In article <20051228134415.J51020 at shell.lmi.net>, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> writes: OK, this brings me to another question for you collectors out there... What do you do when your collection no longer fits in your office / spare bedroom / basement / garage? Do you downsize the collection to fit? Do you rent warehouse space? Do any of you have physical museums that you've constructed with public exhibits (besides the CHM, of course)? I have talked with another local collector about finding a suitable location for storage/display of our collections. He was interested in buying a place, I am toying with the idea of building something to house my (growing) collection before it outgrows my basement. I'm getting to that point dangerously soon, I'm afraid as I've recently acquired some rather large items (vaxserver, 4 lilith workstations, PDP-11/03, etc.) and the era of equipment I'm shooting for entails more "large heavy power hungry items" of the 80s workstation era. If you built your own space, what did you do for power and HVAC needs? I'm in Salt Lake City, so I have to be concerned with both heating and cooling. I'm tossing around the idea of buying an empty lot and building an "earth ship" on it to house a museum/collection. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 14:11 -0800, Zane H. Healy wrote: When mine outgrew my garage + storage unit I moved into ~1400sqft of commercial space. It's very nice (although no a/c). I thought it would have enough space to house my collection + space to work + all the other stuff. I've since expanded into 2 10x25 storage units also to house the overflow. There's enough space (and just as important enough 3-phase power) to be able to power up and run significant parts of my collection (at once)...unless I power up the KL10...then there's about enough for that, a couple of terminals and maybe the lights. :-) Having the space is nice since I can set up the machines so that I can actually use/work on them. Something I couldn't do (easily) before I moved. It's also a bit easier to bring people over and display the collection. -- TTFN - Guy

Teo Zenios wrote: For me, acquiring -- but not in terms you may be expecting. Acquiring costs little out-of-pocket capital, but it costs me a LOT of time to find what I'm looking for... and time is much more precious than money, of course. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) World's largest electronic gaming project: http://www.MobyGames.com/ A delicious slice of the demoscene: http://www.MindCandyDVD.com/ Various oldskool PC rants and ramblings: http://www.oldskool.org/

I second that, storage eats my lunch and more. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 1:13 AM Subject: Re: Housing collections (was: other Utah collectors?)

The tax situation also changes drastically with the IRS men at your door. Turning a personal collection into an 501c3 is just begging for an audit. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org

which you manage your collection if you're going to go to the whole trouble of purchasing land or creating structures to house it. That changes the tax situation dramatically To me that sounds as lousy as thing to do as parking in a handicap space. Yes, technically a person's collection is not for making a profit, but that hardly makes anyone a "non-profit" in the legal sense. Non-profit / 501(c)3 status is for actual organizations that deserve a tax break because they do good for their communities. Just because someone's collection is not for commercial gain is irrelevant -- why does an individual collector * deserve * a tax break? He doesn't. If you buy land for any reason except a legitimate non-profit, then pay your taxes on it. Tax fraud is a pretty serious crime. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Richard Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:21 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Housing collections (was: other Utah collectors?) In article <006c01c60cdc$bedbc490$33406b43 at 66067007>, "Keys" <jrkeys at concentric.net> writes: This is why my friend was interested in purchasing a space instead of leasing one -- as the owner of the mortgage, you get that interest tax deduction. However, he is in the lucky financial position of being able to afford such a proposition. Me, I could afford the vacant lot, but probably not an existing structure, which is why I was considering an alternative housing style construction (Dennis Weaver "Earthship" style) to keep the construction costs low and give an additional novelty aspect to the building. With some alternative construction techniques the build cost can be as low as $15K. Additionally, it may be helpful to form a 501(c)3 as the entity through which you manage your collection if you're going to go to the whole trouble of purchasing land or creating structures to house it. That changes the tax situation dramatically and suddenly you can apply for grants from places like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for historic preservation funds :-). -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

reading all of my posts on this thread. Sorry. Your message about getting non-profit status said it was related to land and structures "as the entity through which you manage your collection"... Sounded like a personal-use situation. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Richard Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 11:45 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Housing collections (was: other Utah collectors?) In article <000801c60cf7$3be9eec0$6401a8c0 at DESKTOP>, "'Computer Collector Newsletter'" <news at computercollector.com> writes: Apparently you've only jumped in at the end here and haven't been reading all of my posts on this thread. Go back and read them again and you'll see that I've been talking of purchasing land/buildings in the pursuit of making a public museum. This is most certainly not tax fraud and I'm not licensing my museum under GPL either :-). -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

Guy Sotomayor wrote: Just curious, how much per month does this space cost you? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) World's largest electronic gaming project: http://www.MobyGames.com/ A delicious slice of the demoscene: http://www.MindCandyDVD.com/ Various oldskool PC rants and ramblings: http://www.oldskool.org/

In article <43B30E61.4000004 at oldskool.org>, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> writes: [Note to Jim: adopt a shorter line length for easier > quoting :-] I think for things like C=64s which are nearly ubiquitous, it doesn't hurt to have kids pounding on the keys. Things like DECwriter printing terminals seem near indestructible. Once while transporting them from high schools, which rented them for the academic year from us, we dropped one down a flight of stairs. Aside from scratches on the plastic housing, the thing was just fine. For PDP-11s and other minicomputer systems, having a terminal, or even a terminal program on a modern PC can get, you the same experience. After all, my entire time spent using a PDP-11/70 was from a terminal across town from the actual PDP. The main unit was housed in an access controlled machine room to which we didn't have access. to keep things working. You'll need at least one spare unit for parts, possibly more. I think a conservative estimate on older equipment I read somewhere was to keep up to 3 units as spares, depending on the rarity of the item and what tends to break. There are lots of small museums around the country where its basically a "look and see" experience -- you get to look at the collections of 19th century hand tools but you don't get to take the planer out and try it on a 2x4. I suspect small computing history museums are no different, but its not very exciting to look at a shrink-wrapped copy of Word 1.0 in a case (albeit actually using Word 1.0 probably isn't exciting either). My friend has a large collection of arcade game machines. These machines have already been through a fairly rough life in bars :-), so there isn't much that kids can do to them while playing the games. However, recently he has been making noises about selling his collection off wholesale, so I don't know what's to become of that. My plan is to amass a collection that focuses on the area of computer graphics and elements originating in Utah (hardware and software) and eventually create some sort of public display space. How long it will take for that to occur is unknown to me at this point. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

In article <43B31304.3030607 at oldskool.org>, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> writes: g I agree, I just never had "hands on" experience with things like punch cards, paper tape. I had a little bit of experience with 9-track tape. I think having "hands on" experiences in a museum is important to keep people interested. However, I note that most museums do not have any hands-on component. The best hands-on museum I've ever seen is the Exploratorium, which is 100% hands-on. I think that there are things you can do in this vein that allow people (kids particularly) to explore the elements of digital computing without sacrificing collectible machines. When it comes to things like mainframes and largish minicomputers they often need a room where the computing is stored due to climate control and dirt reasons, while the actual "interaction" is done semi-remotely by terminal. Even for things like SGI graphics workstations, you can put the workstation in a computer room and the display/keyboard/mouse in another room (many older workstations are pretty damn noisy!). Then there are things like C=64s and VIC-20s which you can just "sacrifice" to the crowd knowing that you can always pick up another one for repairs. In that scenario I think the most fragile thing would be media, but if you replace the floppy drives with faked interfaces into IDE/PC storage behind the scenes, then that concern fades away as well. I think it would also be helpful to have machines that you can tinker with in the sens of taking out boards and seeing the chips and so-on. These would be machines that you have no intention of ever making functional (in fact, the boards could be dead boards housed in a typical card cage), purely there for the purpose of getting your hands on them. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

In article <200512291526.59597.rtellason at blazenet.net>, "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at blazenet.net> writes: Yeah, the SID chips are in demand all by themselves as people yank them from machines in order to make their own synthesizers based around the SIDs. I think I even heard that you can't necessarily create a fully equivalent clone of the chip as the sound will vary Most people I know that want SID chips look for either a) cartridges that had the SID integrated into it to support SID-based sound on systems that didn't have a SID (VIC-20?), or literally yank them from extant systems. Who says the faked interfaces can't have speakers and audio playback of sound effects? :-) -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

In article <43B4572A.2000400 at jetnet.ab.ca>, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes: There was definately a genlock option for the Amiga, dunno about the C=64, though. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

Richard wrote: I collect mainframes. At least one piece of my collection is in every last room of the house. I am contemplating adding outbuildings. Peace... Sridhar

The wife thinks that we moved from our older 1800 sq foot house with 120 amp service to the newer 4500 sq foot house with 200 amp service because our family had outgrown the last house. When she was talking about family, she was referring to the children. I thought she meant the computers .. I'm going to get a proper basement computer lab someday. (I'll have to wire it and construct it myself.) In the house appeals to me because it will be climate controlled. I hated having my household possessions in a storage unit even temporarily, because there was no opportunity to climite control it at all. Mike

In article <43B31B08.7090308 at jetnet.ab.ca>, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes: Yikes! Brick walls?!? My lot is fairly large (0.23 acres) and I have a huge area in the back of the lot that is essentially "unused", where I could build something. But for a public museum I'd rather not have it in the back yard of my house, so I am considering purchasing some undeveloped land in a cheaper part of the city. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

In article <20051228200901.50bc58e8.chenmel at earthlink.net>, Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> writes: That is what I considered adding to the back of my garage for housing my personal collection. It would be similar to the link that was posted, just that I wouldn't build it like a bomb shelter :-). I notice though that this was consistent with his neighbourhood in the Netherlands and it may be a local zoning style requirement that forced him to use brick, even if he already wanted to :-). I also think having a brother that's a stonemason is probably a big help! For a museum space, I considered an Earth Ship or some other form of alternative construction not only for the relative price (much more inexpensive than traditional construction), but also for the sheer novelty of the building. Having been to lots of little museums and stores across the country (thanks for the camping trips mom!), its always fun when they are housed in unique spaces. One alternative that is quite practical here in Utah is to simply excavate a space out of a standstone outcropping like Hole 'N The Rock <http://www.holentherock.com/>. Doing this gives you a climate controlled environment for free! Rammed earth housing and passive annual heat storage give you some of the same advantages with above ground construction. What does everyone think is an acceptable temperature range for storage? In Salt Lake my garage will get below freezing in winter and above 110 F in the summer. Will you give us a chance before ebay? :-) I have mixed feelings about ebay. Its incredibly convenient for obscure items, but the bidding frenzy stuff and the "view at a distance" aspect sometimes irk me. I collect what I find interesting. I tend to be nostalgic about the older stuff that I used, which is all 10+ years old at this point. Pray tell, what is the "Intel 8088 project"? I only recently heard about people specializing in collecting individual chips rather than whole systems. It makes perfect sense considered the idea myself. Do you purposefully look for specific chips? Are you satisfied in removing them from shipping systems or do you try to find "virgin" chips in their shipping tubes? I recall reading in EE times about another freely available tool chain that was quite useful for small projects. I can dig up a reference if you'd like. I don't recall it being specifically named as "gnu" anything, so I think its a different toolchain from what you're describing. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

In article <43B3837B.7040507 at oldskool.org>, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> writes: Yeah, I have noticed this too. There's also the mentality of "rare" == "expensive". A Q-bus A/D converter board was recently listed with a minimum bid of $250 (!). When noone bid, he relisted it at minimum bid of $200 and still noone bid. It hasn't been relisted again, I wonder if he sold it elsewhere for a "best offer" price. Then I see things like *pieces* of computers being offered for prices higher than entire systems sell on ebay and its only a "buy now" item with an expiration date of 90 days. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

I just took a quick look at the page, and I have some tools which might be of use. I have an 8086/8088 monitor, which provides edit/dump memory/registers, serial download, breakpoints, single-step, disassembly and lots of other goodies in just over 4K of code space - completely independant of hardware (ie: No DOS/BIOS requirements). I also have a PC based 8086/808 cross assembler intended for the "bare metal" which produces downloadable code. Both of the above I would be willing to make available to your project. I also have a "bare metal" C compiler/development package for the 8086/8088 which I'm not quite ready to give away yet (still selling it), but if you get the project "un-dormant", we can perhaps make some arrangement. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

On 12/29/2005 at 8:34 PM Scott Stevens wrote: That reminds me of something I was wondering about. I've got one of those HD64180's in the DIP package with the pins on 0.050" centers. Does anyone know of a socket that will let me use this thing on 0.100" center proto board? Cheers, Chuck

Yes, the monitor is designed to be completely hardware independant (except for the CPU :-) and operates with any sort of serial console. I provide sample drivers for the 8250, and also for PC keyboard/video via BIOS calls (these are the only BIOS calls and are inserted only if you assemble it with this driver option - it lets you run it as a .COM file under DOS to check it out). First thing I write when going to a new CPU is a monitor - I also have monitors to stuff into a lot of vintage gear so that I can poke around, very handy. If it is of use to you on the 8088 project, I also have HDM86, one of my "Hardware Debug Monitors" - it's much simpler, but uses NO RAM - handy for getting boards up and running. Yeah, thats me - I've been doing "bare metal" tools for quite a long time... Thats should be relatively easy to do, especially if you stick to a serial console, or a single video card type (MDA for example) to support. -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

Scott Stevens wrote: Wasn't a book written about this? Hold on... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0827370695/qid=1135995852/sr=… "Build Your Own Microcomputer Based on the Intel 8088 by Walter Fuller" -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) World's largest electronic gaming project: http://www.MobyGames.com/ A delicious slice of the demoscene: http://www.MindCandyDVD.com/ Various oldskool PC rants and ramblings: http://www.oldskool.org/

Scott Stevens wrote: I'm with you. The "ten year rule" is crap -- there, I've said it. It's not even enforced anyway, since people here would have no problem talking about SGI Indigos or BeBoxen or DEC Alpha machines or similar stuff, and that's all newer than 10 years old, or just barely. I think the 10-year "rule", if there is to be one, should only apply to wintel boxes. I believe that's the spirit of the rule anyway. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) World's largest electronic gaming project: http://www.MobyGames.com/ A delicious slice of the demoscene: http://www.MindCandyDVD.com/ Various oldskool PC rants and ramblings: http://www.oldskool.org/

Tony Duell wrote: I've come to believe that the only real "10-year rule" strictly enforced is thr one that decrees that every 75 days or so, we have an extended discussion about the 10-year rule. Doc

On Wednesday 28 December 2005 08:09 pm, Scott Stevens wrote: I wouldn't consider that size to be "fairly large" but then I'm thinking in terms of "several acres", probably as rural as I can manage to get... Sounds familiar. I have the larger of two "bedrooms" in a second floor apartment with way too much stuff in it, stuff in the hallway, in front of my bookshelves, and a 10x20 storage unit. Euw. What would worry me more than anything else about not being completely sealed is rodents, they can be very destructive. We've had a problem with mice here in the house this year. I hear ya! :-) I have a bunch of that stuff on hand as well, plus 6502, 6510, 6522, 6526, and some vic20- and c64-specific parts -- not because I have any particular enthusiasm for those chips, but because I used to fix 'em. And a 6809, and I think a z8001 somewhere. And then those 80xx microcontroller chips, and probably others. I downloaded that at one point and had subscribed to their user list but it read too much like a developer's list to suit me, and I never did get around to getting it installed and configured. Yes. I like that sort of thing very much myself. :-) Heh. Sounds like you're definitely worse than I am! :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:35:35 -0500 "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at blazenet.net> wrote: I have had a TERRIBLE problem with mice out in the garage. I've learned that you NEVER put a PC out there without blank card brackets in ALL open card slots and drives installed in ALL open media holes. I've recently thrown away an otherwise good Dell Optiplex Pentium III system because the mice set up housekeeping in it. There was a big obvious nest in it and signs that 'the little ones' were (im)properly raised as computer component enthusiasts. I still have a lot of systems out there but they're all carefully sealed. But I live surrounded by hundreds of acres of cornfields, and the mice converge on my garage every year when it gets cold. They've also chewed up ALL the power tool user manuals that I made the mistake of leaving in the workbench drawer. Sometimes if I'm out there and being quiet enough, the whole city of mice around me comes alive.

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:38:49 -0700 Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: I worked for a business once where a whole bunch of the operating PCs on the network got infested by mice. It's nearly the perfect environment for a mouse house. A decent amount of heat being generated, small secure openings to get in and out.... Let's just say that mouse urine and the copper traces on circuit cards don't coexist very well. I'm pretty sure a friend of mine used the ISA slot section bandsawed out of one of those systems as a passive backplane in one of his homebuild PCs.

Basically, you need a cat. Gordon.

Living here in the desert, field mice are aplenty, I built a fairly large shed to house my collection (12x24) and although it is not heated or cooled it does keep the computers and equipment out of the elements. One of the solution I have found to keep the field mice from making nests inside computers is to put 1 or 2 mothballs inside the computer. It does work, but then again your computer collection smells like grandma's closet :-D Cheers Tom Ponsford Scott Stevens wrote: