18 Oct
2010
18 Oct
'10
1:56 p.m.
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I am not sure there's any correleation at all between deepness of pockets
and ability/desire to look after an artefact...
Certainly if you've bought something as an investment (which I suspect
applies to a lot of antiques, alas), you are going to want to make sure
your investment doesn't lose value, Conversely, thoug, if you've bought a
reare machien for 'only' a few hundred dollars, you may not look after it
as well if you earn that sort of money for an hours work ('Hey, I could
byy another hundred of them easily) than if you earn that amount of money
in a month. Of course you can't buy another hundred of them, for the
simple reason thast there aren't another hundred around on sale
My big worry is that preserving classic computers can be very different
from preserving other artefacts, and that at least over here the people
with the deepest pockets tend not to be scientists or engineers who would
know how to do that.
-tony
I completely agree... but then again, when I rescue something, it
kills me if it's just sitting there, not doing anything. :) Right
now, my housing situation completely prevents me from doing lots of
work on several machines I've rescued over the last year, simply
because I have no room. Hell, I gave up my office for my kid (so that
he could have a bedroom by himself) and my girlfriend has GOT to be
the most understanding person in the world. She puts up with a garage
full of machines, a dining room table that has an IBM PC and an Epson
QX-10 sitting on them, an HP3000 with it's drives sitting next to the
dining room table, a corner of the living room with a pile of boxes
containing software and manuals (as well as another stack of
machines), and a corner of the bedroom completely overtaken with two
desks, several machines and the top of the dresser (literally) piled
hight with 2 1/2 feet of software. God love her, I'm a lucky man.
The point is, she's made it clear that, when we move in a few months,
I'm damn well getting an office so that she can have most of the house
back. :) And also so I have room to work on my machines and have room
to lay them out, power them up and do something with them.
I just realized I had written this and still hadn't made a point. I
believe that preserving classic computers is VERY different from
preserving many other types of collectibles. I know of very few
possessions that can become unusable paperweights when something
ethereal (like disk contents or tape records) become unreadable, and
this is something a lot of people (outside this industry) understand.
When I rescue something, I want to make it WORK, damn it. :)
Mark
<rolls eyes back> I don't think that I
claimed that it wasn't. My point was
that it often has a downside when it comes to getting items to people who
are best capable of preserving them for future generations.
I assume this is the recurring "deep pocket collectors are not the
best caretakers" issue.
What evidence do you have?