CPU-GALAXY is an online museum where every processor, board and strange ceramic chip pictured on the site comes from the owner’s actual collection. This is not a generated catalog. Peter has the stuff.
The site describes itself as a virtual museum of vintage and rare CPUs, chips, boards and related hardware. Exhibits combine high-resolution photographs with descriptions and datasheets, turning what could have been a photo gallery into a useful identification and research resource.
Peter’s “about” page explains the motivation plainly: save old chips, photograph them properly, share the collection, and pass on handling knowledge to newer collectors.
That last part matters more than it sounds.
Rare silicon is easy to destroy
Chip collecting has its own physical problems. Pins bend. Packages get dirty. Collectors want to expose dies. Old boards get scrapped. Parts that look like worthless ceramic rectangles can be historically significant.
Peter writes that experienced collectors learned cleaning, pin straightening and die work through trial and error, sometimes killing rare devices in the process. The tutorials exist partly so somebody else does not have to repeat all of those mistakes.
His best collecting story is pure CacheRat material: an early Intel 8008 processor board found in the garbage.
The site treats old electronics as artifacts rather than generic e-waste. An Intel 4004, 8008, early EPROM, DEC processor or IBM module is not valuable only because collectors will pay for it. It is evidence of how computing was physically built.
A museum without waiting for a building
Private collections disappear easily. Hardware gets sold in lots, estates get cleared, labels separate from objects, and a carefully accumulated collection becomes fifty unrelated auction listings.
Photographing and documenting the collection creates a second layer of preservation. Even if ownership changes later, there is still a searchable record connecting part numbers, package styles, boards and datasheets.
For webmasters, CPU-GALAXY is another good example of a site whose SEO comes almost accidentally from exactness. Processor numbers and obscure chip markings are precisely the things researchers type into search boxes.
CPU-GALAXY was pulled from CacheRat’s larger list of old and specialist sites.
Explore the 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list
If you have ever picked up an unidentified processor and typed every marking into a search engine, this museum is built for you.