HomeComputerMuseum Opens Its New Retro Center in Helmond Today

The HomeComputerMuseum in Helmond opens its 465-square-meter Retro Center expansion across the street, featuring a dedicated repair workshop, depot, and vintage hardware shop.

The HomeComputerMuseum in Helmond is expanding across the street rather than packing everything into a removal van. Its new Retro Center officially opens today, September 25, with the museum itself remaining at Noord Koninginnewal 28 while the additional shop, repair service and publicly viewable depot occupy Noord Koninginnewal 53-55. The extra premises add roughly 465 square metres and solve a pleasant problem for the museum: it has more working historic hardware than it has room to display and service comfortably.

The new location contains the repair operation and depot alongside a physical shop selling surplus museum stock, refurbished laptops, cables, adapters and components for older machines. Commodore has a particularly visible presence, with current Commodore hardware stocked there as well. The museum says visitors can also expect items useful for keeping vintage computers alive rather than merely decorative memorabilia, which makes the shop rather more interesting than another wall of logo T-shirts.

After today's official opening, the Retro Center is scheduled to operate Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 until 17:00. The original museum remains a separate hands-on attraction with more than 500 computers and consoles covering roughly 1975 to 2010. In an age when many retro machines are experienced through emulation, opening more physical space devoted to repairing, preserving and actually using the original hardware feels appropriately stubborn. Old computers, after all, rarely die; they merely develop increasingly specialised capacitor requirements.