IT’S not the done thing for a local journalist to shamelessly plug places that charge an entrance fee. It’s unethical, shady-looking and leaves reporters open to accusations of bias.

However, in the case of the Museum of Computing, I don’t care.

Go there. Go there now. Go alone, go with a loved one, go with your family, go with friends, go with whoever you like, but make sure you go. It’s brilliant.

The folks at the museum didn’t even bribe me to say this, unless you count letting me sit in a Sinclair C5 – the widely ridiculed battery-powered electric tricycle launched in January 1985.

People are sometimes so busy complaining that Swindon lacks interesting things to do that they overlook some very interesting things indeed. To walk through the doors of the museum is to enter a world of electronic retro fantasy, where the phrases “I used to have one of those” or – more likely – “I always wanted one of those” rise unstoppably in the mind.

Here are the ZX 80 and ZX 81, the first popular home computers, looking both old-fashioned and impossibly futuristic. The ZX81 had precisely 1K of memory, meaning that if you were somehow able to gather two million of the things in a single warehouse and link them all together, their collective memory would be equivalent to that of a rather basic modern laptop.

Here, too, are the rest of Sinclair’s machines, not to mention other fabled names, from the first golden age of the home computer; names such as Commodore Vic 20, BBC B and Dragon.

Each is a relic of the days when mums and dads lashed out a week or two’s wages on machines that were always billed as vital educational tools – but they were almost certainly going to be used for nothing more educational than some games that had to be loaded from audiotape.

Or just possibly they may have been used for the creation of simple programmes that filled the screen with the scrolling, flashing word ‘BUM’ or worse.

It was a glorious era when old-school TV presenters such as Fred Harris presided over rather earnest shows urging us to get the most from our RAM. In those days, there were none of your newfangled computer monitors. The computer had to be plugged into the trusty Grundig or Rediffusion telly in the corner of the room, the one supplied by Radio Rentals.

And if mum wanted to watch To The Manor Born, you’d had it, no matter how loudly you pretended Asteroids or Jet Set Willy was vital for your technical development.

There are also games consoles at the museum, starting with the earliest ones from the 1970s, when a simple ping-pong game represented the unbearable excitement of a looming hi-tech future. Later machines on show include the Super Nintendo, the Sega Master System and the original PlayStation. Best of all, some are ready for play, meaning visitors can relive their childhoods (if they’re an adult) or sample a little bit of their parents’ childhoods.

Business machines on show range from an abacus to various Apple Macs, and many of the displays are arranged so the visitor can follow the process of evolution by which the old adding devices became fully fledged portable offices.

The Museum of Computing is an independent, not-for-profit organisation which reopened in Theatre Square in August after a long period in mothballs.

As curator Simon Webb told me: “We started about seven years ago at the University of Bath in Swindon campus in Walcot. We were there for five years, and when the University of Bath pulled out of Swindon, we were homeless.

“Up to this year the museum was in storage, but now we’re here in Theatre Square.”

The museum is grateful to the council for offering the new premises and to the volunteers who are its lifeblood.

Founder and chairman Jeremy Holt said: “We’re here to provide an educational resource that brings home to youngsters the fact that there was a pre-PC period, and to bring out just how much development has taken place. And of course, one of the other aims is to provide a first-class attraction for Swindon.”

The museum is open on Saturdays from 9.30am to 5pm, and on other days by appointment. Admission is £3.50 for adults, £2.50 for children, £3 concessionary and £7 for a family.

New volunteers are welcome, and the museum is keen to secure storage space for items.

Visit museum-of-computing.org.uk.