4 Aug
2014
4 Aug
'14
5:29 a.m.
On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 01:25:52AM -0400, Toby Thain wrote:
[...]
At least it's in Canada. Sometimes you have to go
to where the stuff
is, it doesn't come to you.
Or even just make sure you take hoildays where the kit is. I was somewhat
involuntarily packed off to Vienna, but after the world's tiniest bit of
research, found myself in Technisches Museum Wien[0] where I tweeted these
snaps:
https://twitter.com/pndc/status/495240267679936512
https://twitter.com/pndc/status/495270580002635776
Also in my collection of pictures (which I haven't downloaded from my phone and
posted somewhere useful yet) is a Remington Rand Univac, an Altair 8800 with a
pair of 8" disks making the whole lot about 10U high, a complete NExT cube
system including the laser printer (which I didn't realise existed) an an IBM
5150 in mint condition. There were some curious choices as to what was
considered saveable artifacts for the 1990s and 2000s -- a Kindle is
reasonable, but some of the other modern kipple was unremarkable -- but of
course we won't really know what is historically interesting until they are
much older.
There are loads of other fun bits and pieces, although it has a fairly Germanic
flavour including what seemed to be a somewhat tasteless Third Reich-themed
display of wartime radios, which means there's less British and American kit
and you'd see in for example London's Science Museum. The German influence also
meant I saw some unfamiliar DIN plug formations. (Well, at least it wasn't
French and their infernal SCART.)
A tip for people thinking about walking to the museum. It's on
Mariahilferstra?e, however having walked the full length of that road to get to
the museum and then tended to the subsequent blisters, I can only conclude that
it starts in Slovakia and goes all the way to Slovenia. Consider taking the
tram and/or U-Bahn instead.
(Back to London tomorrow!)
[0] http://www.technischesmuseum.at/language/en-us/home
(And yes, the staff really do speak en_US rather than en_GB.)
[1] That was our Plan B after realising that the randomly-selected Plan A of
the heating Museum[2] was closed for the summer. I concluded that the pilot
light must have blown out. Vienna is rather hot and has been hitting 30?C
most days, so I can see why the museum might not be too popular right now.
[2] http://www.wien.gv.at/english/culture/museums/brennpunkt/