I will stick my oar in for the Large Scale Systems Museum just north of Pittsburgh, PA, in New Kensington (which is where the modern aluminum smelting process was invented), with their simple website at https://www.mact.io/ .
They have DEC PDP11 and VAX, SGI, Sun, IBM mainframe and midrange, Data General (apparently the same terminal setup as used in Severance), a Cray J90, etc. And it all works and you can sit down and type on the systems. If you want to take the 45 minutes it takes to boot an IBM mainframe - you can do it. I know some of the people there, they are top-notch restorers and know the hardware and software very well.
LSSM is really top notch. It's grass roots, done by volunteers that want to preserve and share experience with these machines.
Most museums, I'll pick on CHM as an example but it applies to basically any metropolitan museum: by contrast are quite sterile, you can tell they have a ton of money but it's the standard impressive architecture and displays setup that is designed to ferry large groups through relatively quickly but don't impart much wisdom on the participants.
I never got a chance to visit Living Computer Museum but I wonder if that met some kind of high funding to be able to service masses while still going deep hands on.
That wasn’t my impression of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. (Assuming that’s the CHM you mention.) I haven’t been in maybe 10 years, though. Have things changed?
I went to both years ago, and did enjoy LCM better. The difference is that LCM was ectremely hands-on. They had all kinds of rare machines out on the floor that you could just...play with. Imagine using an original Lisa running XENIX of all things, then firing up MazeWar on an Imlac.
CHM is very well done but more of a traditional museum with limited, curated interactivity.
They have DEC PDP11 and VAX, SGI, Sun, IBM mainframe and midrange, Data General (apparently the same terminal setup as used in Severance), a Cray J90, etc. And it all works and you can sit down and type on the systems. If you want to take the 45 minutes it takes to boot an IBM mainframe - you can do it. I know some of the people there, they are top-notch restorers and know the hardware and software very well.