16 Nov
1997
16 Nov
'97
12:39 p.m.
OK, I am probably going to get yelled at...
Okay.... recently, there's been lots of
"off-topic" stuff going on here
about computers... but I think that it's not "off-topic."
In my opinion it is. There are lots of good, smart people on this list
that can help everyone with modern(ish) equipment, but there are also lots
of them on other lists and USENET.
if you remember, in the "welcome" message,
it
said that it was hard to state the definiton of a classic... but 10
years or older would do.
The definition is no doubt flawed, but trying to fix it may prove to be
impossible. It is the classic cats vs. dogs argument - no one will win, or
have any real valid points to argue with. When does a machine become a
classic? Probably when a bunch of us computer geeks get together and ask
"Remember the Unitari PDQ-8/w? Now that was a good machine! They don't
make machines like that anymore!".
It is probably best to stay with what we have - it can be bent as needed.
Possibly (out for MUCH revision...) is the definition
"Any computer
which has aged sufficently to be considered "outdated" by the computer
market and has historic signifiance, OR is 10 years old or older."
The problem is that that means just about any machine over 3 months old.
The
one evedeint place that requires revsion is the "historical signifiacne"
but I'm not sure how to include that while still aknowladgeing the
presence of many of the best machines and componets that did indeed fail
Many machines that did fail were historically significant - Xerox springs
to mind.
Also, sometimes a whole class of machines is significant, and sometimes
just a few instances (Smalltalk influence leaking out now!) are. The IBM
RT was a bomb, but a hundred or so of them did a great deal to society.
Another example would be the 68000 developement systems that Apple used to
make the Lisa (and Macintosh) - again, the class of hardware may only be a
footnote, but the few actual machines shaped the industry forever.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net