About me

My name is Giacomo M. Vernoni, I live in Italy and I’m 50 years old; my passion for old computers started in 1984 when my parents bought me a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. After that I had a Commodore 128, an Amiga 500 and then an Apple Macintosh LC. Since then I have always used Macs for my work.

The first computer of my collection was a Commodore 64 that I bought second hand in 1994; I have never stopped since then. I collect old computers and peripherals, consoles, games and cartridges, books and manuals.

I’m not an expert in electronics, but in the years I have developed some basic skills such as soldering, checking traces on a motherboard, looking for short circuits, replacing capacitors… nothing special, but I’ve got a couple of friends who help me on the most difficult repairs.

About oldcomputr.com

In 2008 I wanted to share the stories of my computers and I started to write about them – in Italian – at www.vecchicomputer.com. I chose not to talk too much about technical characteristics, there are already plenty of sites that tell you that an Apple II has a 6502 processor :-)

At the beginning I just used some old pictures I had taken with my first digital camera, a 2MP Nikon Coolpix that I used to catalogue my collection. The photographs only portrayed the item I was writing about: for example, a post about the Commodore 64 had a picture of … well, just a Commodore 64.

Then I realised that those pictures didn’t show the most important thing of my computers: my passion for them. The items were always turned off, shown as mere objects. I started to put them in context, connected to a TV or monitor, and took pictures of them turned on, showing that they aren’t just collectible items: the computers have been repaired if necessary, cleaned, taken good care of, and they still work decades after they were put on the market.

I gradually developed a personal style in taking pictures, and the photographs became an important part of the articles I publish.

By the end of 2013 I decided to translate my posts into English, but after a while I opted for setting up a new site. Translating more than a hundred posts would have taken too long, so I’m taking it easy and now I’m publishing new posts on both sites, and when I have some spare time I translate and publish older posts.

Oldcomputr.com saw the light in March 2014.