17 Jul
2005
17 Jul
'05
6:57 p.m.
a billion dollars for doing nothing. Museums go off
and do their stuff
and the world never sees the results (if any) publicly. It frustrates
This is something that annoys me too. Muesums acquire large collections
of machines, software and documentation which then seems to be impossible
to access. When I used to volunteer at Bletchley, I was not allowed to
look at their documentation collection. OK, so I wanted some of the
information to repair my own machines, but so what? I was not going to
remove manuals permanently, or even temporarily. I was not going to
damage the manuals. I just wanted to look something up.
On this list there are people who will pull one of their machines apart
to check some detail (be it mechanical, like 'which way round does this
connector go?' or electronic 'what sort of signal should I be seeing on
pin 4 of this chip?' I have never met a museum that will do anything like
that.
me every time I think about it. But what can I do?
The world at large
doesn't care about sharing the results of old digital archives, and I'm
in effect airbrushed out of the picture.
All I can recomend is that you keep on doing it, because most of us here
appreciate what you do.
So I find something else to do. I've got a day job running a $10 Billion
peripheral that keeps me busy most of the time. There's enough
frustration and heartache there. (Also some satisfaction, too.)
The rest of my time is spent tinkering with complex electromechanical
systems for fun, definitely not in any attempt to make the world a
better place. I am having fun, for the most part. The most frustration
comes when I decide to "look back" and see how nothing that I did made
any difference in the end. Oh well, it was fun at the time. Look for
that instead - don't focus so much on acquiring/trading/valueing stuff
in your case.
Agreed. I fool around with these old machines because I enjoy it. If I've
helped one other person get a machien going, if my home-made schematics
have helped someone, or if I've just encourages people to have a go, well
that's enough for me. But I'll keep on playing around anyway, because
it's something I enjoy doing.
-tony