Goodwill Computerworks Museum is open

Sellam, you wrote: Disclaimer: I live in Texas, was born in Austin, and probably have some local-boy bias floating around here somewhere. I agree with you in some ways. I certainly agree in that I'm very jealous of those guys (GWCW museum). They have positioned themselves squarely astride of the biggest, fastest-flowing stream of castaway (free) antique computers in the state. Add to this the fact that they have the cachet of a charitable organization to motivate donors (whereas I'm just a grubby individual collector) and I turn green with envy. Now let's consider what it is they are actually doing. Like it or not, they are already astride that stream of computers, because they are successful at their mission. Thank goodness they have the sense and foresight and resources to preserve the classics mixed into that stream (particularly the very interesting ones, like the Lisas and Crays) rather than scrapping them as so many other computer dealers, etc. do. Furthermore, they are doing with their preserved machines exactly what I'd do if I had the resources. They are building a very comprehensive collection, and putting it on display for everyone to enjoy. Admittedly the choice of "do not touch" signs is a bit off-putting, but honestly if my collection were on shelves with hundreds of people walking by every hour, I'd have it behind glass. I love the idea of teaching somebody to use my Rainbow, but *only* if I can spend the time to teach them to turn on *both* of the kludged power switches (two SPST replacing a single DPST) at the *same time*, always put the lower floppy into the RX-50 *upside down*, etc. A working, hands-on museum is of course the ideal but in a situation where the guest-to-curator ratio is above about 5, it entails a very high risk of damage to the collection. I'd also like to point out, from a more selfish point of view, that there are no more than one of any specific machine type (that I know about, anyway) in their collection. That means all the duplicates they get do hit their classic-computer shelves and are available to us (me). Again, that's at least as reasonable as I'd be myself and much better than most organizations do. (Actually I'd be inclined to keep spares myself, but then I don't have as good a supply channel as they do.) The one complaint that you have with which I really can't argue is that it's not obviously part of their company charter. However, I'd make the reply that so it isn't, but that just means their charter is inadequate. What they are doing benefits society, in that it is developing and making available a great display of the history of computing. (This is the right group to claim that's a worthy goal, right?) They also make that collection visible to anyone, even folks of very limited means, and that's something that no other organization in the state (region?) is doing. Comparing these benefits to the relatively miniscule finacial benefit they'd get by, how do we say, "whoring the collection on eBay", I find it very attractive to hope they will persist and increase their collection. I therefore hope that no-one complains to Goodwill Corporate about it. I also should point out that it *is* effective advertising, and benefits their chartered mission as such. I've not had a chance to visit their store myself - but I will next time I'm in Austin. - Mark