Marc's Public Blog - Poland2023

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2026/06/19 3 Computer Museums in Warsaw and Poznan

π 2026-06-19 01:01 in Computers, Poland, Poland2023, Sciencemuseums

I went to three vintage computer museums, 2 across the street from one another in Warsaw, and a 3rd one in Poznan. They were all fun to visit but the 2nd one in Warsaw was manned by someone who didn't speak much but Polish, however he had one of the most impressive private collections I've seen, including some expansion boards that allowed improving the old computers like Amstrad CPC with extra resident commands, a newer Basic, and a bunch of games you could run instantly via flash instead of a slow load from floppy, or an even slower load from tape (those were sometimes 10mn or more).

The first one was fun:

But nothing compared to the second one, the highlight by far, hidden in a subway tunnel:

I immediately noticed the expansion board that was used to instantly load games

and I remember playing this game as a kid

this was the magic board which has its own computer and flash, kudos to whoever designed it

and my second computer I spent so much time with

a cute baby version of it

a pristine version of my Amstrad CPC 464 with the correct colors, QWERTY and tape player

I had heard about the atari TT but never seen one! It had a built in hard drive!

I still have that exact spare SIM 9 bit RAM at home :)

and more

the famous Atari ET was featured

Atari 260ST, I had never heard of it! It's a rare machine that pre-dated the 512 STF

Amstrads had to sell as Schneider in Germany

this is another rare one I had never heard of and could accept game cartridges

someone made an updated DOS in 2015, 30 years later!

I had no fun at all ;)

the more boring PCs that killed all our joyous fun computers

an Atari 65XE, before my time. an Atari 800 era 8bit CPU

This was honestly the best private vintage computer museum I've seen in the world. Big props to the engineer who has maintained that collection.

A few days later, In Poznan, there was also an old computer and video game museum. It didn't compare, but fur kids they had enough video games running:

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2026/06/25 Poznan Enigma Encryption Museum

π 2026-06-25 01:01 in Museums, Poland, Poland2023, Sciencemuseums

i learned in Betchley Park that the first versions of German Enigma machine were actually cracked by Polish Mathematicians from the university of Poznan. One of them was able to figure out patterns on how the machine work and eventually help create a machine that could decrypt the messages of the day after trying enough combinations with a machine that would automate the process.
The museum does a good job explaning how different kinds of encryption have worked over the years, and then explained how enigma worked and showed the machine they built in the end to crack it on a daily basis.