IT specialist collects 1980s vintage computers

Ryan Hayward founds Retro Tech group to share old technology with younger generations

Human beings are forever engaged in twin projects: One where we try to shape the future and another where we try to preserve the past.

Ryan Hayward is a mix of both.

Hayward works at St. Bonaventure’s College in St. John’s as an IT administrator and computer science instructor. He also has a tech company called Infomatix.

And as is the custom of most IT folk, he’s amassed a collection of machines over the years. He took time during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns to survey his collection of old tech and wondered what to do with it.

“I had, at that point, a collection of old computers, just from the nature of being in IT and not wanting to throw things out because I’m a hoarder,” laughs Hayward.

“Because what else are you going to do when you’re inside your castle waiting for the plague to arrive?”

He figured it was about time to figure out if it worked.

“Pulled it out of the closet, pulled it out of the garage, pulled it out of the attic. And lo and behold, because this stuff was well built, most of it still works.”

‘AV KID’

Hayward describes himself as “the quintessential AV kid” growing up. He can remember his parents buying a Commodore 386 in 1988. Having a PC was a big deal in Newfoundland at the time.

“I was super infatuated with that, I loved it,” he says. “My uncle at the time was living with us, worked for the company my father worked for doing their IT. He helped set it up and get it going. He was my early IT bouncing questions off person.”

By the mid-90s, Hayward was in middle school, tinkering with old 386s and 286s in his school lab, and became his school’s de facto IT support.

“These computers were at that time probably 10, 12 years old, so they were considered junk. But I just loved them. They were very simple and basic and they worked. That sort of got me hooked on being an IT person.”

BUYING A PET

Back in 2020, stuck in lockdown with access to ebay and a credit card, it didn’t take long for Hayward to start adding to his collection.

“The pinnacle of my collection right now is a 1977 Commodore PET, which is one of the original personal computers, came out at roughly around the same time as the Apple II came out,” he says.

There are different modes of collecting. There’s collecting to flip, and there’s collecting to preserve. Hayward often finds that the folks he’s buying from want to make sure these old machines are going somewhere they might be used or loved.

“The owner actually wanted to make sure it was going to somebody who would collect it, and wouldn’t actually try to sell it,” he explains.

“So he gave it to me for an amazing, amazing deal because I promised I wouldn’t sell it. And I’ve been offered stupid amounts of money since I found it, but it will never leave my collection.”

Hayward isn’t trying to save every computer ever made, so he tries to collect with a purpose, starting with computers he has a personal connection to.

“You can’t save everything. I understand that. You gotta cherry-pick what you want to save and go from there,” he says.

“And that’s sort of where my collection is. I want one of everything from this certain generation, and then of course things that remind me and make me nostalgic for technology.”

His emphasis on restoring these machines to usable states, and then letting them be used, is an extension of this philosophy. That’s what they were built for, after all.

“To what end are you actually preserving it if you’re sticking it in a hermetically sealed room and it’s not turned on and you’re stabilizing it with nitrogen or some inert gas?” he says.

“I understand that’s how you preserve certain things. But what’s the point of preserving it for the sake of preserving it if it’s not going to be visible, on display, and to some extent usable?”

ON THE OREGON TRAIL

In November 2021, Hayward created the Retro Tech Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group to help likeminded folks connect. At the most recent Sci-fi on the Rock convention, the group set up a retro computer room, including an Apple II running Oregon Trail.

“We had people sit down and play the entire Oregon Trail. It’s an hour to play through the game. We had at least 10 people go through the game over the three days.”

Another big hit was the Commodore rotary phone, an accessory Bell insisted Commodore sell if the company was going to support Commodore’s VIC-20 modem.

“It’s fun watching people who are 10 or 15 years old right now use a rotary phone, and teach them how to use it. But that was one of the biggest hits of the event.”

Hayward is no technological luddite. He understands the purpose of the new tech. But he thinks there’s value in showing younger generations of users exactly how far we’ve come. He points out that the time between the first PCS and now is similar to the gap between the first powered flight at Kittyhawk and Neil Armstrong putting a bootprint on the moon. The difference between an Apple II and a Macbook Air is less cinematic but no less impactful.

“It’s beginning to be that time when that stuff needs to be preserved in some form for future generations,” he says. “That we went from literally not being able to fly one day to being on the moon in less than a lifetime. And technology is kind of that way.”

That is the actual inspirational power of old objects, he explains. To say, “This is where we were, and this is where we are now.” To know that in a world beset by problems, improvement is possible.

Next year at St. Bonaventure’s College, the kids will have the chance to take a tech history module that will make use of Hayward’s machines.

“From an education perspective, it’s really cool to show kids,” he says. “The program itself recommends using emulators online and checking out videos and stuff. But to be able to drop an Apple II in front of a kid and be like, here you go, write a BASIC program for me. Here’s how you do it. These are all things that it’s cool to have out on display somewhere where people can use them, because eventually they’ll be forgotten.”

He hopes, as well, that in a throwaway society, seeing restored computers from decades ago might get kids thinking about the problems with planned obsolescence and a culture of “new for the sake of new” in a world of finite resources.

“It’d be a great way to teach kids about the past and help them understand why it’s important when we buy something new we do it for the right purposes and not for the wrong purposes. Not because we want it, but because we actually need it.”

ROSE-PATTERNED SOFAS

The group is hoping to create a more elaborate setup at the Avalon Expo this fall. The plan is to have more machines running retro games and to set up a LAN party to get some Battlefield, Delta Force 2 or Unreal Tournament going.

Long-term, Hayward has dreams of creating a tech museum where these functioning computers can be displayed in their full context. There are two kinds of rooms he wants to create: the family computer room and the video-game basement.

“I want to rebuild that room somewhere the way I remember it: big chonky desk, a filing cabinet that was full of God knows what. A computer. And a plethora of game titles and floppy discs,” he says.

“I also would like to do the standard Newfoundland basement, with a big floor model television and the stupid carpet and the big rose patterned sofa. An NES, and an SNES, and a few other games consoles, a couple of Ataris, that kind of stuff.”

COMPUTERS WITH JOBS

Finding, collecting and repairing retro tech is, as Hayward says, “not a cheap hobby.”

But he has found a way for the collection to earn its keep. Shows like Stranger Things that are set in the 80s require period-accurate set dressing. A number of productions in Newfoundland are also set in that decade, and Hayward is more than happy to rent out his collection to ensure accuracy.

“I enjoy the fact that it’s able to make its own revenue and make a little bit of money there to be able to help preserve it. Any money that the retro tech makes is used to go buy more retro tech or buy replacement parts for said retro tech,” he says.

“I’ve rented out a bunch of this already to a production that’s happening here shortly, so you’re gonna see a fair bit of it on an upcoming television show, hopefully.”

Why does he love these retro pieces?

“It’s not the tech. It’s the memories. Hearing the buzz of the CRT monitors and hearing the noise of dial-up internet, that is so quintessentially retro to me and brings up such emotion.”

Even the act of collecting, the hunt, is about the people as much as the machines.

“Somebody will say in passing, ‘Hey Ryan, there was a guy I knew growing up who lives in Insert Random Bay of Newfoundland, he always had computers. He probably still has them,” says Hayward.

“And with just that amount of knowledge, with just a person’s name, I will go and find that person. And even if they don’t have anything, it’s the fun of making a connection and having a discussion and talking to people.”

Hayward encourages anyone else who has a passion for retro tech to reach out via the Facebook group.