Pelikonepeijoonit.net
Title
Pelikonepeijoonit.net - The Arctic Computer and Console Museum - Finland
Description
Pelikonepeijoonit consist of 3 members: our webmaster Manu Pärssinen (manu@pelikonepeijoonit.net), Ville Heinonen (ville@pelikonepeijoonit.net) and myself, Mikko Heinonen (mikko@pelikonepeijoonit.net). We chose to appear under this title to emphasize the fact that our collection is based in Finland, which, despite being very much up to date these days, was seriously lagging behind at the time of the microcomputer boom of the 1980s. Furthermore, Finland has a very small computer industry, and virtually all machines ever produced here have been PC clones. There's no chance of stumbling across any prototypes here. Basically I'm saying that, even though we've "only" got about 120 machines (not including duplicates) at the moment, it has taken us serious time and effort to assemble this collection, and we considered it worthy of presenting to the general public under one title. Previously, both Manu and I have had our collections on display on our respective home pages, and at least my page wasn't visually very attractive.
Collecting the machines alone is fun, and many of them would be worth more money if left in their original packaging and never tested. However, we believe in using them as well (gently, of course!). Therefore, the most part of our collection is actively used for entertainment purposes. We are also interested in finding software for them.
I think it's safe to say that the whole thing is my fault. I never knew I had the soul of a collector until I came across an ad for an Ericsson step/one (the mono version) in 1992. It had previously belonged to a Finnish governmental agency and was for sale for a very "reasonable" price. To this day, I have no idea why I wanted the damn thing, but I did. And when I finally got it - then again, who else would have wanted it - I fell in love with it immediately. The "retro" feeling of a green display was unimaginable, and I even ended up using it as my "primary" computer for a few months while my PC was being repaired.
