Retro computing museum in Ukraine destroyed by Russian bomb

An old computer with a keyboard and two joysticks.

(Image credit: Getty/Chictype)

A privately owned collection of more than 500 pieces of retro computer and technology history has been destroyed by a Russian bomb in the city of Mariupol. The war in Ukraine is a tragedy on so many levels, but while it in no way matches up to the senseless taking of lives by the invading Russian forces, the destruction of the Mariupol Computer Museum is still saddening.

It has been reported that the Mariupol Computer Museum in Ukraine, a privately owned collection of over 500 items of retro computing, consoles and technology from the 1950s to the early 2000s, a collection nearly 20 years in the making, has been destroyed by a bomb. pic.twitter.com/7xKi3yYjthMarch 23, 2022

The destruction was highlighted by Mark Howlett on Twitter, and confirmed by the Ukrainian Software and Computer Museum account, which operates museums in Kharkiv and Kyiv. The owner of the Mariupul collection, Dmitry Cherepanov, is reportedly safe, though his collection of computers, consoles, and assorted tech from fifty years of computing has been wiped out.

"There is neither my museum nor my house," writes Cherepanov on his Facebook page, it8bit.club.

The museum itself may be gone, but Cherepanov has been chronicling his collection of exhibits online for some time now, and though this is all that's left, it is still a resource worth checking out. There are a host of fascinating old machines, including the Commodore C64, which still holds a place in my heart as the very first computer I owned outright myself. Loved that little guy. Though I did trade it in with my brother's Spectrum 128 to buy an Amiga 500.

As well as images and information about all the 120 computers and consoles in his collection, Cherepanov also hosts RetroBit Radio on the site, too. That's also worth spending some time on, if you ever feel the need for an '80s / '90s gaming mood.

RetroBit Radio player — (Image credit: it8bit)

If you have any memories of the music of the old demo scene it will be a real hit of nostaligia. Cherepanov has set up a Paypal account for donations, the details of which you can find on his Facebook page.

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.