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At 06:07 PM 11/24/99 -0500, you wrote: Hi Megan, My understanding of this issue is that the PDP-6 modules sold at the Museum store were found in boxes in a DEC warehouse. At the same time, TCM removed a piece of the '6 from display, leading folks to conflate the two events, inferring that the pieces being sold were from the one on the floor. The PDP-6 in question is coming back to the History Center by December 20 (this year) as part of a.donation by Compaq which is clearing out a little-known warehouse TCM used for deep storage. I hope you will find this explanation satisfactory and that we can put this issue behind us. I apologize on behalf of the Museum and History Center that we perhaps did not communicate well with you and other enthusiasts about the machine in question. It took some time to reconsruct an event from a long time ago. If you have specific concerns about other machines, please let me know. I am eager to address cogent criticisms of TCM (the past) or the History Center (the present & future) at any time and to work with you all in advancing the state of the art in computer preservation--we have many unique problems that are fascinating to think about and solve, ones that everyone can contribute to remedying. [snip: re visiting the west coast] Plenty! We have many "virtual volunteer" opportunities. One of the greatest needs is to transcribe computer history lecture for the web. This is of tremendous use to scholars because it is a searchable version of the lectures we hold with some of the computer industry's most important contributors. Past speakers have included: Bob Noyce, Jay Forrester, Grace Hopper, Doug Engelbart, Maurice Wilkes, Seymour Cray--an amazing list that covers 20 years of computer history! For a typical transcript, have a look at: http://www.computerhistory.org/events/sage_05191998/index.page Also, these transcripts are soon to be supplemented by RealVideo/RealAudio/MP3 media streams of the lecture. We have posted Godron Moore's lecture from last month on-line as an example: http://www.technetcast.com/tnc_program.html?program_id=54 Might this appeal? We hope to have a "Links" page within the next 60 days. One of the concerns we have at the Center is that while there are superb computer history sites out there run by individuals, there is no institutional architecture for ensuring that they can continue past the sponsor's lifetime or (much more likely) even five years. As you know, some of these sites are simply superb and irreplaceable resources whose loss would be gravely felt. If we take the geological timescale into account (50 years for computers!), there is a real concern that such wonderful resources might no longer be maintained after some finite amount of time. I think you'll agree this is a pretty reasonable conclusion. Consequently, the Center would like to host (perhaps 'park' is a better word? -- since we would have no content oversight whatsoever) high quality sites in computer history allowing these sites to make use of the Center's stable infrastructure (including regular backups, &c.) We haven't worked all the details yet--for example, how to handle updates and so on. If anyone on the list would like to serve as a test case, please contact me and we can experiment! All the best Megan--thanks for caring! d. -- Dag Spicer Curator & Manager of Historical Collections Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing The Computer Museum History Center Building T12-A NASA Ames Research Center Mountain View, CA 94035 Tel: +1 650 604 2578 Fax: +1 650 604 2594 E-m: spicer(a)computerhistory.org WWW: http://www.computerhistory.org <spicer(a)computerhistory.org> PGP: 15E31235 (E6ECDF74 349D1667 260759AD 7D04C178) S/V 516T Read about The Computer Museum History Center in the November issue of WIRED magazine! See "The Computer Hall of Fame - Modern Art." pp. 276 - 299.