I just made contact with Don's wife, Bristol. They're not sure what Don died of, but he'd had cancer for 18 years and he died a couple days after entering the hospital after falling ill. Understandably, she has no idea what Don has in his garage. I offered to help her sort things out and to get money for whatever computers are in his collection that are worth anything, and of course I informed her of the importance of Don's disk archive. She's very nice and willing to pass the collection along but she first wants to run everything by her nephew who knows about computers before anything happens, which is understandable. This process will take some time. Bristol has many other things to deal with of course, but she informed me that she will make sure none of the computers or software will be discarded until they can get a full idea of what they have. She said they already took 5 computers to recycling but she didn't think they were anything of concern as her computer savvy nephew was the one who chose them and felt they weren't old or valuable or anything. At any rate, she assured me that nothing will be taken for recycling until we figure out what's all there. I'd like to enlist the help of some local San Diegans to assist with the inventory of Don's collection. I will probably end up making a trip down there in the future to either help with the dispersal of his collection and/or retrieve the disk archive. It would be a great help to Bristol if someone with knowledge of vintage computers can help her nephew identify the valuable machines so she can decide what she wants to do with them. And of course, to help identify the disk archive. I would imagine (or hope at least) Don had it pretty well organized and labelled, but we need someone to identify and separate it from the rest of his collection. Also, I want to give Don a tribute at the upcoming VCF 7.0. I'd like to talk a bit about Don's life and what he did for a career and all that. His wife didn't know much about Don's computing career and so I'm hoping that some people on the list who got to know Don and his history can share it with me. I'll keep the list updated as the process moves along. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]