Associazione Culturale Verde Binario

Verde Binario is a cultural association born in december 2002 and located in southern Italy, in the town of Cosenza. The name “Verde Binario” means literally “green bits”, since our interest is focussed on the relationship between environment and technology. Since its early days, the association is working on two main projects, both involving retired IT hardware retrieval and restore. MIAI – Museo Interattivo di Archeologia Informatica (Interactive museum of IT archeology), is the main project. A permanent exhibit of historical computers, including mainframes, old PCs and videogame consoles. Visitors are welcome to interact with all the working machines experiencing the feel of old systems, softwares and interfaces. The exhibit includes many machines, ranging from big VAXen to early Apple PCs, UNIX workstations, old IBM PC clones and vintage videogame consoles. Guided visits to the museum are available by email or mobile reservation. While looking for vintage hardware for the exhibit we immediately noticed that many people were throwing away newer hardware, mainly assembled x86 machines with no historical interest, but in good working order. Quickly, a “Trashware” project started. We take all the Pcs we can an take them in our labs. Small hardware repairs and/or upgrades, cleaning, and injection of Free software bring them back to life and set them ready again for use. We give all the PCs we restore to anyone who needs the at very small fee, for covering the retrieval and work costs and for contributing with Verde Binario's activities. 100% recycled hardware and 100% free software :-) Aside with our main projects we promote cultural, educational and social events and hacker attitude.