-----Original Message----- From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 2:00 PM Subject: Re: Sun Monitor (UK) (2) years up I economic PLEASE! I didn't mean to imply that you are dishonest, or any other negative thing. I was thinking about someone completely different when I made the remarks to which I think you are reacting. He does say many of the same things as you, but for entirely different reasons. I meant no personal reference to you except in the sense that you do often point to the expense of a given item. We're all concerned about that to some extent. You've made your position abundantly clear many times, and, while I don't share your views in all cases, I understand what you are saying. The only point of disagreement, in this case, is that the fellow who wants to USE the SONY monitor he already has, apparently in working condition, has not indicated he wants to use it in a restoration project, nor does he apparently want to make any other sort of project of it. Instead he wants to use it because he already owns it. I wanted to offer a simple and QUICK way to get there, starting with how to determine whether he can get there at all with what he's got. It pains me too to have to toss something because it's taking up valuable space and I haven't time to fix it before the space is needed. I would never have ended up in this discussion if I didn't feel it important to continue to use resources rather than to discard them the moment they become unfashionable. The way I got here was by trying to give away a bunch of aging computer hardware which has gotten too space-consuming to warrant my keeping it. My own evenings and weekends are spent on trying to take a dozen or so 8" floppy drives and ship them out to people in condition suitable for their use, since most of them don't have the equipment or the experience to adjust them to nominal specifications. If I didn't care about preserving the usefulness of this old hardware, I'd just take off the boards, unscrew the steel, and collect about $8 per drive as scrap aluminum. That's certainly more than I get by fixing them and shipping them. I had no intention of giving any offense with the remarks I made. They were certainly not directed at you. There are people who will pinch software or other easily appropriated intellectual property, and they've always been among us, and probably always will be. I don't believe in making things any easier than necessary for them. that I have read that document and certainly hope they're able to uphold it under the current commercial trend in the LINUX community. much There's nothing wrong with pursuing a project for self-education. It's just not what I perceived the goal in this instance to be. it's Frankly, it's curious that you have no commercial application for your talents. I know a few fellows who claim to know quite a bit about hardware, software, etc, but who have problems with taking direction, reporting to work on a schedule, adhering to a schedule in general, and solving the problem at hand instead of some other related and more interesting problem. hardware/software have Based on what you've said, that would probably be a mistake, but different people will have different views on what aspect of repair/restoration is of interest. In the current case, repair and restoration were not the issue. Seamlessly adapting a fixed-frequency monitor to a multi-sync environment is the issue. That's probably somewhat off-topic, since it doesn't really deal with the classic hardware at all. However, since the monitor is "old" and the problem is old as well, it popped up. are I'm unprepared to comment on the situation in the UK, but, since the individual who initiated this thread is in the UK, perhaps you could contact him and determine whether he wants a fix or whether he wants an education.