Hands-on experience with home computers and arcade machines from the 1970s and 80s
Our apprentices and dual students from the first year of training visited the Oldenburg Computer Museum (OCM) together with training manager Rolf Norrenbrock and had the chance to thoroughly test exhibits from the past 50 years.
Many of the original machines from the early days of the computer age were not only on display for our colleagues Lukas, Lars, Stefan, Johannes, Oliver, Daniel, Helmut, and Florian, but they also had the chance to try them out and even program in BASIC, together with our training manager Rolf at the Oldenburg Computer Museum. In addition to systems like the digital PDP-8, Commodore PET, Apple ][, Sinclair ZX81, Commodore C64, Atari 800XL, and Amiga 500, the exhibition also includes important game consoles, rare computers, and specialized literature. The event was held together with other training companies from the Weser-Ems region and was initiated by the trainers’ working group. That’s why our colleagues were lucky enough to have some specially selected machines in the arcade hall set up exclusively for this visit. The famous Pong table in the “back living room” was also available to the group.
Floppy disks, Atari and Co.
The apprentices and dual students definitely had fun using the “outdated” technology, as most members of Generation Z know floppy disks and the like only from stories and had never used magnetic storage media before. Of course, game consoles have also changed significantly over the decades. While Atari is still familiar to our older colleagues, for the younger generations, it usually starts with the PlayStation or Wii. “It was fascinating to see how hardware and software have evolved over the past decades, but that the foundations of today’s computer architecture are still largely based on concepts from the 1980s,” says Rolf Norrenbrock.
If you’d like to visit the OCM, you can find more information here: The OCM is open every Tuesday from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, and admission is €2.00 per person.