17 Oct
2010
17 Oct
'10
5:37 p.m.
Mark Davidson wrote:
On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Roger Merchberger
<zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com> wrote:
Quite true.
Of course, you can run into the problem of museums rejecting perfectly
good hardware because "they already have one". I rescued a very nice
collection of AT&T Unix PCs (with tons of diskettes, manuals,
expansion cards, spare hard drives) from a lovely person who had tried
for a long time to find a home for the collection. She had tried at
least 3 museums, all whom had rejected her offer of free equipment.
I think most museums (not just computer-related) could do a lot better in
acting as intermediaries between people who need to "dispose" of items and
those who might want what they have - the museum attitude a lot of the time is
"we don't want that, so we don't care what you do with it," when
it's not
really much more effort to say "we don't want it, but we recognise that these
things won't be around forever, and so therefore you could ask here and here
and here..."
It's not about doing the work of actually finding a home for it, but more
about suggesting places / individuals who might be interested, based upon
experience of the item being offered.
On 10/16/2010 07:21 PM, Teo Zenios wrote:
True, but I thought of a point... even with machines that are less
than 30 years old, finding some of the components/peripherals can be
hard. Hell, even software and docs can be impossible to find.
I just think you are thinking very short term,
like 20-50 years not in
the very long term 100+ years where museums are involved. Later
generations will not care about specific machines (unless it was
something revolutionarily special) just in generic how did this thing
work.
If, you meant to type "1000+ years" then maybe I'd agree with
you - when the
archaeologists can't figure out things worked, then they're interested
enough to *not destroy the unit* while trying to figure out how it works. As
a previous poster mentioned - How's the antikythera device
reverse-engineering / restoration going thus far? The argument of "But there's so much
available information now" doesn't mean
much when access the most comprehensive library of the ancient world
(Alexandria) evaporated left most people thinking the world is flat for a
millennium. If people can't access the info, it doesn't do much good - who's
going to have a working DVD-ROM 1000+ years from now?
Even if they did, what about degradation? The movie industry is
dealing with old nitrate-based film rotting away.
Sooner or
later just turning on old relics will release the magic
smoke and parts plus expertise in repairing them will be hard to come
by. For the most part I expect old systems to be run via emulator so
that any software and its data can be read for whatever reason, the
original hardware at that point is not important (unless the emulator
has a bug or old media needs to be reloaded).
Right... but how many
"emulators" will be run on PCs that require +1.65v...
and if the curators forget that the original hardware needs +5.0V (and
that's just TTL... what about RTL or ECL?) and try to get original hardware
working without the full specs (remember, this is in a futuristic
scenario... we still don't have the full specs of King Tut's tomb, and it's
a couple kiloyears old...) Emulators are great for a lot of things
(offtopically, especially running WinXP in a sandbox) but aren't nearly so
helpful when trying to get original hardware working again... All you
need is one collector to lose their job for everything they have
to hit the trash heap. Just by having to move a few times you will end
up losing items or getting them destroyed. Museums probably have a
better setup in case of fire....
...For the stuff they care about. How much is in
low-end storage that they
don't care about? (Yes, I actually own some stuff that's "museum
quality"
(not computer-based). No, I haven't donated it yet as I need more info to
the local museum lackeys & how well said priceless (yes, honestly[1])
treasures will be treated. Very good point. I've always assured people that
I have rescued
equipment from that it won't end up on EBay. :)
Yes, me too - or not ebay specifically, but more that I'll try to find a good
home for it. Once out of my hands it's out of control, but at least I can
sleep easy in the knowledge that I tried to do right by it rather than making
a quick buck.
cheers
Jules