Making the decision to specialize on a particular classic

24 Apr 2004

...

  o Why have five of something?  A quantity of a
thing past three
    seems excessive: One to use, one for spare, so the third one
    is the only excess I try to allow.  
 Well, except if you actually use more than one.  I have a large number 
Other reasons for keeping more than 1 of a machine : 

You're setting up a network of them. This particularly applies if they 
have non-standard network hardware (e.g. Acorn Econet, or the Tandy 
cassette port pseudonetwork). 

You have lots of add-ons, more than you can connect to one machine at a 
time, and you don't want to keep on plugging and unplugging them. This 
applies in my case to HP41s. I have one set up with a card reader, HPIL, 
Extended IO ROM, another with card reader, HPIL, HPIL Development ROM, 
and so on.

The're not absolutely identical. Maybe one has a particular ROM revision 
or something. HP41 hackers will know what I mean by a 'Bug 1' machine, 
and would agree it should definitely be kept!

-tony

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Making the decision to specialize on a particular classic