How to best monetize collection of 8bit computers?
Good friend of mine do have great collection of 8bit computers. Apart from usual ones (Commodore, Sinclair…), there are lot of East European and similar model that are not frequent. He was thinking about some kind of museum, but I am looking for better solution, if any. Museums require large investment and usualy bring low revenue. Any idea or advice how to create better business out of it? Location would be Europe. He may create a renting service. Recently on a few devcons I saw a retro-corner. It was just a bunch of few popular machines like early apple, c64 and few other machines. You can go there, play with the machines - there where a few games loaded there, that's it. It will require more work and may be dangerous to the hardware (transport) but probably there is some demand for such services. More demanding thing to do would be to create a kit for hobbyists. For example I never heard of IBM 8086 DIY clone available in Europe. The market is very niche and would require some work (ordering printed circuit boards; handling customers). Not sure if it benefit would be worth the costs - most people that are doing those kit's usually stops after a few years. The last option would be to write a book about one particular machine, with schematic and stuff. Probably there would be some licensing issues. I would gladly buy a book that described working on IBM 8086 in all technical details. Currently such knowledge is distributed among old IBM manuals and obscure PC emulation forums. I'm sure your friend can sell a few units online, maybe to North America customers who might be willing to pay a more decent price. I for one would love to have purchase a retro platform for my son as his first computer. But Apple/Amiga/etc. are either not powerful enough or too exotic to maintain at a reasonable fee. I'd try out a 80386/80486 if your friend has one. I never interacted with systems older than a 286 but I'm actually curios about them.
Maybe you could "lease" these computer, by virtualizing the keyboard input and stream the screen back via a simple webcam, some curios and universities could rent them for education purposes.
Still I can't see any decent revenue, let alone driving a business. It could be a part of amusement park. Imagine, now exists parks with miniature World Wonders, and this will be park with 8bit world.
There will be 8bit building, 8bit rooms, 8bit design/environment, 8bit restaurant, and as pearl, collection of real 8bit computers. And yes, as I know, amusement parks are good strong business, only have issues on pandemic. I've already said about amusement park. Also could create 8-bit cafe. But cafe is not simple business to run, because very big concurrence on market. Amusement park is also not simple, but much difference there are not too many parks, and their creation usually very well supported by communities. Best way would be ebay. Everyone thinks its museum worthy, yet 99% of those people never paid for museum tickets to see old computers. Generate NFTs and let people buy the rights to a picture of them, backed 1-1 with actual hardware.