Flashing lights, clacking keys welcome visitors to Seattle’s new Living Computer Museum

SEATTLE — For tourists with an interest in Seattle’s role as a high-tech hub, there hasn’t been much here to see, other than driving over to Microsoft headquarters in suburban Redmond to take pictures of a bunch of boring buildings.

But Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has just opened the Living Computer Museum, with displays of old machines — all in working order — along with a geeky wish list of items he’d like to add, just in case anybody out there has an old tape drive or super-computer sitting around.

Visitors who stop by the nondescript building in an industrial section of Seattle south of the baseball stadium are likely to see technicians in white lab coats working on the machines. But this place is not just for nerds and techies. Since the museum’s Oct. 25 opening, many visitors have been families, and their questions have not been the expected queries concerning technical specs of machines, but rather where did the curators find these artifacts and what were they used for....