Even as the power and speed of today’s computers make their forerunners look ever punier, a growing band of collectors are gathering retro computers, considering them important relics and even good investments.

In an old barn in Northern California that also houses pigs, Bruce Damer, 45, keeps a collection that includes a Cray-1 supercomputer, a Xerox Alto (an early microcomputer introduced in 1973) and early Apple prototypes.

“For me, the fascination with these artifacts (is) that they are living histories–especially if they can be kept running–and that they are the key innovations that affect all of our lives more than anything else here in the 21st century,” Damer said.