A Collection Four Decades in the Making
The Computer Museum Ata collection began in 1983 when a Finnish teenager received his first computer — a Spectravideo SV-328 — and has grown continuously ever since into Finland’s largest private retro computer, game console, and gaming collection. What started as a personal passion has become a comprehensive archive of computing history spanning over four decades of technological change, now totalling over 11,000 items across computers, consoles, games, accessories, books, and Nokia mobile phones.
The collection grows every year through careful searching, purchases, donations, and trades. The annual acquisition pages linked below document every addition year by year — from the earliest records to the present day. Below is a summary of notable acquisitions from recent years, highlighting some of the most historically significant and rarest items that have joined the collection.
Notable Acquisitions by Year
2025
A productive year with strong additions across multiple categories. Finnish computing heritage was strengthened with the Spectravideo 328 Flipper Skipper and Spectravideo Xpress SVI-738 — rare Finnish-market Spectravideo machines. The Sakhr AX-230 joined the collection — an Arabic-market MSX computer produced for the Middle East, a rare variant rarely seen in European collections. Vectrex games including WebWarp, Spike, Soccer Football, Bedlam and Armour Attack expanded the Vectrex library significantly. The Hewlett-Packard Color Pro Plotter — a high-end colour plotter from HP’s professional instruments range — represents early computer colour output technology. A large batch of 27 Tiger Electronics handheld games arrived in one acquisition, significantly expanding the LCD handheld collection.
2024
The single most significant acquisition of 2024 was the NeXT NeXTstation (acquired 27 February) — the workstation computer produced by Steve Jobs’ NeXT company, on which Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1991. One of the most historically important computers ever made, the NeXTstation represents the direct origin of the internet as we know it. The Processor Technology Sol-20 (May) is one of the earliest personal computers ever made, pre-dating the Apple II and produced in 1976–1977 from a kit design featured in Popular Electronics magazine. The Sharp MZ-800 complete system with disk interface and drive, and the Spectravideo 328 Music Mentor CIB added further Finnish-era computing heritage. Multiple Nintendo Game & Watch multi-screen models joined the collection including Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong II, Mario Bros, and Gold Cliff.
2023
The Telmac TMC-600 (July) — Finland’s only domestically designed BASIC home computer, with fewer than 600 ever produced — was one of the most significant Finnish computing artefacts ever acquired. Accompanying it was the Mikroprosessori käsikirja RCA 1800 — the Finnish-language manual for the RCA 1802 processor that powered both the Telmac 1800 and NASA’s Voyager space probes. The Sony Hitbit HB-101 MSX computer and Gakken Konami Frogger tabletop LCD game both joined in October. A large Nokia phone acquisition in March added the Nokia 8850, 7710, E90 Communicator, E7 and multiple Lumia smartphones. The Apple Power Macintosh 5400/180 with Apple LaserWriter came with an extensive Macintosh software library.
2022
The Sinclair ZX80 (July) — the original 1980 computer that preceded the ZX81 and Spectrum, selling for just £99.95 as a kit — is one of the rarest working Sinclair computers in any collection. The complete Multitech Micro-Professor MPF-II system (October) arrived with keyboard, floppy disk interface, disk drive, joystick, 19 games, and 8 manuals — one of the most comprehensive single acquisitions of educational computing hardware. The Atari 600XL CIB with 15 games and the Amstrad CPC464 Plus CIB with 21 games both arrived in January as strong collection additions.
2021
The Apple Lisa 2 (July) — one of the first personal computers with a graphical user interface, predecessor to the Macintosh — is among the most historically significant computers in the collection. The Apple III (March) completed the Lisa/Apple III era of Apple’s pre-Macintosh history. The IBM PC Portable model 5155 (December) — IBM’s own portable computer from 1984 — documents IBM’s early attempt at portable computing. The Nintendo Wii 25th Anniversary edition CIB and Nintendo Super Famicom Rental Storage unit were notable gaming acquisitions. Three Salora Manager computers with disk drives and plotter (January) significantly expanded the Finnish computing section.
New acquisitions annually:
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001