Hardware Hobbyists vs. Emulator Jockeys

On 18 Jun 2009 at 11:56, blstuart at bellsouth.net wrote: For the really classic machines, the issue may be one of "how do we get this thing to operate at all?" versus "well, it's a nice museum piece--too bad it won't ever work again". Replacing an antique memory device (Williams tube, thin-film, delay line or even core) with modern memory may be the limit of what can be done at reasonable expense. If it gets the system running, one can always leave the old device in place for show. I think bitsavers' archiving tdocumentation is probably more, or at least as important as preserving the actual iron. I've learned more about some old machines by perusing the archives than I ever would have playing with the real thing. One aspect that the documentation can convey that the hardware doesn't is "why we did it this way". i.e. the thought process behind the implementation--and to me, that's far more important. Playing with old hardware without documentation is sometimes like looking at object code without source. It's a grand puzzle and you can figure out the logic, but you lose the sense of the human behind the design. A well-commented piece of source code is worth its weight in gold for getting the big picture and the mindset of the programmer. The same goes for hardware technical manuals. --Chuck