13 Feb
2009
13 Feb
'09
6:21 a.m.
test equipment seems to be a poorly covered area in
the museum
and archive world.
I was thinking about this some more last night, and there is little
activity preserving the software for test equipment. Brokers keep the
manuals and the hardware, but rarely keep the software to make it work.
For example, the Biomation CLAS 9000 logic analyzer had no built in
user interface; it was a SCSI periperial connected to a Macintosh.
They didn't document the protocol to talk to it, so it is a rather
large boat anchor without a Mac and the software to talk to it.
Then, there are all the PC instruments that had custom cards and software
to talk to their widget. The parts are separated, and no one saves the
card inside the PC or the software to make it work.