14 Nov
2002
14 Nov
'02
11:03 p.m.
I collect a few chips, but I'd rather have a whole
working machine that I can demonstrate. You've got to
admit, a set of chips I've got in a shadowbox on my
wall - the 4004 to Pentium Pro - takes up a lot less
space than the machines, generally! I puke when I see
the word "rare" in the ePay ads. There are some
unbeleivably idiotic gems on ebay right now (like the
RARE!!!! 1977 8251 CPU!!!!!, for example).
--- Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com> wrote:
On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Brian Chase wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I find the whole practice of "chip
collecting" a
bit disturbing. Mainly
because it means functioning, useful, components
are becoming scarcer
for those people who could actually put them to
use. And then
secondarily, it creates a market for the willful
destruction of what
might be otherwise working systems or subsystems.
I totally agree. Chip collectors are focused mainly
on the one part they
are after, and I can imagine a rare board that could
bring a rare system
back to life being stripped of a few ICs considered
"gems" without
consideration given to the whole.
There's difficulty in attempting to educate
people
that working systems
are more interesting, and valuable, than
disassembled bits of them. It
/is/ solely a matter of viewpoint, and not
everyone has the skills or
resources to collect like most people here do,
but
getting even a few of
them to see things our way is progress.
I'm not going to outright condemn chip collectors as
they are definitely
preserving information and artifacts, but they need
to be mindful of
computer collectors and not leave a pile of debris
in their wake in
pursuit of their hobby.
That being said, I agree that a piece of silicon
sitting there doing
nothing is nowhere near as interesting as the
greater machine that it is
helping to make work.
Sellam Ismail
Vintage Computer Festival
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia
at www.VintageTech.com *
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