November 2, 1995
Web posted at: 7:50 p.m. EST
BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The Computer 2000 at Boston's Computer Museum is a place where the kids can get into computing, literally. The size of a two-story house, the walk-through computer makes Lilliputians of us all. The Gulliver-sized keyboard becomes a child's springboard into the computer age, and the circuit boards serve as a gathering place for the technologically inclined.
("It's humongous!" - 43K AIFF sound or 43K WAV sound)
Recently, workmen added some big multimedia upgrades to the "floortop" computer. (No desktop could hold this setup.) The 486 Intel chip was swapped out for a seven-foot-square Pentium processor big enough for kids to get inside for a hands-on feel of a working computer. "Not only is this a model of a computer," said Oliver Strumpel, executive director of the Computer Museum, "but it's a working model of a computer, where you can interact with the different components of it, and really see how it does what it does."
The ceiling-high ethernet board shows how computers send messages to each other. And children can see how e-mail streaks across the Internet to land in their computer. (281K QuickTime movie)
Kids at the museum had good things to say about it. "I like the idea that it wasn't a museum where everything was behind glass. I liked how everything was open. You could touch everything," said one young visitor.
From the oversized circuit boards to the huge turbomouse trackball, virtually all the giant computer's components are real and functioning. In fact, the only stage prop in the entire computer is the keyboard. There just weren't any real keys rugged enough to stand up to being walked upon.
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