Popular Science article

While I'd like to say, gee, that was a nice article, I can only say that I'm glad that I allowed my subscription to run out several years ago. Quothe Jim Arnott, from writings of Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 07:46:57PM -0700: The author of that article could at least have had the decency to refer to Tony as Dr. Tony Duell, and not made him sound like just another PeeCee user who also happens to have a PDP-11. He doesn't just "bang out letters, novels, e-mail and code" on his computers, he learns and figures out (with and without documentation) how they work, how to make them more useful with the help of a soldering iron and custom circuitry (not by just adding some boards that he buys somewhere), etc. Without a doubt, Tony is perhaps the most valuable resource that collectors of true classic computers have, particularly when they run into hardware that's undocumented or in need of circuit modifications, etc. Furthermore... what about the other hardware hackers on this list who do all sorts of neat things with older computers, and I don't just mean PCs. There'a a huge knowledge base here in this group; people with vast arrays of experience, and experiences, with all sorts of neat and interesting older computer equipment, from mainframes to early personal computers. Look at the "new" PDP-8 kits, for example. There are people on this list with walls of racks filled with working minicomputers, that sometimes required much restoration work, which are lovingly maintained. Then, there are the collectors who do their own component-level troubleshooting and repairs. Let's see, then there are those PDP-8 and PDP-11 emulators; neat, and useful! Also, what about the mainframe preservationists? Then, there are those who've spent vast amounts of time to make archives of much useful information available to us. The list goes on. It would take a very long time to describe all of the hackish (in the true sense of the word, not the false and perjoritive sense) work and preservation efforts, etc. of all of the members of this list. Alas, that article didn't even scratch the surface. It could easily have made Sellam look much better as well. The members of this list aren't a bunch of "geeks" who spend all of their time doing mundane things with PeeCees and early microcomputers. Such activities as the aforementioned are certainly far more noble than just getting PCs from 1997 or so upgraded with new hardware so that they can run new software. Ok, end of rant. -- Copyright (C) 2003 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.