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!"

Comments

Hermetically sealed vacuum containers

[ObviousGuy]

Suck the air out of the exhibits and you'd probably be able to preserve those exhibits a little bit longer.

And if all else fails, take a picture and put it up when the original machine has fallen to pieces.

I retired my Compaq transportable 8088

[kfg]

Just a few years ago. Not because It didn't do what I wanted it to. In fact I rather miss it because it was ideally suited to its task, but because various little mechanical bits of it started to get wonky and I couldn't find replacements.

I'll be able to custom build a replacement now with the new VIA stuff, and the replacement will undoubtably be "better" than the Compaq, but it's still just plain annoying to have to take a grand or so out of pocket to replace something that did it's job ( and that I only payed $50 for in the first place) and could have continued to do so ad infinitum had a few $5 parts been available.

And of course its basically working carcass is now sitting in some landfill because none of the local shops even considered it worth taking up space if I gave it to them for free.

And this could still be a continuing issue. One of the surest ways to force DRM "enabled" machines on the majority of the populace is to simply phase out the bits of the machines people already have making them impossible to keep going.

It might take 20 years, but businesses seem to find the patience they otherwise lack when it comes to ways to grind down the consumer to the level they desire.

KFG

Disposable Culture

[EvilTwinSkippy]

God, between this post and previous article about houses I wonder it historians 1000 years in the future ares going to look back at the 20th century and think we must have reverted to the stone age. Or maybe we lived a strange immaterial existance. Why else are there no remnents of housing, or roads, or even buildings. (Skyscrapers have a life of 100 years before they have to be torn down because of metal fatigue.)

Okay, we WILL be leaving behind mountains of trash that future cultures will probably be mining for raw materials.

Been there, didn't do that.

[geoffeg]

When I was a kid I found my dad's old (Texas Instruments, I think) calculator. It had a one line red VFD display and was almost the size of a brick (it weighed sligtly less). I also found a little book of magnetic strips (about the size of a stick of gum). The calculator had a little slot in the left and right sides. You could load "programs" into the calculator by inserting the strip in one side of the calculator and a little motor with a rubber wheel attached would pull it through and spit out the other side. If you were lucky, it had read the strip right and loaded your program.

Well, after about a dozen of these loads the little rubber wheel attached to the motor fell off, no more contact with the strips. I tried tons of things, tape, pieces of plastic, shaved down washers, nothing worked. I was quite sad when I had to throw it away, it was a fun little toy. I'm sure that now, being older, I could have fixed it. Maybe if I had kept it and fixed it I could still be using it to this day.

These things wear out and break down but I think if you have enough time, money and resources you could probably keep them going forever.. But, is it worth it? For me it would have been... for the sentimental value.

Geoffeg