-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at
classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at
classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Philipp Hachtmann
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 1:33 PM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Rescued documentation issues
This is a tough one. What I'm finding is
there is very little
detailed
documentation
that has been archived on how systems were built, along with the
applications that
ran them for exactly the reasons you give. The best you find are
overviews in
the trade publications of the time.
Hm, overviews could be of greater historic
interest. I used google and
it seems that my docs belong to a paper making machine control system.
And it seems that those are still around somewhere.
What you get from technicians in most cases is not what gives you the
"big picture" of a system rather than drowns you in detail.
For the paper thing, I have binders and binders and binders full of
flowchart diagrams, listings, more diagrams, ECOs, memos etc.
But I have not yet found the machine's design documents or something
that gives me an overview.
Of course, there's always a counterexample, and I'm going to offer one. One of my
colleagues needed to decipher some 'images' of DECtapes that were created by
simply extracting track contents (essentially, recording the read head output) into a disk
file on a modern PC. Interpreting those images required in-depth research regarding
DECtape media format and the use of same by various DEC operating systems and utilities.
Are historians
going to be interested in artifacts to this level of
detail?
My (little) experience would say: Not really.
I am! I am! :-) My position, that detail is important, is premised on the belief that
if we are committed to preserving the history of information technology, we need to
preserve the artifacts as *working* systems.
But I also recognize the practical challenges of saving the immense amount of information
created over the last few decades. Saving it in physical format requires a great deal of
space and curatorial care (to avoid damage over time and to provide meaningful access to
it) and even the finest such program can be rendered moot by a random spark. Saving it in
electronic format is labor-intensive and runs the risk of loss of information through
noise in the process (i.e. scan quality) or the obsolescence of storage and representation
formats. I've had numerous conversations with Library Science types regarding the
latter problem. It's a hard one.
UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.
Ian S. King, Sr. Vintage Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
A project of Vulcan, Inc.
http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org