Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 84: The trials of vintage computing

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

Benj Edwards has long dreamed of curating a museum of vintage PC history, and he's amassed hundreds of classic computers to make it happen. We talk about the unique challenges of preserving so many aging machines… especially finding room for them all.

This week on Retronauts Micro, a microcomputer collection gets microsized. episode of Retronauts Micro. I am Jeremy Parrish. And with me here is none other than the amazing, the one and only. Benj Edwards. Listen to that excitement. And yeah, Benj is here because he recently posted a tweet on Twitter, which is, you know, where one does such things as tweeting, talking about and showing off his extensive collection of personal computers, or if you're one of those people who's still living in 1983 and think PC only means, means IBM-compatible systems is microcomputers. And it's quite an impressive array of systems, but unfortunately it's not going to be

with Benj much longer, it sounds like. Yeah, it's possible. Would you care to elaborate? No, I just, you forced me to do this. You seemed excited to be here, and now you're all like, whatever, computers. Yeah, that's just part of the comedy routine. Oh, okay. I have been collecting computers since I was about 12 years old

and that's around 1993 and so 25 years now I've been amassing a large collection of personal microcomputers as Jeremy said and also video game stuff too I have lots of consoles and stuff but I was recently thinking about potentially moving to a different house and I thought hey maybe it would be nice to move somewhere where I didn't have to have

a gigantic two-car garage building to house all this stuff in a climate-controlled, you know, situation. And I thought, hey, maybe someone out there is actually interested in acquiring it now. So I put that tweet out there. I said something like, hey,

does anybody want to buy a computer collection that I've been collecting since 1993? I'm thinking about downsizing. And it was retweeted, 7,000 times or something, which is a record for me. That's a record for me. Yeah. Never been retweeted that much.

And like 800 comments and lots of likes, however many that was 5,000. Well, the good thing is your ratio there is strong. It's not like 7,000 responses and 500 retweets. That'd be bad. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, but it definitely, I didn't realize it had blown up so much, but, you know, I saw it making the rounds for a few days and I thought, you know, since you are here as a, you know, regular on Retronauts East, I thought it would be pretty cool for you to come in and talk about just the process of amassing these computers, why, you know, like, why you've done it and why

you are thinking about getting out of it and, you know, what personal connection you have with some of these systems and so forth. Yeah, I'd be happy to talk about all of that. Yeah, it's, the, the collecting aspect of classic video gaming and game history is something that, you know, we talked about, we have talked about a few times. times, mostly in the context of like, boy, it sure is expensive now. But this is different because you've been collecting these computers for like 25 years. So, you know, at the time you were, I'm assuming, assimilating and accumulating and aggregating and aggregating, these computers

cost just a few bucks some of them. Yeah. What's the best deal you've gotten on a vintage computer? Like the craziest, rarest thing that cost the least. The best deal is probably, Probably when someone sent me a complete working Apple Lisa 2 for free. Wow. Including paying shipping. I didn't even know there was a Lisa, too. I didn't realize Lisa survived that long. It did.

They had a, the first model was 1983, and it had the dual twiggy floppy drives that were problematic as far as reliability is concerned. And then in 84, they relaunched the Lisa at the time they launched the Macintosh with a three and a half inch floppy, Sony style floppy that. It was a lot more reliable, and I think they lowered the price, too, at the same time. But it was still insanely expensive. Yeah, it was $10,000 in 1983, which is inflation that's $20,000, $30,000 now. I can't remember whatever it is, but it's a lot. The lease is great because it's one of those things you can point to and say, like, no, Steve Jobs wasn't a complete, infallible genius who never made a mistake. Like, that was his baby, and it was a mess.

But it's crazy that you have one of those because they're not very common. I mean, they were a mess, so hardly anyone bought them, and the Macintosh came out at the same time and was a much more practical, much more affordable device. That was like $2,500. Steve, you know, he instigated, I think, the Lisa program, but he was kicked off of it pretty early on. Wasn't that name for his daughter, though? Yeah, I think so. They, you know, there's people claim it is and, you know, it's never been fully confirmed. I've seen Michael Faspender as Steve Jobs. I know what's up. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't see. that one. I think I saw the one with Ashton

Coutcher, however you pronounce the name. It was all right. It's the first time I've ever seen people I know in person in a film like portrayed as actors. I think Al Alcorn was in there as the guy who hired Steve Jobs at Atari and, you know, Waz was in there

of course. And Waz has all kinds of stuff to say about those films. I'm sure. I bet. He's not too happy about him. But yeah, you know, we don't have to get too much into the Apple history. You've done that already.

Yeah, I guess we have. And, you know, I should tell you about some of the response I've gotten from that. Sure. If you should have mentioned that, which is I've had museums around the world contacting me in America, in Europe, like Italy, even in Greece,

the UK, Spain, Germany. All interested in the collection. And lots of individual collectors are interested in combining collections or some kind of weird thing like that. And universities starting up new programs. What do you mean by combining collections? Like, I'm not going to give you

any money, but if you give me some of your computers, I'll give you some of mine. Yeah, it's just surprising. Three people have said this to me. The point is you want to get rid of stuff. So there's like no appeal to taking on someone else's unwanted crap. Yeah, it doesn't really make sense. Three people have said something like, I will take your computers, combine them with mine, and then

try to get rid of them. Or, you can buy mine and then you can get rid of yours or you know it's just you know it's not good logic but um those aren't really serious considerations anyway um i talked to the computer history museum who of course has most of everything i have and i'm friendly with them very much and um they were interested in seeing if i had anything they didn't have and i don't know if that's true um and the strong was interested in potentially getting some stuff And I'm friendly with them, too. And the funny thing is everybody was kept.

So these people got harassed like crazy, all my friends. And people I know, like Jason Scott and Frank Sefaldi. And, you know, these museums, they just got bombarded for three days straight with people saying, contact, Computer History Museum, contact, Jason Scott, contact, you know, hundreds of times. Everyone saying the same thing. Jason said, 15 people have DMed me about your collection. You know, tell them to shut up. Unfortunately, that's not how Twitter works.

It doesn't work where people see the retraction. It's like the real news. You know, you get the retraction on page six after the headline that gets everyone's attention. Yeah, as I didn't realize you've been bombarded so much. But you're like, you're in the news, right?

Businesses. Businesses? Want to rent them out? Somebody wanted to, what? Some company wants to. Because there's still businesses that are using like an OS2-based system. And they're like, oh, finally, we can, we can add some,

some workstations to our office. No, actually, I think they just want them as decorations. In fact, two of the publications I've written for, Macworld, I think, and PCMag, both editors editors from those places said they considered trying to acquire it just to put in their offices

like a wall of computers just for decoration because it's cool. All right? I didn't realize they were in that much money, but okay. Didn't they just lay off a ton of people? They were just assumed acquired by a Chinese company and sacked their entire staff? I'm not going to get into that because I like those people.

I do. I like the people who were there, but they're not there anymore. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Mac World people were the greatest crew before they fired everybody a few years ago. I mean, those were some of the best editors on Earth. But anyway, so, yeah, I've got companies even locally considering doing some exhibit things with me, and I'm still trying to work that out. So I might not actually sell everything.

I'm considering I'm preferring to hopefully do something like, an exhibit or maybe lease them to a company for a while and then maybe sell some of them or most of them. I don't know. There's a lot of options available now, which is what I'm excited about. The important thing is to get them out of your garage. Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah, it would be nice to, especially if someone helps me move them out is what I want to most. It took me six months to move a man. Sorry, I've just got a Cooper minis. Can't help you there. Yeah, so I want, yeah, it took me six months to set up everything up. there without breaking everything because these a lot of people don't realize how fragile these

are becoming especially if they have plastic cases right which gets really fragile yeah they're really brittle and like the max everybody loves the max the most but they're actually in the worst shape because they're plastic and the plastic cracks now there are all these tabs that are supposed to be flexible tabs to open a case and they snap shut with friction and stuff and those now, if you snap, you know, if you pull them too far, if they've been in the wrong conditions, they'll crack straight off. And I've been losing a lot of pieces.

Well, a lot of those old systems have built-in CRTs also. And those, I feel like that's also just trouble right there. CRTs aren't too bad. The capacitors is the worst part. All the Macs have these really poor quality capacitors that are leaking and going bad. You think as much as they charge for those things, they would have used better materials.

Yeah, it's funny. So the Apple tax didn't go toward the materials. It was just toward Steve's vacations. So the IBM, though, everything IBM made still works. It's like they're built like a tank. It's incredible. That was their thing was like, you're going to pay a lot of money for this, but it's going to last you forever.

Yeah, it will, and they do. In fact, I use a 1986 Model M keyboard. You know, it's got the mechanical buckling spring action every day on my main computer, and it will never get old. it still acts like it was completely new, and I've been using it for 10 years straight already. I would love to have one of those instead of this MacBook keyboard. You drop a little bit of, like a tiny grain of dust gets in there,

and all of a sudden, Nikita doesn't work. I hate this thing. Great computer, but terrible keyboard. Yeah, Apple makes some questionable design decisions sometimes. It looks pretty. Um, yeah. So anyway, that's, that's kind of like the, the overview of all of this. But how did, how did you start accumulating computers in the first place? You said you started, you know, 25 years ago. Yeah. So what was the first computer you, you decided, like, what was the first computer you decided? Like, what was the first computer you, you decided? decided to keep. And at what point did you say, I need more of these? That's a very good question. I think what may have started it was when my dad bought me an Apple 2 plus around 1990 because

he wanted me to learn basic programming. And we go to this. Around 1990? Yeah, around 1990. And I was nine or so. And were people still using basic back then? Or at that point? That always struck me as more of like an early like lead 70s early 80s kind of thing yeah that wasn't it wasn't a popular thing anymore at that time really for everybody to learn basic just just a way to kind of get you started he just wanted me to have some fundamentals going on because my brother had learned basic on the atari 800 which i we had kept those ataris for a long time and um i was interested in those but the apple two plus we got at a uh what we call a ham fest which this annual gathering of amateur radio operators. There's one in Raleigh every year where they have a swap meet flea market

thing. And they have a lot of old tech there. And my dad saw that Apple 2 Plus there one time and said, hey, I should get this for you. There's a hundred bucks with some drives and books, instructional books. And I put that in my room and I learned a program basic on it and it was really fun. And I probably was thinking, you know, how come the other kids don't have Apple 2s at the time? Right. They were kind of at the end of their existence at that point. But I mean, No kids had computers. Prince of Persia had just debuted the year before that on Apple II, so there was still some life of the old girl.

Yeah, it wasn't totally dead. I mean, we still had computer labs at school with Apple II's in them at that time. But, you know, actually, no computer, no, like I was saying, no kids really had computers at that time. But everything was shifting to IBM PCs and boring beige boxes. I was worried that if everybody was going to throw away the old computers, that they would forget about this history. And I thought that was important because I thought,

man, these are cool machines. And there was so much variation and variety in computers in the early 80s when they were made by so many different companies with different incompatible platforms. And so I started, somehow I made some kind of that click where I just said, I should preserve these. So they don't get tossed, everybody doesn't throw everyone away. and someday I'll start the world's first computer museum.

That's what I thought. How is that going? It's still in the works. It's not going to be the first anymore. It's probably not the first, but you're still kind of on track to actually make this childhood, this crazy childhood dream happen, which is more than I can say for myself, I wanted to be a comic book artist. That's not happening.

Yeah, it goes to show how much support I've had from my family and my wife and, you know, and my people around me that I could maintain this collection. for so long but it's also been there have been a lot of trade-offs and sacrifices of trying to keep this stuff so much stuff and to keep it in a reasonable in reasonable shape there's a time period at my last house where a lot of them spent time in an unheated uncooled garage where at in the beginning it got so humid that every time it got humid there'd be mold on stuff you know it's growing on things. I lost a lot of manuals and stuff because of that because it grows in there and once it attaches, you can't really get rid of it. And luckily, I've cleaned the moldy stuff and got

rid of the moldy stuff. But it's a real challenge. You really have to climate control of stuff and they're sensitive to light, like the plastics discolor and get brittle under UV light and sunlight. And so I've had to put dehumidifier in there. So right now they're in a climate controlled space totally and that's it's a it's a tricky thing to have that much climate control space really but you you've moved around a few times in 25 years so you've had this this collection tagging along behind you and as we we talked about in a not you and i but in a previous retronauts episode we talked about how the logistics of having to move is a real detriment to keeping physical possessions and in fact you're talking about moving now and liquidating your collection um so how how much how much

of a challenge has that been through the years? It's been a real challenge. I think I've moved probably four times in the last, I don't know, 15, 20 years. And, you know, at first, everything was at my parents' house. And then I graduated from high school and I moved in with my brother. And we had a small house. We rented together while we were both working. And the funny thing is, like, the first night we set up this house, we got this little tiny

house, I set up a bunch of computers on the kitchen table. And my brother came in, I was like, that didn't take long. There's like an IBM PC Jr. and an Apple 2C and stuff sitting there. But I was like, finally, I've got space to put stuff, you know. But soon that house, all the closets in the house were full of computers and video game stuff, including the laundry room over, there are these shelves over the laundry room. And they were full of tubs of, you know, video game peripherals and stuff. And Jeremy's like, one time, that's my brother's name.

And he's like one time, just once I'd like to use that shelf for laundry detergent. So, yeah, moving things. Everything has a chance of breaking every time you move it because the bigger computers are kind of heavy and fragile and awkward to carry and move around. And it's hard to pack them in such a way that you could stack other things on top of them without breaking. So you end up having to make 20, 30, 50 trips back and forth. I have a minivan, and I would shuttle them back and forth between houses a few at a time, whatever I could just set on the floor because it couldn't stack up a lot of stuff. And that takes a long time.

And things get broken a little bit. So I don't like to move them too much anymore. I can help it. So you mentioned that you got your start on this, doing all this with an Apple 2 plus that your father got for you. Do you still have that computer? Yeah, I did it. as something that will always, I'm assuming, remind you of him. Are you planning to keep that particular computer?

Yeah, I will. If I do get rid of a majority of my collection, I'll probably keep my family computers, which is, you know, the most important things to me are the Atari 800, the Atari ST, the Apple 2 Plus, and the, you know, some of my early PCs that I use to run BBSs and things like that. That'll be fine. enough for me to play with.

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MGC takes place at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 13th through 15th, and we'll be speaking live at 1 p.m. Saturday the 14th with a presentation called Atari Got a Raw Deal. Joining us to make a case that Atari was done dirty by the games industry will be Atari historian Kevin Bunch and Marty Goldberg, co-author of Atari Businesses Fun. We'll also be having a social meetup Saturday night with our friends from Watch Out for Fireballs. And finally, if we can make it happen, we're going to attempt to set what may be a world record by hosting a 16-player-Faceball-2000 match on Game Boy. I'll bring the games and four-player adapters. You bring a system from the Game Boy family and a link cable.

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Thank you. That kind of, to me, gets to the heart of why we do things like this, because, you know, this is technology, it's objects, it's things. But at, on some level, you, you are interested in them because they resonate with you on some personal level. Like, you know, I like writing about Game Boy and NES games and that sort of thing. And started up return outs because I'm like, oh, yeah, these are like these video games that we're talking about, they're things that I, you know, cherish because of the memories I have wrapped up in them. and the experiences I've had, and I want to keep that alive. Yeah. The nostalgia is important. It's not even nostalgia. It's, you know, like, nostalgia to me speaks of something sort of empty or, you know, superficial. Really, do you think of it as a negative word?

I think it has negative connotations. Like, it's pining for something that's gone, whereas what I'm talking about is something more like, this is, you know, this is your heritage. My heritage, and it's part of my identity. Yeah. There's a legacy wrapped up in this. That's why our work resonates with people so much because it's part of their formative identities. I like to say these are the ingredients of the recipe of a person that came together to make someone who they are. All the cultural media you consume as you're growing up and even up to the present.

Yeah. It becomes your personal identity, you know, what you associate with, what you know. Right. I think with nostalgia, you get something like Ready Player 1 where it's just like, hey, It's a thing I remember, but we're talking about something a little more substantial, more like, what is the legacy here? What's the heritage? Where did this come from? Why did it exist? What's what's about? How did it help make me who I am? And it's not just that. I'm also casting a wider net and asking the question, how did this stuff make everybody how they are? It's a legacy of our generation. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to preserve all this stuff is so people know what the ingredients were that

made us who we are. So in the future, people know why we did the things we did, made the decisions we did. And there's another element to this collection, which is it's been a personal reference to me and a library when I had no possible way of having that anywhere else. It's not like there's a computer museum near here. And there's no library fully these old magazines and books I have. So as I have been writing about computer history and video game history, it's been an invaluable resource for me in that work because I was exposed to all sorts of neat things that people need to remember,

but I wouldn't otherwise if I didn't have those physical objects sitting in front of me. So how many computers in total have you accumulated? How big is this collection? I think right now I was just looking at the... I keep this running list since about the year 2000 is when I first started putting it together, just to keep track of the actual system.

and computers I have. I also keep track of the ones I discarded or got of or sold because I need to I can't remember what happened to what if I still have it or not because there are so many. And at its peak, I think I've had over

300 computers and 150 consoles, game consoles and stuff. But you have to keep in mind that every computer has its accessories and accoutrements. They're, you know, software, disks, printer, You know, so everything has extra boxes and boxes of stuff with all those 300 computers.

So that's what makes it so huge. And I don't have those in a list. Everybody wants me a list amount, but man, that's going to take a lot. And I thought that was going to be like 70, 80 computers, 300. Yeah, actually, I just looked at, I printed out that list before I came here. It says I have non, I used to separate them by non-IBMPC compatible computers because when I started, I thought IBMPC stuff was really boring. So I separate them out. That's true it is. Non-IBMPC

207 is the current count. Unique models is 160, so there's a bunch of doubles in there. Okay. And I've gotten rid of a lot of double. So do you count like an Apple 2 versus an Apple 2E versus an Apple 2 plus as separate models? Yeah, those are

unique machines. Okay. So a lot of them, okay, yeah, so I see like Tandy TRS 80, different variants. Color Computer 1, I've got two of those. I've got two color computer 2s, two color computer trees. Yeah, those are good candidates for downsizing. So what were your criteria for acquiring systems? Like, what was the process you used? Was it pretty much just fair game? Like, if it was a computer from the past, it's, it goes in the collection? Or were you looking for

specific things at specific times? I used to just take everything I could find a long time ago. So my main way of getting the computers has changed every time. I think at first I went to a lot of, went to yard sales and flea markets, and then I would get a lot of stuff at the Hamfest every year that I mentioned. And also I went to some estate sales one time and found some neat stuff. I went to thrift stores every weekend around the year 2000. They still had computers back then. And that's when I could these, there was one downtown. a Goodwill store that was liquidating a bunch of Apple stuff.

And I bought maybe like five or six Mac pluses for a couple bucks a piece at that time. And I used to have them. I got rid of all but one or two for space considerations about 10 years ago. And I wish I still had them because then I needed to fix them up. At one point, I started writing for Macworld a whole lot and doing these vintage things. And they weren't as reliable as they thought. They were, you know, once they got that old, and I needed to take pieces of the different computers and put them together to make a working one, you know. And so I wish I still had those, but I've had to make a lot of tough decisions about what to keep for space concerns.

I assume it's pretty easy to, like, track down American-made and American-sold computers. But how far have you delved into, like, European systems or Japanese systems? Do you have stuff like Sharp X-1 or X-68,000 or things like that? or is it pretty much been American systems? The limitation has always been price. It's always been what I could get cheaply. So I was always focused on what was available locally. In fact, a lot of people gave me, like, family.

As soon as family and friends knew that I collected computers, they were all giving me their old stuff. Like, hey, I got this Atari and Maddoch or I got a, you know, PC. And I have, like, everybody I know, everyone's family and friends of family. I have all their old PCs in my garage and they'll come visit them. They'll be like, oh, that's the one I used in college, you know. I still got it, you know. So I haven't had the budget or the money to go into those exotic things like the Japanese machines.

I have a couple MSX computers. I think I have one, you know, I have an MSX. I think that may be the only Japanese computer I have. And then I have an American MSX, the CX5M by Yamaha, which is this neat synthesizer machine, music synthesizer, computer thing. That sounds amazing. It has a FM synthesis built into it, and it's got a, you know, a 60 key keyboard, you know, piano keyboard, you plug into it, and you can use it as a synthesizer and record sequences and stuff is really neat. And I got that when I was experimenting with music a lot a long time ago. So, and European stuff, I don't know how many European things I have.

Like, I have a John Sands, Australian, John Sands, SC 3,000, the Sega. I've never even heard of that. John Sands is like an Australian chain like Sears, I think. So they marketed the Sega products in Australia. And I got that a long time ago off eBay. and basically it's just been too expensive to get into. It's been a budget collection from the start. Right.

Like whatever I could get cheaply. Same with my video games. I mean, that's why one of the reasons I started collecting all video games is because it was cheaper to buy them used than new. You could get like an 80% discount if you wait a couple years. I can wait. I'll be the same game.

I'll play it in two years and it'll cost a lot less. That's the way I used to think. Yeah. No, I mean, you know, when you're a kid on a budget, that's the way you have to think. I remember a lot of my NES games I would pick up at the local Hastings, which is a book, music, record, video store chain in Texas. And, you know, after like six months, they would put out some pretty great games for less than half price. So I got stuff like Castlevania 3, Adventures of Lolo 2, like these really good games for 20 bucks when they were still on the store shelves for 60.

Yeah. So that was pretty, yeah. And, you know, they would come into boxes and manuals and everything. That they, you know, never got put out on shelves because they just used the little printouts and stuff. So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. And I just didn't stick with it. And, you know, I've moved back and forth across the country from, like, Texas to New Jersey to Michigan, to California, to North Carolina. And, you know, within those places moved multiple times.

So that's a lot of moves in the space of 15 years. I couldn't do that. That's the sort of, you know, you sacrifice career opportunities. and stuff if you have to stay in the same place. Well, really, I was mostly moving because I was looking for career opportunities as opposed to like, oh, I found a job that needs to be to move. It was more like, please, someone hire me. Good times.

Yeah. Well, that just about wraps it. I was just kidding. Do you have any other questions? I can't remember. Yeah, I asked, like, what was the best deal you got? But what would you say the most exotic computers and the most interesting thing that you have in your collection?

You know, I think one of the coolest things I have right now to me is this Southwest technical products. They call them SWTPC PC from... It just rolls off the tongue. It's a 6800 from 1975. It's the oldest computer I have. And it was one of the very first PCs like in the Altair era, the kit. And it was sold as a kit and you had to assemble it. And we have a family friend who's since passed a.

away. But he was a surgeon at Duke University, a research surgeon. And in 1975, he bought several of those machines to assemble to help him with his records at Duke or something. And so after he died, his widow, who's still a friendly friend, asked me to come look at their stuff because they have some old computers. And then I just hit a treasure trove of this very rare early PC stuff. I mean, He had not only this SWTPC, 6800 assembled, but another one that's unassembled. And then the terminal they used with it, which was another product by the same company, which is rare. And a printer, this crazy printer that looks like a metal box with all these, you know, like impact hammers and stuff just, and ribbon is just sticking out. You know, because it was just a low budget thing you built out of a kit.

And all that was really neat. And I think it may have been the first PC used at Duke University ever. that's you know it's the odds are high you know really high so the unassembled one do you still have that unassembled one do you still have it in a box that's amazing yeah so it's just like the raw kit basically yeah it's just circuit boards um the pc boards plus the components and the instructions you know that's so crazy so that's kits you know that's worth something um i don't know what exactly but it's those are some of my neatest you know things plus i love the apple lisa you know especially I had two Apple leases for a while,

but I sold one really cheaply at the Hamfest about five, six, seven, eight years ago just so I didn't have to ship it anywhere. And I like to, it's sort of a community. We give back to each other. We sell each other the same things over and over again. Right. People, you'll see the same object coming back around over the years.

It's funny. Okay. Yeah, so just finally, like, what happens when you let go of these? Are you going to continue to stalk whoever acquires them to make sure that they're giving them? them the proper love? Or will it just be like, okay, I'm done? Let's let it go. Yeah, it's hard to let go. It's really hard because it has been a big part of my life for so long. I mean, for a majority of my life, essentially, because I'm going to be 37. So if I've been doing this for 25 years,

you know, it is my life. And I will probably make sure, I just want to make sure they go to a good home that's respectful of the mission I've been. pursuing, which is preserving, you know, cultural history of technology. And, you know, if they want to hire me to curate this stuff or something, that'll be fine, too, as long as I don't have to move anywhere. Right. But now I can move because I don't have the computers. Okay, maybe I should- I'm sure. I'm sure. Let's go, you know, play mother hen to your old computers that you got rid of. Yeah. They'd love that. All right. Well, thank you for, um, for coming on and talking about these computers that will someday soon not be yours. Or they may be. Or maybe. I mean, there's this

possible I might keep them for a while, too. I'm not going to, it was just, I'm just testing the waters to see what the interest is, but I'm just really pleased that everyone is as interested in them as they are, you know, because it's, they have meant a lot to me. It's been sort of a lonely pursuit keeping this collection for so long by myself that most people don't see. And I'm really glad everyone's trying to help me with it, and I appreciate that. All right. So Ben, Benj, where can the humans find you on the internet? On Twitter at Benj Edwards, B-E-N-J-Edwards.

Also, I have a new podcast called the culture of tech at the culture of tech.com and vintagecomcom is my blog. All right. And of course, I am Jeremy Parrish with Retronauts. As usual, Retronauts.com,

iTunes, podcast 1, et cetera. Look for us. It's Retronauts. And we're supported through Patreon. Patreon.com. slash Retronauts. Yep, the usual. You can find me on Twitter as game spite, even though I'm not really that spiteful about games. It's a it's a fallacy. It's a lie. I apologize if you were coming to my Twitter account looking for cruelty. It's just not there to be found. Anyway, thanks again, Benj. And we'll be back on Monday with a proper Retronauts episode. And in two weeks with another mic. We're going to be able to do. We want pretzel crust.

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Pizza pizza at participating locations plus tax. Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as

officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect and a man police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.