A lot of very nice computer collections are parts of bigger ones in larger, less specialised, museums.

It’s rare for museums to keep artefacts operational. The ones that still work are usually treated as the big attraction because they demand attention and maintenance.

I was recently in Bletchley Park, where I saw a partially working Bombe (they only run it partially because of the wear), and their smaller computer museum (there are a lot of machines that are available for visitors to play with) and the one in Cambridge, which has classrooms with BBC micros, as well as many other interesting machines - Suns, SGIs, Amigas, Ataris, Spectrums, and even a Lisa, which had a boot issue.

I have to say the kids in the last two seemed thrilled to play Lemmings on Amigas and Archimedes machines. Not a PDP-1, but still cool.

That’s sad. Maybe other museums would be more enlightened. In the end, unless the museum is well funded by a government grant or something similar, it’ll need to recover costs from tickets, and prestige items are something they can advertise to the muggles.

Keeping these machines running is hard work and, for the most part, unpredictable - they will go down and need maintenance from time to time. These is a constant tension between keeping it operational and keeping it original, as tools, materials, parts, and techniques become unavailable, and replacing parts with modern equivalents is a last resort.