25 Nov
2003
25 Nov
'03
11:28 a.m.
On Tuesday, November 25, 2003, at 06:15 PM, Vintage Computer Festival
wrote:
Wikipidia is fine. Can we have our timeline on a page to point to
pages about systems?
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Hans Franke wrote:
Sellam's marketplace is nice. but it does it have a place for technical
notes,
procedures, how-tos, stories. How do I bring up a real PDP11 with
blinkenlights
and switches from cold iron? How do I install VMS on a vintage VAX?
What do I need
to know before I go and buy that vintage VAX?
It's completely useless to have lots of
ego-database projects. Better
join an existing: first of all, there's already Tizianos great list
and collectors data base, now at
http://www.1000bit.net/
(formerly known as Il mio angelo - My Angel :)
He has redone his website during this summer, and it's most definitly
worth to give it a try. To my knowledge it's the largest existing
cooperative project in this area. If your unhappy with some features,
just tell him, and I bet he will update them soon.
Tiziano's site is cool but it suffers from not having a complete
database
of computer makes and models. All in all, it's a nice effort.
Second, our beloved friend an all time hot shoot
Sallam is tries to
setup a similar system on his vintage market place. So, if a european
source is suspect to you, go ahead and see what he has in mind.
The added advantage of the VCM database system is that it ties in to
the
sales and trades. You can input your entire collection if you like or
just the items you wish to sell. In either case, whenever you sell or
acquire an item, the record for that item is transfered to the new
owner,
thus automatically creating a line of provenance, which for rare and
exceptional items will be critical for future historical and monetary
valuations. After a while, with an item trading hands several times
(and
as long as it all takes place on the VCM) you'll be able to know
everyone
who owned your item before you: very cool. wikipedia.org already houses some quite extensive
information about
classic machinery. Just check Atari, Osborne or DEC
Someone did a very decent Altair 8800 write-up as well.
I've been playing around with Wiki very briefly in recent days and
find it
to be quite cool, and I think it is probably a permanent fixture in our
human culture. It's something that could have only come about with the
internet, and it puts the power of historical record into the hands of
ordinary folks, something that should scare the hell out of power
whores.
No longer will history be written by the victors. Haha. Fuckers.
*1 - Just recently I heared that wikipedia
surpasses the actual issue
of the encyclopedia Britanica in terms of size (words) and topics
That's pretty amazing! It hasn't been around
THAT long. Cool.
So anyway, I agree with Hans. Put all your vintage computer Wiki
entries
into the Wikipedia.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
Festival
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