Retired man turns spare room into Soviet-era supercomputer

Somewhere in the UK, a man named Mike is warming his entire computer room with a machine built from 460 Soviet-era vacuum tubes, each one roughly 75 years old and sourced from cold war surplus bins. His hand-built tube computer uses the same NOR gate logic as the Apollo guidance computers, runs 16-bit math, and takes up to 15 minutes just to stabilize after switching on.

The machine's crowning ambition is a flight simulator set in the 1920s, where users pilot a British R80 airship from Brighton to Paris, controlling ballast, gas release, rudders and mooring gear through a vintage mechanical display that once served a British Rail station.

Mike calls his obsession "an addiction," noting this is his third tube computer since 2021. He keeps a fire extinguisher nearby because, as he puts it, "you can smell it running." He also keeps a ladder close, because, in his words, "It is probably one of the few computers that needs both a small tweeker and a big step ladder."