For vintage-tech lovers, this story feels like stumbling on the digital equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb. A forgotten barn, a collapsing roof, and thousands of untouched machines from the dawn of home computing — all suddenly reappearing online for the price of a dinner out. It’s the kind of find collectors dream of and historians silently envy.
A Forgotten Mountain of Machines
Hidden away for 23 years in a creaking barn in Massachusetts, more than 2,200 NABU computers were rediscovered — a colossal stockpile of early networking machines designed when home internet was still science fiction for most households. Their owner, retired engineer James Pellegrini, had bought the entire lot in the late 1980s and early 1990s, hoping to build a business communications network.
The project never materialized.
Instead, the machines — weighing roughly 22 tons altogether — were stacked on the barn’s second floor, gathering dust while the structure around them slowly weakened.
“I loved how they looked back then,” Pellegrini admitted. “But nothing ever happened. I never launched the project. I think I made a few partial drawings and that was it.”
Despite decades of neglect, the computers remained in surprisingly good condition, a detail that immediately caught the eye of retro-computing enthusiasts, who saw them as rare relics from the formative years of digital culture.
From Barn Floor to Online Frenzy
With structural concerns mounting and storage costs rising, Pellegrini decided it was finally time to clear out the forgotten stash. His first attempt — a quiet listing on Craigslist — barely stirred interest. But once he turned to eBay, the response changed dramatically.
Within days, nearly a quarter of the stock had been sold, each unit priced below €100. Collectors rushed to snag a piece of computing history at a bargain, sharing excitement across online forums and social media. Before long, the entire inventory had disappeared — snapped up by hobbyists, museums, and curious buyers looking for a nostalgic project.
Today, none of the machines remain for sale, fueling an almost mythic aura around the “NABU barn find,” a moment where forgotten tech resurfaced to remind us just how fast — and how far — the digital world has evolved.
If you’d like, I can also write a follow-up piece focused on NABU’s history, early internet experiments, or the modern collectors restoring these machines.
