Russians Destroyed The Retro Computer Museum in Ukraine

500 pieces of retro computer and technology in a privately owned collection have been destroyed by a Russian bomb in the city of Mariupol. The war in Ukraine is a disaster on so many levels, but while it in no way fits up to the senseless taking of lives by the Russian forces, the demolition of the Mariupol Computer Museum is still crushing.

It has been reported that the Mariupol Computer Museum in Ukraine, a privately owned collection of over 500 items of retro computing, consoles and technology from the 1950s to the early 2000s, a collection nearly 20 years in the making, has been destroyed by a bomb. pic.twitter.com/7xKi3yYjth

— Lord Arse! 💙🇺🇦💛 (@Lord_Arse) March 23, 2022

The devastation was highlighted by Mark Howlett on Twitter and verified by the Ukrainian Software and Computer Museum account, which operates museums in Kharkiv and Kyiv. The owner of the Mariupol collection, Dmitry Cherepanov, is safe, though his collection of computers, consoles, and various tech from 50 years of computing has been destroyed.

“There is neither my museum nor my house,” writes Cherepanov on his Facebook page, it8bit.club.

The museum is gone, but Cherepanov has been showing off his collection of exhibits online for a while now, and though this is all that’s left, it is still a resource worth checking out. There are a collection of intriguing old machines, which includes the Commodore C64, which I still love, and own one in original packaging.