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Problems in Computer Conservation
sobachatina writes "The Computer museum at The University of Amsterdam has an interesting page with examples of the problems that they run into maintaining 20+ year old hardware such as rubber rollers from card readers melting or mold growing inside CRT terminals.I hate it when I get mold growing inside my monitor!"
There have been some interesting discussions about this kind of thing on alt.computers.folklore recently; it might be worth checking out for those who want a more hard-core technical discussion. Myself I prefer to use emulators and avoid aging issues entirely, but then my apartment's too small to indulge in antique hardware...
o Keeping old hardware alive
o Keeping old CPU's alive
(In addition to this stuff, USENET of course has a number of groups dealing with specific older hardware.)
2. A museum should contain items that are interesting to others. How many would venture into a junkyard of mold computers to look at the "exhibits?"
I just took a postdoctoral position in the Netherlands, and my office is one floor above this Computer Museum, as I discovered only a couple weeks ago (and now I realise why my network connection has been slow for much of the day...). I think the exhibits are quite fascinating, and give enormous insight into how computing was done thirty years ago. It really gives one an appreciation for how much computing has changed---not merely the technology, but the approach to doing computer science. So there's one person anyway, though I didn't come to look at the mold in particular.
3. Perserving crap serves no purpose. Why not start a museum of Gremlins, Pintos, Festivas, Yugos... (See my other posts)
Well there's a brilliant argument. By that measure, historical (as opposed to artistic or natural) museums would be largely empty, precisely because most of the artifacts therein were perfectly ordinary, everyday items. What you call crap, may well be a priceless treasure for an archaeologist ten centuries hence, attempting to glean some insight into the dawn of the machine era. It seems laughable now, as it no doubt would if you had told a potter in the early Bronze age that is work would be considered a valuable treasure thousands of years hence.
Mouser
Stop and consider the common mode failure: plastic or rubber failed in every case. What does that tell you about your plastic CD or tape substrate and the readers? Cermaic and glass last all else returns to dust sooner than later. The infamous NPR archive tape case, where ultra expensive tapes failed well before anyone expected is a case in point. You might be able to make a special ceramic CD, but the reader would fail and have to be reconstructed. The best prospects for long term data survival is still human readable monuments.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... Joseph Stalin ...
Ten points for google.
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I was quite sad when I had to throw it away...
Argh! Older TI's had lifetime warranties! My dad had one of those that he bought in college. It died sometime in the late 80's/early 90's and they sent him a TI95 (wierd qwerty calc with a cartridge slot) and a pile of cartridges to replace it. Never throw away an old TI calc; you never know what they'll send you as an "equivalent model"