18 Mar
2007
18 Mar
'07
3:13 a.m.
Okay, Dave, so give me the name and address of some
place to give my
diskette collection to should I be hit by a falling airplane tomorrow
morning on my dog walk. Otherwise, my wife's not going to know what
to do with it, and, God forbid she should depart before I do, the
trust who will be the executor of our estate will simply dumpster it.
I can put someplace/one in our will to make sure that it won't happen
that way.
Hi Chuck,
I think this is a separate issue, what to do to protect the physical
artifacts in our various collections - In this sense, diskettes are
no different than computers, S-100 cards or any other physical thing
that you consider valuable/important enough to want to insure it's
survival bayond your own ability to care for it. Each of us must put
in place whatever arrangements we feel are appropriate.
Perhaps it wasn't clear in my previous posting, but I was not suggesting
that we create a repository for physical media - I believe that most
collectors with media matching hardware would not want to give up
those original media for archival, and physical media also has
limitations and vulnerabilities that make it more difficult to mirror
and share among a group of people (The vulnerability of physical media
is one of the lessons we can learn from the situation with Dons archive).
What I was trying to suggest is that we work together to make a group
managed archive of the content of the many system diskettes (and other
media) that we collectively have in our possession. This would best be
done soon, before we all kick the proverbial bucket.
Once the content of those diskettes of yours are placed into a
repository, that content would be protected against loss to the
community. Yes, the physical disks would remain at risk, and you
should take whatever measures you feel are appropriate for them,
as you would any other item of significance in your estate.
Physical artifacts are a topic for another discussion. I would
suggest that at the very least we place the following information
somewhere where it will be available to anyone with the unfortunate
task of having to clean our our basements:
- And indication that the material is important and should not be
contributed to landfill. (If you have valuable items in your
collection, I assume you would identify those for your estate).
- Names and contact information of knowlegable people who can help
in it's disposition. If nothing else, information about how to
contact this list.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html