7 Aug
2012
7 Aug
'12
10:26 a.m.
On Tue, 7 Aug 2012, Rod Smallwood wrote:
Museums in general and computer ones in particular
suffer from 'Iceberg
Syndrome' Seventy five percent of what they are you can't see.
They are driven to hoard anything they can get their hands on and just let
it rot away in storage. They only restore items that they think will attract
visitors.
Hands up all of those who have made an equipment donation to a museum and
have seen it restored and displayed in working condition. Does anybody know
of a museum that restores systems to working order regardless of if they
will be displayed or not.
The only exceptions to this rule seem be Cars and Planes. Every
vehicle/plane is usually restored to running condition and they even make a
display out of the restoration process.
I have a policy now of /not/ donating computer-related items to any sort
of museum simply because of this. I'd rather something collect dust in my
own storage than have it be buried forever in a museum's "archive" where
it is inaccessible. Locking things away from people who might have a
genuine interest in them is imo just not right.
I personally own a number of examples of "rare" and historically
significant computing technology. Two such examples are a SGI IRIS 1400
[Computer Chronicles, Computer Graphics, 4/5/1984
http://archive.org/details/Computer1984_6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmO0y51_y9o] and a complete Motorola Altair
wireless network system.
While there are quite a number of IRIS 2000 and IRIS 3000 series systems
out there, and as much as I detest using the word "rare" due to widespread
overuse, the IRIS 1400 is about as rare as hen's teeth and there are very
few examples of these machines left today. My own 1400, serial # 95
(originally serial # 47), was located in the UK from about 1983 to 1998
and was originally used as part of a DC-10 flight simulator.
After people learned I had a complete 1400, I got all sorts of email
offers wanting to buy it for stupid money, but both then and today, it
isn't for sale. I would rather restore it and show it at events such as
VCF than have it hidden away in a museum's archives or tucked away in
someone else's private collection.
My Motorola Altair devices (currently non-working due to an unusually
large number of failed/shorted/burned SMT tantalum capacitors) are also
extremely uncommon today. Not only do I have a complete setup, but I even
managed to obtain the books and documentation with them. These too would
be much better to show at events such as VCF than hidden away in a museum
archive or stuck behind a glass display case.
I actually almost loaned my Altair devices back to Motorola's legal firm
as prior art for a patent lawsuit, but ended up not doing so. I was also
going to duplicate the books for them but that didn't happen because their
legal firm's account number turned out to be on hold...and then I found
out that the company who would have copied the books wanted to strip the
spiral bindings off and run the old pages though document feeder. My
condition for loaning the equipment out would have been that they pay for
replacement capacitors (which are expensive, IIRC, replacement parts were
over USD $250) and that they were to be installed before I would loan the
equipment out. After the fiasco with the documentation, I decided loaning
out any of it would probably be a very bad idea.