31 Jul
2010
31 Jul
'10
11:56 a.m.
In article <AANLkTikC39131GtBLEF5UZKp9mOk-eeinpseBZtiB7Fp at mail.gmail.com>,
William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes:
Having been a collector of stamps and comic books previously, I guess
I already learned the "focus" lesson before I started on computers
:-). For computers I focus on serial terminals and graphics gear.
There are times when I go to places that are loaded with vintage gear
and I keep an eye out for stuff I think others might be interested in,
but that have no interest to me. While my focus is graphics and
serial/X terminals, there's a point where serial terminals are
essentially all the same. They keyboards have become standardized.
The functions are all virtually identical. The enclosures lose any
sense of differentiation as they all become just large enough to hold
the tube and a small amount of high density electronics. I don't have
any Wyse terminals in my collection because of this.
I've stayed away from teletypes mostly due to the combined issues of
weight, cost and availability. If a number of teletypes could be
easily had, I would accept those into the collection and call myself
"good" as far as teletypes are concerned. A few models would
demonstrate the concept without me having to become a teletype
collector. There are other museums that specialize in that. However,
a few examples for the right price and availability would be fine.
Similarly, most minicomputers and microcomputers don't fit well into my
collection, even though most micros have some sort of graphics. If I
started collecting every micro that had "graphics", then I'd have to
collect virtually all of them. There are plenty of people with large
micro collections and that's not the focus of what I'm trying to do.
So, Apple ][, Atari 800 and C=64, sure if they're free/cheap. They are
enough to represent that class of graphics and are the common examples
with which people are likely to have had first-hand experience.
There's plenty of important graphics gear to fill the collection
anyway. No need to get distracted by micros, commodity terminals and
other things.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
Museums should
specialize more, maybe specific companies or year range.Then
they can build up a collection with all the models and rarities without
having to pass on anything special.
This is a key concept. Any startup museum, small or large, should have
some sort of focus. From the focus should be a written collections
criteria - a set of self-imposed (and self-enforced) rules that the
group sticks to when considering what is to be accepted as a donation.
Almost every small museum or serious collector I have been involved
with has failed at the whole collections criteria idea, myself
included. Most figure out the hard way - or in some cases, they very
hard way, with good stuff being lost or damaged forever. I am
currently helping a friend out in this situation, and frankly, it is
pretty painful (and disgusting!).