The Cow goes retro

"Ever since I saw that post about taking the Cow places I've been trying to think of where to take it…I mean, there's so many interesting places. You almost got a shot of the Cow at the sign for One Infinite Loop, but I would have had to get past a bunch of Japanese tourists who were piling off of a bus to take each other's pics at the sign.
So then it hit me: Cool old computers. Well, I think they're cool... I'm a computer history buff, and jumped at the chance to go to the Computer History Museum. So the Cow (and my laptop) came along..."

Cap'n Hector

For the record, old computers are cool. An inspired choice, and I'm thoroughly inspired, and Cap'n Hector was nice enough to annotate what's what.

"The Cow and a Xerox Alto. One of the first GUI-driven computers, the first platform for SmallTalk, and it uses that lovely think yellow Ethernet cable that needed the vampire tap."

"The Cow and a very early disk platter. The large platter held ~10 megs, the smaller drive in the center holds a gig. The Cow holds a white russian."

"The Cow and an Apple 1. 'Nuff said."

"The Cow and a Banana Jr. 2000 stand for an Mac Plus. If you don't know about the Banana Jr. 2000, then you weren't reading Bloom County in the mid-80s."

"The Cow meets a working IBM 1620. It was busy doing calculations and making typewriter noise."

"The Cow and one of the first racks of computers from the Do No Evil folks themselves…Google. I must say... I've never seen a rack this badly put together. I think the level in the White Russian went down a bit..."

"The Cow. The Cray 1. A meeting of things beginning with the letter C. PS: The Cray went at 140 megaflops, so my PowerBook is a wee bit faster than this. However, the Cray has better seats."

"Serious geekage here... We're at an Interface Messaage Processor. It's one of the first routers ever, and was used on the very early ARPAnet."

"The Cow. The Vax. Two greats of computing history, each in a fetching shade of green. The Cow, contemplating history over a nice cigar. The Vax, sitting silent. It's almost poetic..."

Sadly I don't think the museum has a DEC PDP-1, although the hand holding out the Powerbook in some of them really put it over the top and I'm able to cross off a chunk of Northern California. Awesome.