Vintage Geek Museum
The Vintage Geek Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee, showcases a vast collection of vintage computers and technology from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Visitors can interact with fully functional machines and learn about the evolution of personal computing.
Planning your visit
The Vintage Geek Museum in Knoxville holds home computers, consoles and peripherals of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and the distinguishing feature is that the machines run — Apple IIs, Commodore 64s, TRS-80s, Amigas, early IBM PCs and the consoles of the period, powered up and usable.
That matters because the experience of these machines cannot be conveyed by a photograph: the boot times, the disk drives grinding, the character sets, the sound chips, and the fact that the user was expected to type commands.
The collection covers the arc from kit computers built by hobbyists to the mass-market beige boxes that put a machine in most American homes within fifteen years.
Guided tours by staff who maintain the hardware are the way to see it.
Knoxville sits near Oak Ridge, itself central to computing's wartime origins.
Allow ninety minutes. Current availability is listed below.
Before you book
Where is Vintage Geek Museum?
Vintage Geek Museum is in Knoxville, United States.
How long should I allow for Vintage Geek Museum?
Allow ninety minutes. That is the time the collection itself takes at an unhurried pace, before any queue.
Do I need to book Vintage Geek Museum in advance?
Guided tours run to a fixed schedule and small group sizes, so they are usually booked ahead.