical machines, see one here swing a division (355/113) made on the Mercedes Euklid. 2: In the late evening started the big happening "A House of Words, Arts and Music" in the LCD, at which the Computarium participated. Look at the exhibitions page for more.
16 Mar 23	Mr. E. Lacoste donated a nice TI-30 scientific calculator form 1976. The machine had a few problems that were easy to "repair". Look here for an album and here for a very short video.
03 Feb 23	1. A group of 10 former ETZ (University of Zürich, CH) visited the Computarium. Among them Jos Lahr who introduced the first computer (a HP2100A mini-computer, exposed in our collection ) in a Luxembourg school (the "Technikum") in 1970, and Théo Duhautpas, who taught telecommunications at the same school. Both gave explanations about their former contributions to the Computarium (HP2100, Codex modem system). This visit was a very agreeable one, as all these engineers were familiar with many of our vintage computers. Jos Lahr with F. Massen in front of the HP2100A, and the group being shown ferrit-core memories (photos by C. Raths). 2. Jos Lahr donated a chinese abacus and 4 original paper tapes of the HP2100A, among them the Educational Basic which I used with my students in the 70's. Constant Raths donated an HP iPAQ (a Pocket PC) in excellent condition. Many thanks to these contributors.
18 Jan 23	Click here for the video made by Diekirch TV in the Computarium. Look here for the full Diekirch TV report, first on air the 16 January 2023.
16 Jan 23	The crew from Diekirch TV, Mme Sandie Lahure and camera-man Xavier Deschamps, made a shooting using the Computarium as the "studio". The recording will soon be aired; you will be informed here.
22 Dec 22	New album on the LINUTOP nano-computers, which were used in the "INFOSCREENS" project of the LCD. This was an early digital signage project developed by Marcel Kramer (software) and Francis Massen (hardware), using many large flat TV's in different locations and buildings to display individual or collective common information. Start was in April 2007.
05 Dec 22	Mme Sandie LAHURE, the communications manager of the town of Diekirch, visited with her camera-man the Computarium for two hours. The aim was to make interviews and pictures of the exhibits; the video will be broadcast on the intra-town TV channel ("Infokanal") of Diekirch. When available, a copy will be posted on this website.
09 Nov 22	M. Raoul THOLL visited the Computarium with 6 of his students from the two upper classes of the LTPS Ettelbruck (Lycée Technique pour les Professions de la Santé). They made some steps on manipulating sliding rods calculators, created a short punched tape on our "new" vintage ASR-32 Telex machine, saw big mechanical calculators humming and our PDP-8 launching a Focal program. M. Tholl is physics professor at the LTPS (Ettelbruck), head of the physics department, a regular helper at meteoLCD and also at the Computarium (he helped repairing our Heathkit analog computer where his skills as a restorer of vintage radios were invaluable).
01 Nov 22	M. Freddy THYES donated several items to the Computarium: an Apple Powerbook 520c and Newton110, several PDA's and a miniature Philips Color TV from 1990. Many thanks!
20 Oct 22	M. Christophe PONSARD, a teacher at the University of Namur (Belgium), researcher on Computing and Security in Informatics and a member of the steering comity of the NAM-IP computer museum, visited the Computarium this morning. NAM-IP is a very interesting museum with a lot of big Bull equipment, a special boot of the Maredsous abbey whose fathers were pioneers in using IBM storage technology in their biblical research etc... This was a very agreeable visit by an expert in computer restoration.
24 Jul 22	This is a very sad day for the Computarium. Our contributor and friend Guy Schintgen passed away today, after a long battle against the consequences of several strokes. Guy donated (among other items) the DEC PDP-11/34 that is now exposed close to our main cabinet. Guy was one of the pillars of the GSL, the Luxembourg caving (= speleological) group. Without his help and expertise, the research project Phymoes on underground climatology, at the start of the 90's, would not have been possible. He was an electrical engineer, an expert in overvoltage and lightning protection systems, and he also helped to build the meteoLCD infrastructure. Guy will be badly missed by all of us, lucky to have had such a good friend! The picture shows Guy (top row, in red protection suite) near the entrance of the Moestroff maze cave, close to the end of project Phymoes, with most of the members of the research crew..
06 Jul 22	Our contributor Thé JACOBY donated a whole bunch of vintage software in their original packaging, with games, photo-editing, dBase and accounting stuff and much more. Many thanks!
05 Jul 22	Claude BLASEN (retired math.teacher) and Marc BERNARD (retired chemist and former LCD student) visited the Computarium. Claude Blasen donated an ATARI 1040SFT in mint condition, with Monitor, printer, docs etc. Many thanks! The two visitors passed the sliding rod calculator tests with flying colors!
06-10 Jun 22	1. The DEC PDP-11/34 has now its definitve resting place near the big cabinet. 2. Restoration of a DEC VT180 system and album. For both items see WORKS page.
08 May 22	1. Nico Beckerich donated several items to the Computarium, among them an Atari Portfolio (1989) and a Texas Instrument SR-56 (1976), all in mint condition. Many thx! 2. I added to the PDF section of the library two reports written in French: one by me (MASSEN Francis, Les pionniers de l'informatique..., 2005) and another, much larger by REEF Monique (L'introduction de l'Informatique..., 2002). Both may be of interest for historical reasons!
21 Jan 22	Our contributor Guy Schintgen donated a DEC PDP11/34 system from ~1981 which was used in the 80's in his business CITO Luxembourg. The rack has the CPU and two RL02 hard disk drives. Also a VT52 terminal and DECwriter II. Many thanks! Our contributor Jean Wagner and I made the bulky transport today; the heaviest by far is the CPU, which has a wire-wrapped motherboard.
19 Jan 22	M. Marco Barnig, one of the pioneers of microcomputing in Luxembourg, and a former asssistant of the ETHZ donated quite a lot of material, among them several projects built at the ETHZ: an IBM Selectric modified to be driven by a text processor box, a special built 6800 system witha display on an oscilloscope, an electronic mill game, several Minitels ... Many thx! You might visit his website "www.web3.lu" which contains may articles on the history of computing in Luxembourg.
11 Dec 21	The paper Handling Vintage Media (Francis Massen) has been updated, and can be found in the literature section "papers by Computarium crew members".
23 Nov 21	The section 3 (mini- and microcomputers) of the virtual museum has been updated, with the addition of Motorola Exorciser II, HP 9826A, Iomega Z100USB and Z250USB. Also a new version (version 10) of the iSpring Converter has been used, which seems to be much faster...The HTML5 version of the virtual museum also displays very well on your smartphone, with a correct scaling of the pages.
19 Nov 21	M. Fernand Steffen, a colleague and former teacher of the LCD, donated two USB ZIP drives which are in excellent order. They come handy to ease the job of saving old digital media, as these ZIP drives still work with all modern systems without special driver software. Many thanks!
11 Nov 21	Mr. Marcel Origer, a former student of our lycée, and also a follower of my first BASIC programming course held in 1974 at the LCD, visited with 5 colleagues, all retired engineers, scientists or computing people, the Computarium (and also the meteorological station). It was a very agreeable group to show our facilities, as many of the exhibits were familiar to them.
06 Nov 21	The AALCD (Amicale des Anciens du LCD = association of former LCD students) allowed the Computarium to auction a rare HP9825A computer (1981, Motorola 68000 uP) in the USA and pay for the acquisition and (expensive) mailing costs. The computer is inside in a pristine state, with all boards nearly shining like new. There was no software included at all, but with the help of other people I managed to make it boot into Basic 5.1. See more in the WORKS section! Many thanks for the AALCD, which is a reliable and long-time financial contributor to the Computarium!
18 Oct 21	M. Gusty FEINEN donated a SONY laserdisc (CVRdisc) from the 90's. This ca. 30cm diameter optical disc of the WORM (Write Once Read Many) category had a capacity of 24 minutes analogue video per side (yes, it was a disk storing an analogue video signal!) and was in use at RTL.The audio part was somehow digital (PWM).
11 Oct 21	Gilbert Maurer donated a very nice HP85A, together with its sturdy carrying case, and several CASIO Digital Diaries, not all in working order. Look in the WORKS section for some images on trying to repair the HP85A. Many thx!
10 Oct 21	An extensive article on the history of the Computarium by Francis Massen is published in the 2021 Millésime year-book of the Lycée classique Diekirch. Click here for the PDF version.
07 Oct 21	The Promotion 1976 of the chemistry faculty of the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium) visited the Computarium; guides were Jean-Claude Krack (himself a member of that Promotion) and Francis Massen. One participant was Dr. Yves Leduc (a Texas Instrument fellow), who contributed developing the filters used inside the world first minidisc player (the SONY MZ-1), of which the Computarium has a working specimen.
01 Jul 21	M. Felix Hansen, a contributor of the Computarium, found an old Mercedes-Euklid M21 electromechanical calculator in a pawn shop, and made the buy for the Computarium. The machine is a 110 VAC model from 1939, and against all odds it worked at perfection. After some really needed cleaning, I a made a short video showing how to do a quick division ("Kurz-Division") on this type of machine.
22 Jun 21	Today the last group of the 6ième visited the Computarium; similar to the first there was a great enjoyment and many giggles learning to operate the vintage sliding rod calculators ("Zahlenschieber"). Click on the picture for an 8 second video!
16 Jun 21	Yesterday and today two groups of our students visited the Computarium. Yesterday 12 students from a 6ième of Prof. Claude Hansen, and today 7 students who under the guidance of Prof. Tom Scheer, were the first Luxembourg students team admitted to the Benelux First Lego League (look at RTL video here), and there won a first price in robotics and programming.
20 Apr 21	Section 6 is mostly done, including now the second and last part of Western and other non-Eastern block chips. For the moment, this section will stop at the 486 family (or equivalent). The Western and al. chips will be displayed in a show case similar to the Soviet clones. Note that only chips that we have in our collection as individual items (i.e. not built-in in machinery) are in this section. Section 6 is not meant to be a database of all what existed in the world; there are quite a few good websites specialized in this, and I added numerous links to these.
12 Apr 21	A new section 6 has been added to the virtual museum. It shows our collection of vintage microprocessors and some support chips. I started with (mostly) cloned microprocessors and chips from the Soviet and Eastern Block (donated by Carlo Mullesch.).This new section is in English.
29 Mar 21	Look at the "WORKS" section for the new report by Claude Baumann on the restoration of a Colinbus profiler (CNC machine)
24 Mar 21	We received quite a lot of material during the last weeks, and I am very busy verifying, repairing and learning about these items. M. Gérard Franzen (who is a regular contributor) donated several PLC's (Programmable Logic Controllers, SPS in German): models from the Mitsubishi Melsec line, and others from the Kloeckner-Moeller brand. All are working, but I have some problems with missing software (as the Moeller Sucosoft S30 for the PS4-100), or software that seems not to be working (Meltec, DOS version for the Mitsubishi). The Kloeckner-Moeller PS4-151-MM1 shown on the picture now works fine, after a silly serial communication problem has been solved. M. Paul Kinarian (a former LCD student, and also a student of my BASIC course in the 1970's) donated a SHARP PC-1211 (which I sold him during these years!), a Commodore C16 and C64, the floppy drive 1541 and a little BW monitor. All items are now working, except the 1541. Many thx to these contributors, and sorry if these thanks took so long before being published!
06 Feb 21	The 3rd section of the virtual museum ("mini- et micro-ordinateurs") as been updated; I have added (among others) quite a lot of pages with our core memories collection, which was not present in the virtual museum.
22 Jan 21	Carlo Mullesch donated a very rare module from a 195x analog computer by GAP/R (George A. Philbrick Research). It is labeled "Character Recognition Unit", and even the best German specialist on analog computers (Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulmann) has no specific information on this unit. Click here for an album.
02 Jan 21	Look here for the Computarium's Happy New Year video (YouTube, 3 minutes with muzik, shortened version made the 05Jan))
07 Oct 20	1. We made the second and last trip to Mr. Mullesch, this time with J-Cl's car and a large trailer. We put everything in our metal boxes, so this action was much more professional than the first one. 2. Our member Claude Baumann donated a rare CASIO AS-L electronic desktop calculator from 1972; this machine has 4 LSI chips which do the job of a microprocessor. Display is 12 small Nixie tubes. The tubes lighten up, but the machine is not working. Many thanks to all these contributors!

28 Sep 20	M. Carlo Mullesch donated a major part of his collection to the Computarium. J-Cl. Krack and myself made the first transport today. On the picture you may see a very rare ELBIT 100 computer from Israel, a Heatkit analog computer, a PDP-8/L, A Decmate 350, a Teletype and miscellaneous other material. A great many thanks!
28 May 20	I was able to auction at eBAY a very nice SHARP PC-7000 laptop from 1985. It has a 8086 uP + 8087 arithmetic coprocessor. No hard disk, but two 5.25 360kB floppy disks, which are a bit unique in the world: they have a single spindle motor, and the two read/write heads move on the same axis, but evidently driven by 2 separate stepper motors (look this YouTube movie for more details). The screen is an LCD, rather difficult to read. I did some needed cleaning inside, and this sexy laptop runs like a charm on MSDOS 6.0
18 May 20	The Computarium acquired at eBAY a rare SONY MZ-1 MD Walkman; this is the first minidisc player on the market. It was un-operational, but I was lucky to cure the mechanical problems, and it works now like a charm. Click here for a short album. The MD is tightly interwoven with Luxembourg, as the government pushed TDK into building one of the only 3 MD making factories in the world. Alas, it was not a commercial success!
28 Apr 20	M. Louis REINARD donated an original package of the BeOS, an OS developed by Jean-Louis Gassée and which lost against Steve Job's NEXTSTEP in 1996 as the future MacOS. This is the professional version R5.01 from 2000; in 2001 Be.Inc, the company behind BeOS, shut down. Today there is a revival with the open-source HAIKU OS, which is partially compatible with BeOS, and written as the former in C++. I installed BeOS on a vintage MAXDATA laptop, and it runs like a charm (in black and white, as BeOS does not recognize the graphics card of the laptop). Well, contributing to the charm is a supplementary CD with application software, some of which seems very buggy (eg. the BeMath package). If you look carefully at the screen with the clock, you may see that the date of the year is 2010. This is the highest number that BeOS accepts, increasing it brings you back to 1965. How remarkable that a Silicon-Valley company had such a short outlook into the future!
17 Apr 20	Patrick WAGNER donated two HTC Qtek9090 Pocket PC's from 2004; one is a French model with Azerty keyboard, the other an English Querty model. Both are in mint condition, except for the internal battery. The French model is complete with charger, USB cable, manual, etc... These machines have Windows Mobile 2003 as OS; a system that is defunct and mostly forgotten, and an example that big companies are not always successful with a new product. Many thanks!
07 Mar 20	Today we made what is surely the most difficult material transport in the Computarium's history. Mr. Patrick and Robert Muller donated a vintage IBM System/32 computer system which was used at the AP Kieffer Company in the 70's and 80's for calculating the salaries and misc. office work (look here for a picture of a System/32 of the same color). The beast weights probably more than 200kg and it stood at the 2nd floor of a house. This floor is only accessible by a winding staircase. We had to painfully remove most of the items (power supply, "giant" hard disk, 8" floppy, printer, enclosures etc.), just to be able to move the super-heavy cabinet. Florence and Ronny Heinz-Massen helped, and at 5 people working together we were able to put the nearly bare cabinet in a Renault Scenic car and the pieces in another car. Look at the pictures for the computer upright after descent of the staircase (height is close to 2m), and deposited at the storage room of the Computarium. The last picture shows the beautiful technicians panel, used to check everything, find problems and aid making repairs. Reassembling will probably be a nerve-cracking job, and I want not to rush into it too fast. We plan to expose the computer near our main magenta show cases at the LCD. Many thanks to Mr. Patrick and Robert Muller for this exceptional donation, and for their invaluable help in dismounting the system..
05 Mar 20	Today was a second trip to M. J.Wagner's (former director of LUXCAD) collection, and we needed two cars to bring everything to the Computarium: many Compaq comuters (that were not yet in our collection), software (most in original package) and a hell of a lot of miscellaneous ware, like plotter pens and paper, electronic stuff etc... A last trip will be made asap to finish this donation, about which we are very thankful.
12 Feb 20	Here is a short album of the PDP-8/A on its rolling table, with the VT100 on top. Everything now works fine!
09 Feb 20	Many years ago we received a DEC PDP8/a minicomputer ( introduced in 1965) which was used at the pumping station of Koerich ("Syndicat des Eaux"), and at EOL put down in the basement, which was dark and very humid. The machine was in a horrible state, and I had resigned considering it non-repairable. Two years ago M. Marco Rauhut visited with is wife the Computarium, and saw the cadaver lying in the attic. Mr. Rauhut is one of the very few people in Europe which are able to repair DEC machines, what he has done several times in the past. He took our PDP8/a home, and yesterday came back with a running machine (16K*12bit core memory). Bringing this very rare beast again to life is quite an achievement, and the Computarium is extremely grateful for his work. We are able to run FOCAL (an interpreted language, with some similarities to the later coming BASIC), and use as terminal a vintage DEC VT100 from the same period (right on the picture, with the Focal Programming Guide). The machine must be booted by a series of manual switches, and then a longer boot loader is loaded through a serial communication (using a separate laptop).
31 Jan 20	1. The section 4 (laptops, PDA....) of the virtual museum has been updated (4 items added) 2. The Computarium has now its nano-GIFTSHOP: 4 products are available to buy for visitors (sorry, no sending, no on-line order).
26 Jan 20	I found today on a flea-market a vintage Sharp PC-E220 pocket computer, which is in mint condition and works fine. It is programmable in BASIC and Z80 Assembler, has a library of mathematical and statistical functions, and can communicate through a serial line (but I do not have the proprietary cable CT-801). It is quite a beast!
15 Jan 20	M. Jean Wagner, the former director of the LUXCAD company, donated several material to the Computarium (this is an ongoing action!). The largest and heaviest item is the FSC 6050 Magnum colour scanner ( A0+ format, year 2001) from the Danish company CONTEX (which in past times also built (electro-)mechanical calculators (some of these are in our collection). Many thanks!
14 Jan 20	M. Felix Hansen donated two (identical) circular slide-rules that were used at the Ewald Giebel factory in Dudelange (Luxembourg) to calculate weight and other factors of steel coils. E. Giebel was a factory specializing in electrolytic zinc plating of large steel coils (more on E. Giebel here). Many thanks!
02 Jan 20	M. Patrick Wagner (a retired teacher of the Lycée Technique Hôtelier Alexis Heck in Diekirch) donated a PSION Series_3 organizer with the spreadsheet module. The organizer is in mint condition, only needs a new CR1620 backup cell. Many thanks!
31 Dec 19	On this last day of the year I made a quick and short video of the Telic Minitel (shown below) playing some Videotex pages. Look at YouTube here.
29 Dec 19	Annette RAMEL et Odile BEAU donated two Minitel's to the Computarium (Annie et Jacques Ramel made the logistics); both are in working condition and are models not yet in our collection. The first picture shows a Minitel1 (Telic-Alcatel) with a hinged keyboard, the second a Minitel1 M\|A (Matra Communications) with a fixed keyboard and the "loupe" key to double the size of the displayed characters. Both are from 1986 and have the 5pin DIN connector which allows us to connect to a Videotex player. Many thanks!
21 Dec 19	Our member Claude Baumann donated a rare test model of the RXC 1.0 LEGO microcontroller, introduced for LEGO Mindstorms in 1998. This "unofficial" test-model has a (serial?) DB9 connector, the standard RCX communicates by IR (infra-red). The controller is based on the Hitach H8 8bit microcontroller. Claude is quite a specialist of the RCX, having written a compiler, the first virus-demo and in 2013 a book "Eureka! Problem Solving with LEGO Robotics" (ISBN: 978-1-934891-13-1, link). Many thanks!
12 Dec 19	1. Claude Hansen, an LCD teacher in natural sciences and computing, has joined the Computarium crew. A hearty welcome! 2. Young students (ages about 13-14) from a class of 6ième (the second class in our gymnasium) visited the Computarium in two groups (5th and 12th December); guides were Francis Massen and Claude Hansen. Each visit took about 2 hours, and the students liked the many hands-on experiences.
30 Nov 19	A Minitel 1 from 1985 has been transformed by adding inside its case everything what's needed to make a stand-alone Videotex player: powering the Minitel up starts a slideshow of new and vintage Minitel pages. See album.
25 Nov 19	Joel Francois (the head of our computing department) donated a TRS-80 Model 1 computer from 1977 (the original 16 KB model, was his father's 1st computer), together with the original video monitor. Many thanks! (the monitor is in mint condition, the computer needed a repair: a 2102 (1Kbit) video Ram chip was defunct).
22 Nov 19	A group of 4 members of the crew organizing ESCH_2022 visited the Computarium. Guiding was by Jean-Claude Krack and Francis MASSEN.
15 Oct 19	The Computarium acquired a digital planimeter (a TAMAYA Planix 7) to complement the collection of vintage integrators. This digital device (probably from 2008) is not yet historic, but it is a fine item to show the progression from mechanical to electronic planimeters. The device works and looks like new.
12 Jul 19	1. Work on the virtual museum during the last days. I migrated the "communications" section from chapter 3e ("calculettes...") to chapter 3c ("mini- et micro-ordinateurs..."). Started with adding modems, minitels and several new or older computers of the collection that had not yet found their way into the virtual museum. Chapter 3c now holds 211 items. 2. Work on the roof continues, but the slates are not yet laid down. During the last thunderstorm some drops of rain found their way into the Computarium's office. Most material is wrapped in plastic to avoid damage during the work. 3.M. Marco Rauhut (a German specialist in the restoration of vintage DEC computers) has restored our DEC PDP8a which was in what I thought a hopeless state, with nearly everything damaged by humidity and its storage in a humid basement. During the next fall we will meet and see how to integrate the machine into our exhibition.
18 Jun 19	M. Felix Hansen, a retired engineer, donated PLC material from AEG-Modicon: a big A350 mounted in a rack (seen on the picture below the laptop ), 2 micro Modicon A120, one seen above the laptop (all from the early 1990's ), a Compaq Presario running AKSoft and a huge package of documentation. I added one of the two A120's to the rack, together with a support for a laptop and power connections. The rack has 4 rolls and is easy to move. A first test shows the equipment to work, but some time will be spend learning the programming (which is similar to the Simatic 5). Many thanks!
12 Jun 19	1. Work on the roof of the attic holding the Computarium collection has begun. It is a major work, adding thermal insulation and new slates. 2. We acquired an Olivetti L1 M20 (1982) microcomputer in mint condition. The OS is an italian speciality called PCOS, not compatible with the usual MSDOS or IBMDOS. The microprocessor is a rather uncommon Z8001.
16 May 19	We acquired a rare Sharp MZ-40K microcomputer from 1978. This "didactic" computer was sold as a kit to learn machine code programming. The uP is a rare MB-884, a 4bit model from Fujitsu. The board is in working order except key 0 which does not respond (even if it makes correct contact). Power supply is about 11 VAC; I salvaged a 8.8 VAC power supply which also works fine (tests were also made with a 11 VAC transformer). There are a few supplementary items like switch, reed-switch, water-level switch to be used as triggers to launch dedicated programs. The uP holds 1 kb ROM, and RAM is 512 words à 4 bits (256 bytes). Some very primitive music software is in ROM.
15 May 19	Today we had the LCD Sciences Déeg with more than 200 children from the neighboring primary schools spending time (from 09:00 to 15:30) at the LCD at several of the 15 workshops held by our more senior students. The Computarium participated with 2 workshops, one on using sliding cross calculators (all Maximators), and the other on calculating with Brunsviga 13RZK pinwheel machines. Claude du Fays and Francis Massen made the training of our 8 students from the section II B (=second-last year of the lyceum, mathematical section), who excelled as animators guiding the children into the world of mechanical calculation (see album).
04 May 19	M. Vic KOLB donated quite a lot of material, that Florence and I were fetching at Dudelange today. All these calculators were in use at the ARBED Dudelange steelwork (later Arcelor-Mittal). Among the mechanical calculators the most remarkable are a Comptometer 3D11 that I am repairing (mostly cleaning and making recalcitrant keys working) and a electromechanical MADAS from Egli, Zürich. Look at the bay of my Jeep and at the Comptometer in the works. Many thanks for this generous contribution!
30 Apr 19	We received two nice machines: 1. B&C. TEHEUX donated a 6 language Tandy EC-500 translator in mint condition; device is probably from 1995. 2. Our member Claude du FAYS donated a Oregon Scientific Accelerator Power Desktop (what a name!) which is not a real laptop, but a childrens game station and educational tool, with 11 chapters of different activities. This vintage approx. 2003 "computer" also runs like a charm. Many thanks!
11 Apr 19	Quite a lot of news: 1. the roof above the Computarium will be rebuilt with a better insulation, so we had to wrap everything delicate into a Christo-like wrapping, waiting for the works to start and end! 2. Robert Maquil donated quite a lot of material, among them 2 HP calculators (HP21 and HP32E) that I modified to run on normal AA cells (the rechargeable batteries were beyond any hope of salvation). 3. Pierre Kuborn donated a rare Burroughs C3300 desktop calculator from 1969, not quite in working order but not dead either (the calculator was used by the company Couleurs Gérard (Gérard Frères), founded in 1843 (!) and famous in Luxembourg for its good colors for painting . This machine (actually a Sharp CS-32 made by Hayakawa in Japan) is quite a beast: core memory, discrete transistor-diode logic (317 transistors and 1200 diodes!) to make the NOR gates used for binary operations, and 16 Nixie tubes (one is dead). A tentative restoration will be attempted asap. More here. Many thanks to all these contributors, which keep the Computarium expanding!
17 Dec 18	Our member Colette HEIRENDT, the spouse of Francis Massen, passed away today. Read obituary here.
26 Nov 18	The microcomputer and pocket calculator sections of the virtual museum have been updated.
09 Oct 18	The old crumbling Velux windows in our attic will be replaced in November, so much of the material has to be displaced temporarily away. A group of three (Claude du Fays, Men Krack and Francis Massen) did heavy work this morning in moving material and putting up dust-protection plastic sheets. Picture shows Claude and Men. More pictures here, here and here.
01 Oct 18	M. Paul Kunsch, owner of the "de Schweespunkt"company, donated a very rare vintage NORTHSTAR Horizon system to the Computarium. This is a~1979 business system (using the S-100 bus) with a Z80 based cabinet holding two 5.25" floppy disks (using hard-sectored diskettes) and running CP/M 2.2. The system which was put aside more than 20 years ago seems to be in good condition, but must be tested asap. Many thanks!
01 Sep 18	Our vintage Lego robot GASTON (which was built by Claude Baumann and a group of students of the Convict many years ago and uses two RCX controllers) was invited to the 20th anniversary of Lego Mindstorms. This is a special exhibition held at the LEGO HOUSE in Billund, Denmark. GASTON, we are very proud of you! Look here for many timeline photos.
24 Aug 18	M. Will FEIDER donated a vintage Toshiba 420CDT laptop (1996, Satellite Pro line)) which is mounted in a carrying case also containing a Canon BJ-30 inkjet printer and all connections.. The system was used by agents of the large Luxembourg insurance company Le Foyer when visiting clients or working from home. The operating system is OS/2 3.0 Warp, and this is the only laptop in our collection running OS/2. The whole system is in mint condition. Many thanks!
07 Aug 18	1. Our member Claude Baumann donated two vintage calculators from the 70's: a TEL Elektron Mark1 (1973) and a UniMark 805T (1975). Both machines are in working order and have beautiful VFD displays. Many thx! 2. Most sections of the virtual museum have been updated, Remember, this is an never-ending process!
13 Jul 18	Update of the first section of the virtual museum. Added two mechanical calculators and 3 mathematical instruments (integrators).
12 Jul 18	We got quite a lot of new material during the last weeks: 1. I auctioned a very nice Rheinmetall KEW IIc electromechanical calculator from 1953, which is in mint condition. Division is semi-automatic by the "Stop-Division" method where continues subtraction stops automatically when result goes into negative. 2. A second auction yielded a Lagomarsino Numeria 7101 mechanical calculator from 1956, also in excellent condition. 3. Our artists from the "4-Stack" donated several nice Sony Trinitron monitors (see 3rd photo) as well as several of their vintage Mac's (G3 and G5), all in excellent condition. 5. M. Bruno Prémont donated three pocket calculators from the 70's. Many thanks to all our contributors, which help the Computarium ticking!
15 Jun 18	A group of 17 "students" who passed their final examen of secondary education at the LGL (Lycée de Garçon de Luxembourg) in 1968 visited the Computarium. Guy Greisen, a former mathematics teacher and a colleague from the caving group (Groupe Spéléologique Luxembougeois) had organized this visit to give their 50 years anniversary a certain touch. Claude du Fays, Claude Boes and Francis Massen were the guides for a 2 hour tour, with some practical exercices to freshen up the minds. Feelings were very good!
01 May 18	Colette Heirendt and myself finalized and installed the "Braille Printing Station" in the Computarium. A vintage Maxdata laptop running XPPro allows to show how blind people work with Windows using speaker software (here NDVA); text may be printed as Braille by the WinBraille software. The heavy and noisy printer in the soundproof cabinet is the Index Everest V2 model from ~2000.
24 Apr 18	1. We received today a very exciting Linear Planimeter ("Rollen-Planimeter") built by the famous mathematical instrument maker A.OTT in Kempten, Allgäu. The heavy instrument (probably from the early 70s) is in mint condition: it allows to calculate the definitive integral (=surface) of any closed curve. Compared to the Polar-Planimeter, this instrument allows to contour much larger surfaces. 2. Gilbert Maurer donated a OLYMPIA AE8 printing electro-mechanical calculator, probably from 1966. Some cleaning and filing (!) brought back the machine into new life. Many thx!
20 Apr 18	1. New album on our visit of the TOP SECRET exhibition at the Mundaneum, Mons, Belgium. 2. The Computarium acquired a nice TANDY TRS80-II computer from 1982. This is a professional computer running TRS-DOS on a 8" floppy drive. It is in good condition, but I still have to read the manual...
30 Mar 18	We received two special computer related items for blind people from M. Claude Streitz, one of the visitors in October 2017 of the group of blind people: a Index Braille Everest embosser (upper picture) and a Tieman Voyager Braille keyboard (lower picture). Both are in mint condition and are in test. Look here for a print-out of the embosser and here for a close-up of the Braille keyboard matrix. Many thanks!
27 Mar 18	We had the training session with the students from the IIIB class for the upcoming LCD Science Déeg in May. Claude du Fays, Marc Lavina and Francis Massen showed how to calculatate with an chinese abacus or how to play the different levels of the original SOKOBAN game.
20 Feb 18	I auctioned a Teleprint TTY (actually a ASR33 by TTY, UK model), and Colette Heirendt and myself drove to Nordheim (near Heilbronn, Germany) to pick it up. The TTY is in good condition (counter shows only 85 working hours) but as had to be expected, does not function completely without problems. So there will be some restoration work in the pipeline...
10 Feb 18	The Casino Forum d'Art Contemporain of Luxembourg organized a visit to the Computarium, as they have an exhibition titled "2045-1542: A History of Computation". Colette Heirendt, Claude du Fays and Francis Massen guided the (very small) group, showed many functioning machines and made the first step with the visitors in using an abacus and a sliding rod calculator (and refreshing their forgotten capabilities in playing PONG!). Look at the web page of the Casino on this event here (PDF file, you might zoom to 250%). Another link is here.
08 Feb 18	1. We acquired a rare French SMT GOUPIL G4 computer from 1985 (one HD, 2 floppy drives, i80186 uP). It is in very good condition, and has been installed for demos in the Computarium, showing TETRIS on a vintage BULL Micral amber monitor. We are always looking for vintage CGA/EGA monitors; if you find such a beast in your attic, please send an email (francis.massen@education.lu). 2. An update to the "pocket calculators" section of the virtual museum has been made, including the last calculators donated by P. Klein and F. Steffen.
19 Jan 18	Colette Heirendt and Francis Massen visited the Bonami Computermuseum in Zwolle (Netherlands) the 19th Jan. 2018. This is a rather new museum, still in development, which extends over a huge 3000m2 in a former warehouse. It has many personal computers, an enormous collection of games and quite a lot of mini-computers (even 4 analog ones). The only structuring feature is a time-line, so that many places in the exhibits are still empty, waiting for an occupation. A small crew of 5 people manages the museum, which is quite an achievement. I will present several albums, starting here with the first one covering the PONGs, MISCELLANEOUS, Personal Computers, GAMES.
11 Jan 18	The Computarium bought a nice Z88 notebook. This was the last computer designed by Clive Sinclair. Having sold Sinclair Research to Amstrad, this computer was marketed by Sinclair's new company Cambridge Computers, and manufactured in Scotland by SCI UK Ltd. Based on a Z80, it's OS is called OZ. Software included is Pipedream (wordprocessor & database &spreadsheet, comparable to Lotus Symphony) and the full BBC BASIC (from the BBC line of microcomputers). All software in ROM (and/or EPROM, 3 slots available). Communication with other computers by serial cable. The computer works fine.
13 Dec 17	I was able to auction a former DDR (= GDR = German Democratic Republic) KC 85/3 computer, which is in mint condition. KC means "KleinComputer", it is a Z80 clone 8 bit machine. The DDR computers were expensive, and virtually unaffordable to the normal citizen. This item has an inventory label "Bez. Akademie Ges. Wes. Potsdam" (admire the German abbreviations!) which means "Bezirksakademie des Gesundheitswesens Potsdam", a former technical school for medical personal (as nurses, midwifes, technical assistants...). See album.
30 Nov 17	Quite a lot of new material: 1. a NIXDORF PC02 luggable computer from 1985, weight 17 kg, nice amber screen. (see picture), auctioned at eBAY. Inbuilt working thermal printer. One RAM and HDC error on booting, will be checked asap. 2. two Macintosh LC and one Macintosh IIsx (all have bad switching power supplies, which will be replaced), and one Macintosh monochrome display, donated by Robert Massen. Many thanks!
18 Nov 17	A group of 20 former students of the LCD (the "promotion 1991", mathematical section B) visited the LCD and the Computarium. Jean-Claude Krack and Francis Massen were the guides (photo Francis Kaell).
09 Nov 17	Our contributor Théo Jacoby from the "Croisé et Fils" insurance company in Diekirch donated a rare RUF electronic booking machine, probably what was called the "RUF Visible Record Computer" (see here). The machine was built by the HOHNER company in Trossingen (famous manufacturer of musical instruments, mostly harmonicas) in 1970/1971. Input/output is by a modified IBM "golf ball" typewriter. The picture shows the real heavy main desk; the computer and power supply are in a separate cabinet not shown. This machine seems to be very similar to models sold under the Nixdorf and Sumlock brand names. RUF Buchhaltung was based in Zürich, Switzerland, and had a division in Karlsruhe. I am not sure if the equipment can be brought back to life, but it is a real decorative piece of collection. Many thanks!
05 Nov 17	The Computarium acquired a very rare Husky Hunter 16 hand-help computer, probably from 1991. This UK-built ruggedized computer was used by the military and outdoor people. It runs on 4 AA cells and has DOS 3.30 in ROM. See album.
28 Oct 2017	Quite a lot of news: 1. Carlo Schoup (+2011) donated through his sister a Mercedes-Euklid M22 electromechanical calculator. The machine is blocked, and is currently in repair. 2. Our member Claude Baumann donated a beautiful Continental 9S printing calculator (probably from 1937). Some repair was needed, but now the machine works AAA (see album). Many thanks to these contributors! 3. A group of blind people, several working as computer programmers, visited the Computarium. Claude Bauman, Claude Boes, Jean-Claude Krack and Francis Massen made this not so common guiding, where we tried to present as much as possible machines to touch and hear. We all were surprised how fast the blind people became familiar with the unknown keyboards of mechanical calculators. At the end of the visit two of the members showed us how they operate for their work a normal laptop (Mac and Windows), without any Braille keyboard, relying only on the built-in spoken reader as a guide (the picture shows using a Mac). Absolutely baffling! See album.
20 Oct 17	I auctioned two real gems: a rare Bondwell B12 luggable form 1984, running CP/M 2.2, and a still rarer ( and still heavier: total about 50 kg!) Siemens 6.610 "Mittlere Daten Technik (MDT)" computer with three SSSD 8" floppies (2 of them in the expansion box below the beautiful keyboard), a very obscure BS1 operating system (variant of CP/M), Cobol and professional not-quite-standard Basic. Both systems are in mint conditions, the Siemens needs some brain work to understand it's OS and other software, as there are no manuals to be found. If you know more about this Siemens machine, please feel free to contact me. Photos are provisional, made in the workshop.
24 Sep 17	New album with 125 slides from the visit by Francis + Colette Massen-Heirendt of the famous Computer History Museum in Mountainview, California
19 Jun 17	We received two new items for our collection: 1. Mrs. Pia Roth donated a Commodore PET 2001_8C which is in exceptional good condition, looking and running as new. This is the full keyboard/large numerical keyboard model with 8KB Ram, probably from 1979 (this model was known as the "professional PET 2001-N8). 2. Fernand Steffen donated an Apple Macintosh Powerbook 165c laptop from 1991: this was the first laptop with a color display (passive DSTN display, remarkably good); this laptop also is in working condition (except a defunct battery). Many thanks to these contributors!
10 Jun 17	Update of section 3a (mechanical machines) of the virtual museum with new objects and several corrections. This section now holds 240 items.
10 May 17	The Computarium participated again to the annual LCD Science Déég where our older students manage during a full day workshops for children of the last year of primary school (K-12). Students from the IIB2 (the "special math section") were introduced by C. du Fays and F. Massen from the Computarium into the art of Abacus calculus and Logo programming. We used for the first time our notyetquite-vintage HP Thinclients running WIN7e and the excellent FMS Logo. See album.
29 Apr 17	Link to the presentation given by Francis Massen at the conference on Analog Computers mentioned below. (PDF file)
25 Apr 17	Francis Massen will give a conference the Friday 28th April at 20:00 on analog computers. Start is 20:00 in the Robert Bohnert room of the Lycée classique de Diekirch. Entrance is free. Click on picture for a full view of the flyer.
09 Apr 17	I was able to buy two items at the "old stuff market" in Diekirch: a rather strange abacus, sort of a hybrid between japanese and chinese model (the chinese abacus has two heaven and five earth beads, the japanese 1 heaven and 4 earth beads).This model has one heaven and five earth beads! Actually it seems to be a (copy of a) Mutsudama type Soroban which was introduced in the early Meiji Period (1868-1912) The second item is the old XY plotter sold as a children's game. This model was sold by the French company Joustra and made in China (manufacturer unknown). To erase the drawing, one has to flip the device face down and shake it thoroughly. Just to make things more interesting: the right knob moves the pen in the Y direction, and the left in the X direction.
28 Feb 17	New video by Francis Massen on the Duffing chaotic oscillator, a very simple electronic circuit which goes into chaotic behavior when a relevant parameter (here the amplitude of a forcing oscillator) changes by a very small amount. Simulation done with Multisim (Electronic Workbench).
02 Feb 17	Colette Heirendt and Francis Massen visited the new NAM-IP computer museum in Namur. Outstanding! See album!
30 Jan 17	Gérard Franzen, an ingenieur teaching at the LTPEM (Lycée Technique Privé Emile Metz) and a former donator of the Computarium, donated a very nice Olivetti Logos 444 desktop printing calculator, in mint condition. He also assured that we received from the LTPEM a vintage Siemens SPS S5 system (introduced in 1979) with a very nice PG675 programming portable computer running CP/M86-2.2. Some quick first tests showed that this computer (probably from 1983) works fine, even if I have not yet read the manual and am unable to access the command line prompt. 04 Feb: With a new built cable, the communication between PG675 and the S5_100U unit (see lower picture, empty battery has meanwhile been replaced) is working now. We also have now several working CP/M diskettes for the PG675.
21 Jan 17	A group of 8 people celebrating their xxth anniversary of quitting primary school visited the Computarium. C.Heirendt and F.Massen gave explanations and made some practical hands on work with them, with an introduction in operating abacus and Brunsviga machines.
09 Dec 16	Théo Duhautpas, a former director of Restena and a retired professor at the University of Luxembourg, donated a very rare CODEX 9600 multiplex modem. This was the first QAM modulated 9600 bit/s modem of the world, manufactured in the USA from 1971 to about 1975. This specimen was used by REUTERS to establish communication between computers/terminals in Luxembourg and Frankfurt/Main, via a leased 4 wire line. It can drive either a single 9600 communication, or by multiplexing 4 communications at 2400 bit/s. The oscilloscope shows the 16 different bit pattern of QAM-16; it was routinely used to check the quality of the line. Many thanks!
22 Oct 16	1. The Computarium acquired a beautiful TODD Protectograph, a device to write tamper-proof checks. See album. 2. Our member Ronny Heinz donated a very nice book "Commodore 64: a visual Compendium" which is another project of the kick-starter company Bitmap Books. This large compendium (474 pages!) has beautiful and stunning screen-shots of many famous C64 games. Many thanks!
19 Oct 16	C. Heirendt donated for our "Euro-converter" exhibit an exceptional nice and stylish converter sold as a promotional gadget by Perrier. See album.
16 Oct 16	1. Many updates to the virtual museum, more links to large-scale pictures. 2. Repaired (with C. Heirendt) a miniature Multifix E1R calculator that I drove by careless handling into a completely blocked state. See album of this very nice machine.
21 Sep 16	Pol Hoelzmer contributed again a lot of material; the most interesting object is a rare IBM PC convertible (IBM 5140) from 1986, without power supply but in mint condition. Some soldering to adapt a standard powerbrick, some Internet research to find a PCDOS 3.30, and presto, this laptop is back to life. The IBM 5140 was IBM's first laptop (following the 5155 portable) and sold poorly, due to its difficult to read passive LCD screen and lack of HD (it has only two 720kB 3.5" disk drives). It was designed by the German designer Richard Sapper (see here) and received many prizes, as the iF Industrie Forum Design Award (Hannover 1988). More pictures in album. Pol has finished successfully his secondary school studies, and we wish him good luck in his new endeavor!
18 Sep 16	I added a short video on how to do multiplication on our Everest Multarapid printing calculator, which has a strange dial wheel. We graciously received a manual of the follow-up model from IFHB, which explained how to do the automatic multiplication and cleared up some of our preconceived foggy ideas..
17 Sep 16	Our CH private collection increased by two rather rare sliding rod calculators "made in France": a REBO from 1928 (manufactured in Marseille), and a RAYMOND from 1948 (manufactured in Pernes-les-Fontaines). Click on the pictures for full size views.
13 Sep 16	We received today from the CTIE (Centre des Technologies de l'Information de l'Etat) a very old IBM 3420/6 tape unit from ~1977, which is exposed at our main gallery. The sliding glass panel covering the tape reels was broken during the transportation, and I will try to find a replacement asap. Many thanks for this very nice object! The capacity of this "storage monster" was a max. of 45MB per tape reel. The unit was part of a large IBM 370 system.
12 Sep 16	We bought a vintage OSBORNE 1a portable computer (1982), which is in a very good condition. The CP/M II system disk is easy to duplicate with CopyIIPC.. As there is no application software joined, I will make 5.25" disks from disk image files asap (video). The model is a variant of the first mod.1, distinguishable by the coiled keyboard cable (mod.1. had a flat ribbon cable and can only handle single density (SD) diskettes). The processor is a Z80 at 4 MHz, memory is 64 kB.
01 Sep 16	I am nearly done with the update of the section 3 of our virtual museum (mini/microcomputers). Many new machines were added, and nearly all photos are now originals made at the Computarium. I switched to iSpring Converter version 8.3, which seems to create much faster Html5 code. This update is heavy work, as the machines have to be cleaned, tested, opened (to make pictures form the inside, many more pictures are made of each machine than displayed on the web-site) and eventually repaired. There surely remain some errors; please send me an email if you detect one!
29 Aug 16	M. Serge Pletgen, who visited our workshops in Brandenburg, donated two Schubert DRV pinwheel calculators from the end of 1950's. Both needed some work (see here) to come back to working state. Many thanks!
22 Aug 16	1. Busy time making pictures of machines, updating the virtual museum and doing repairs. 2. I added to the LIBRARY (PDF section) two files from the Microsoft public archive of the The Computer Museum. These are poor gold: a treasure of original articles and photos of vintage material and computer pioneers. Look here and here (large files!).
17 Jul 16	We participated to the "Branebuurger Maart". More on "Exhibitions" page.
20 May 16	Pol Hoelzmer, one of our most prolific contributors, donated quite a lot of interesting stuff: a HP Jornada720 (working), a few computers and many calculators (also all working) with an HP21 among them. As the rechargeable NiCad battery was dead, I carefully slit open the case and replaced the 2 NiCd AA batteries by alcalines: yes this works and does not harm the calculator.! Many thanks!
28 May 16	André Schwarz is a most prolific writer on computers and the biographies of computer pioneers. He gave the Computarium the full text of all his contributions in the cultural section "Die Warte" of Luxemburg's main news paper "Luxemburger Wort" (which gave us the permission to publish these articles). You will find all the articles in the "Library of the Computarium", PDF section (click here). Many thanks to André and the Luxembourger Wort.
22 May 16	On this second day Claude Boes, Claude du Fays, Colette Heirendt, Francis Massen and Anouk Neven were present. The attendance was about the double as yesterday, and all visitors showed great interest. Nevertheless we all find that well-needed publicity was nearly absent, as well as the distribution of brochures which went well in Luxembourg-City, but seemed to have forgotten Diekirch; also the City of Diekirch which proudly sells itself as the "Ville des Musées" did not make any visible publicity on the electronic public boards or on its Web site. Album.
21 May 16	The first day of the nation-wide "Invitation aux Musées" day is finished; the number of visitors was clearly enumerable ("dénombrable" in French). We installed everything on Friday afternoon, and Saturday Colette Heirendt, Florence Massen, Ronny Heinz and Francis Massen staffed the show. Workshops covered Napier bones, Genaille-Lucas rulers, abacus, Logo on vintage BBC Masters. For fun there were some vintage games running on emulators and several original Pong's. M. Pierre David, a former programmer at EAI (Brussels headquarter) donated a nice EAI slide-rule, some memorabilia and several flow-chart rulers from well-known companies (Bull, Burroughs...). Many thanks!
11 May 16	The LCD Science Déeg had an attendance of about 200 pupils from neighboring primary schools. See album.
04 May 16	Training session with 10 students of the II B mathematical session for the upcoming LCD Sciences Déeg. Colette Heirendt showed how to use Napier Bones and Genaille-Lucas rulers, Francis Massen how to program in LOGO (Turtlegraphics) on vintage BBC Master computers.
22 Apr 16	Students from an Erasmus+ project follow two workshops on Napier/Genaille-Lucas rulers and Brunsviga calculators in the Computarium. See album.
20 Apr 16	I found by chance this digital "sliderule" from Lucas-Nülle, a German company which makes educational material, mostly for scientific and technical education. The disc fell out of a journal, probably donated by Jean-Pierre Unsen. The back side shows the digital states of various flip-flop types. I did not find a date of manufacture for this nice disc. Any help will be appreciated!
14 Feb 16	Our regular contributor Pol Hoelzmer donated quite a lot of interesting material, among them a Compaq Armada running WIN96 ! (did you know that this version exists?). See the contributors page for more details. Many thanks!
30 Jan 16	Yet another restoration: this time a very simple line-tracking robot has been restored. See the WORKS section for more.
03 Jan 16	Our member Ronny Heinz participated to the Kickstart project of Bitmap Books to publish a book on the games of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum . This very colorful book is a great pleasure to look at. Ronny donated the book to our library: many thanks! This is the book #3 of Bitmap Books. Look here for all the books from this company.

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