24 May
2010
24 May
'10
9:43 p.m.
Hi Tony el al.
Well it's interesting to see how much of what I suspected you have
confirmed from direct personal experience.
On a more positive note I have a great deal of admiration for what TNMoC and
the others are trying to do. The way they going about it, however leaves a
lot to be desired.
There is a huge amount of knowledge amongst the members of just this list.
Has any one been approached by any of the preservation/restoration groups
for information or assistance? If somebody says I have just restored such
and such a system and I am a restoration group with the same system but not
working I'd be calling the guy pretty quick.
Waiting for people to volunteer will not get you the right people at the
right time. If you have a system that needs fixing then find somebody who
has experience and will help. Don't waste their time with travel to BP or
anywhere else. Get it in a vehicle and deliver it and collect it when done.
The two major issues most restorers have are space and transport. They would
save more systems if they had the right transport and space to work. So if
you want to be a working computer museum get yourself a big van and some
hefty volunteers. Then make friends with known restorers. Horse trade parts
they may need for their work on your systems. Don't be afraid to exchange
items in storage for something a collector ahs and you would add to your
display. The old 'the donor wouldn't like it' excuse is nonsense.
Rod
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 24 May 2010 20:52
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Anyone off to VCF-UK?
Hi All
I have been interested in the response to my comments. Its clear
that the event title was at lest misleading and possibility a
misrepresentation.
I think that's going a bit far. It is clearly a vintage computer event. I
don't think anyone could claim otherwise. However, from what I've heard
from talking to people who've attended the VCF in
the States or in
Germany, it appears it will be a somewhat different sort of
event.
I do have sufficient reservations about the style of the event and who it
appears to be aimed at that I will not be attending. I do hope the evenit
is a success, though.
That said I may well still attend. However this
situation has brought up a
That is entirely up to you.
number of import issues.
There's a suspicion that the world of computer collecting may be divided
into to two groups. I'll define the two as the 'Restorers' those who put
systems back into working order and the 'Preservers' who clean the outside
I've been know to refer to the latter as 'stamp collectors',
particularly if they want to own every cosmetic version of a particular
machine (but don't care about the internal changes).
I can give a classic example of that. The HP80 financial calculator. The
normal collector's guides give all sorts of cosmetic variations. What
none of them point out is that there are 2 very different logic boards
used. The onlder one has 7 ROM chip dice mounted in a hybrid module. The
later one has 2 conventional DIL chips for the DOMs (each has 4 times the
storage of each of thr original ROMs). That to me is a much more
significant change...
and display non working items. A bit like dead
animals pickled in
formaldehyde and displayed in clear jars. Worse yet they tend to display
only part of their hoard. I can't accept that storing systems out of sight
in an unserviceable condition is justified.
Alas I am guilty of that. The reason is that I've not had time to restore
all my machines yet. Many times I've been able to get an interesting (to
me) machine and if I'd waited it wouldn't still be avaiable. So I store
tit unitl I get time to work on it. But my intnetion is to have all my
machines in working condition in the end.
-tony