15 May
2014
15 May
'14
1:46 p.m.
> Incidentaly, my expeirence suggests that
msueums have a similar
> policy with information. I have never had a useful reply to a
> quesiton from _any_ UK museum (not jsut comptuer ones). Perhaps
> I've been unlucky, but I find private colelctors a lot more helpful.
I don't know to what extent it's relevant, but, tony, you should
realize that you are enough of a fount of knowledge yourself that by the time _you_ have a question to ask, it's
possible the number of
people on the planet knowing the answer can be counted on one hand.
But that is not the problem here. I would not contact a museuam and ask
'what is the exact sequence of microcode states in an HP11305 cotnrolelr
when reading a sector'; or something like that. Nor would I expect them
to do anthign that migth damage the artefact, like pwoering it up (unless
it was being run anyway) or using a soldering iron on it.
Now, I was generalyl askign questions which could be asnwered by
examining the artefact from another angle, or perhaps taking the casing
off
Let me give a conrete example, which is not comptuer related. Sitting
alongside e is a Xerox RX400 Telecopier, a 1970's analogue fx machine. I
was restorign ti (the project is on hold for vaarious personal reasons).
I noticed a UK msuem had one of these machines so I asked :
1) My machine origianlly had the fan/filter unit on the battom, but this
was remvoed by a previous owner. I am therefore missing the base plate.
Could tooul let me look at the udnersid of the machine, or tell me if
this plate is metal or plastic (or soemthing else) and if metal, is it
magnetic
2) I have the manufacturer's service manual. Do you ahve any otehr
docuemtnation, in particular, do you have any infroamtion on aligning the
optical assembly. I would be happy to send you a photocopy of the serivce
manual if you do not alread y have it, and also a copy of the complete
circuit diagram I traced out from my machine
3) My machine is missing the telepphone line isolating transformer unit,
which is the metal can at the far right of the rear section. Could you
either let me see inside it, or take some digital photos of the inisdes.
I want to see just waht compoents were used and how they were physically
arranged.
That's jsut one example. I've had many more, comptuer related things, of
a simialr nature. I might want to know just hwat a mounting bracket
looked like, or what style of conenctor was used, or...
-tony