14 May
2014
14 May
'14
2:29 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Dave
Sent: 14 May 2014 21:44
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Buying something from a museum (was Re: Whats in a straight 8
On 14/05/2014 21:27, Tony Duell wrote:
Certainly many UK museusm do have a 'black hole
policy' as you put it.
And this is one reason (the main reason) why I will not donate
anything to a museum.
I would rather my machines get used and enjoyed than sit i na museum
store soemwhere.
Incidentaly, my expeirence suggests that msueums have a similar policy
with information. I have never had a useful reply to a quesiton from
_any_ UK museum (not jsut comptuer ones). Perhaps I've been unlucky,
but I find private colelctors a lot more helpful.
-tony Tony,
That i s odd because I have generally had helpful replies from all the
people I
And just to make it clear, the Computer History
Museum has a policy
that NOTHING offered or in our collection is EVER sold.
That means? Everything
that ever arrives at CHM will never leave again?
I personally do not like "black hole policies". They mean that the
CHM wouldn't even help out a collector like me with a spare part it
would never need again... have contacted, at MOSI, The Science Museum and The
National Museum of
Computing in the UK and Al at CHM. Al has been especially help full and
re-
scanned documents with missing pages, and helped me
search the software
archives.
One great thing about MOSI is that any one can visit the MOSI collections
centre and view any of the objects in on-site storage. They were quite
happy to
show me the PDP-8 archives they have (sorry for the
long URL) which are
briefly descried here:-
http://emu.msim.org.uk/htmlmn/collections/online/archivedisplay.php?irn=331
48&QueryPage=%2Fhtmlmn%2Fcollections%2Fonline%2Fdetailedsearch.php&s
ection=
That link says there are tapes there. It would certainly be worth checking
if they contain anything unique. Would the museum let you try to get the
tapes read to recover the contents?
Regards
Rob