16 May
2014
16 May
'14
8:05 p.m.
On 16/05/14 4:14 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
I didn't say "working" :-)
The Antikythera Mechanism has the last laugh here, anyway.
--Toby
On 15/05/14 9:19 AM, R SMALLWOOD wrote:
I disagree. It would be impossible IMHO to preserve a computer for 500
yaars. ICs will fail whether powered up or not. EPROMs will suffere from
bit rot. You have to look at the motivations behind those
who run museums.
Firstly only a small fraction of what they have is ever seen.
They are hoarders and misers of the worst kind.
That is not entirely fair. The best museums will preserve their pieces
for 500, 1000 years hence (and hopefully longer).
Although it pains me o say it, if you want to preserve a particular
machine for 500 eyars, you pretty much ahve ot use the emulator and hope
tthere is ome way to run that in the future.
Alas too many museums (at least over here) use the conservation methods
for fine art on techncual artefacts. IMHO said methods are not
appropriate for soemthign where the visual appearance is not the most
important factor.
Given that failure of an unreplacaable component, like a custom IC,
doens;'t change the appearance of a machine in most cases, it would seem
to be better to run them now, while iti is still possible, and then to
preserve the remains when something fails that can't then be repaired (it
may be possible to repair it in the future), rather than not run it
now, have it fail anyway, and still have soemthing that may or may not be
able to be repaired. To ru nit now doesn't seem to lose you anything.
-tony