23 May
2003
23 May
'03
9:19 p.m.
On Fri, 23 May 2003, TeoZ wrote:
Well some museum people function like archeologists,
they want to leave the
machine in the state they found it in the wild. People like you want to
restore the machine to the same state it left the factory most likely. Very
few computers that are put out to pasture are probably in the state they
were when they were sold and shipped. Along the way addons are released that
increase functionality, speed, reliability, etc just like the PC today that
you buy will probably get trashed in 5 years with completely different guts,
storage, memory etc. Who is to say whats wrong and whats right in what state
is correct for that machine?
With older machines it is important to know what technologies the
manufacture implemented to design their machine, because this is then how
we determine the state of the art for various eras. Modifications to the
machine would have been in the form of engineering updates or additional
features or instructions. So the machine as it came from the factory and
a machine that came out of production may have considerable differences
worth studying, because it would indicate a change over time (years
usually) as the technology advanced.
Nowadays, that technological progression is measured in months, and less.
Plus the technology is homegenous: it's all mostly PC. So the changes are
usually not that significant or extraordinary or interesting.
I think the right way to display a machine is to get it working while
simultaneously preserving its historical fabric. The Computer History
Museum revived an IBM 1620 in a very intelligent way: they used whatever
modern parts were necessary to get it running again (in this case
semiconductor memory to replace the damaged core plane) but they made all
the modifications in a non-destructive, easily reversible fashion, i.e. no
permanent modifications to the original machine. More information on the
project can be found here:
http://www.computerhistory.org/volunteers/past_volunteers/IBM1620/
This is a really common sense approach to restoration and preservation.
Like I said before museums have static displays for
reasons of power
requirements, lack of personnel that can run the machines, spare parts that
are expensive and hard to find, and the fact that a screwup during operation
could actually destroy one of the few remaining examples (or only one). Most
Is it better to try and fail to restore a machine than to just leave it
static fretting that it might be destroyed in the process? What is
destroyed? Killing a rare (or one-of-a-kind) chip? If you put the best
people on the job and something goes wrong then I think that's better than
never having tried a restoration to begin with. I mean, the thing isn't
going to explode or anything. Worst case a chip fries or a board burns
up.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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