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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!"
This has never been a problem for the folks down at Not@Home cable internet servce.
Just check out their state-of-the-art equipment!
tcd004
for going solid state all the way.
I work as tech support, and the other day I opened up a computer case. I thought the dust bunny in there the size of my fist was a rat at first and figured it was about to jump out and bite me.
The problems for future computers are going to be worse! Ewwwww!
I'm fairly certain that enough particles have wafted in for some really nice little pot trees to be growing in my CPU by now...
I am Law! You are Crime!
They should stop running their webservers on the antique computers. Then they would last longer...and maybe they wouldn't be /.'d already.
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 have been pwned because my
I hate it when I get mold growing inside my monitor!
That's when you know it's time to buy an lcd.
Interestingly enough, the old technology is not considered the best, at least not as a backup medium. This is the thing most of the preservation efforts go and should go into.
:)
Admitted, paper lasts very long, there is enough ancient evidence
But look e.g. here http://www.osta.org/technology/cdqa13.htm,
they say that CD-Rs last 50-200 years(!)
Compare that to magnetic tapes, discs, etc.
But the final solution for very important data may well be the engraving into gold-plated aluminium, as the NASA did it for pioneer 10...
It seems that mechanically changed media (stones, CD recordables etc.) have the longest lifetime.
My boss brought in his laptop.
... eventually he left the lcd, and never saw him again. Either he found his way out of the laptop, or got electrocuted.
There was an ant crawling around INSIDE the lcd. You could see him running around
1. the netherlands are not poor....
2. it's a museum...
3. there is old that has to be conserved. (See my other post).
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
... It just wouldn't seem right without the simulation of the capacitor "popping" in an old VT100. I saw this happen and a little mushroom cloud formed over the top of the terminal. I had to walk over and unplug it as the young woman at the key board wouldn't go back near it.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I've solved my 'dirty keyboard' syndrome by purchasing black ones.
I used to put 'em through the dishwasher.
Works like a charm.
(just remember to remove the circuitry, m'kay?)
how about the opposite?
;-P
plug the thing up the net, pay some cobol programmer to write a server, then put a wish fulfillment story on slashdot to the effect of "proven: microsoft stole source code from linus" or "proven: mp3 pirating good for the economy" and then watch the poor old decrepit things melt or explode.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I still have the "nanosecond" I received from Grace Hopper dinner she spoke at in Milwaukee. I wonder how many of these are still around?
Probably about a billion.
def: nanosecond: wire approx 11.98 Inch long, if you don't know why already then you wouldn't be interested.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
1.: They can. They are not using these computers for their daily work. Are you kidding?!
2.: You have probably seen enough of these boxes and stuff so you won't go into a computer museum. But others haven't, are interested, and they go.
3. There is sometimes older scientific data, still of relevance, that has to be recovered.
I was de-bugging a radio stations computer system that wasn't playing music (no music == bad) so I had to crawl over the on-air console and go behind the built in furniture. My GOD! HUGE lumps of dust, and wire... running... everywhere and nowhere at the SAME TIME! It turns out the problem was a home-made null-modem cable connecting the scheduling computer with the playing computer (most important systems in the station, responsible for playing all music over the air) was resting under the UPS they had back there. I'm trying to keep things cleaner now. Less wires that dont run anywhere (hell, I think I remember hearing there was 120v Live not connected to anything just laying there) and more vacuming (less dust). Systems turn to SHIT when you don't activly watch over them.
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.)
Ummm...no. Nobody read it that way.
Lay off the crack pipe.
Mess Stuff Up
Hemp (the fiber of which used to make rope, and the leaves of which is used make hippies & the early BSD's) paper can last 1,500+ years
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
Okay, we WILL be leaving behind mountains of trash that future cultures will probably be mining for raw materials.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Old data is not the same as worthless. Say they did census work on punch cards back in the 60's. Just because its old does not make data worthless. The equipment may be, but its the data you care about.
Mod point free since 2001
Yeh, because you play with mundane stuff.
Me, I'm getting what will be the jewel of my collection, a Intergraph Interpro 6000. Clipper C300 (I think) cpu, which is weird even by my standards. But the hard drive is gone... while it uses SCSI which is easy to replace, the original operating system is long gone. CLIX. Try ebaying for that. And you've all heard of 3w3 or 13w3 monitor connectors... but 24w7? It makes my brain hurt just looking at the thing.
And how about my PDP-11/04 ? I can't even be sure what the Xylogics unibus card is, though it has to be storage of some type. 8 inch floppy? Tape controller? SCSI? Who knows. Not that I have too many friends with the expertise to help me load RSX on it, even if I knew.
Heh. I still want that Cisco AGS+... more proof that I don't know when to quit.
sounds like the hampster powering the computer fell off it's wheel.
$cat
CD-Rs use an organic dye which reacts to the recording laser in a CD-R burner, causing it to melt and pit--it then becomes non-translucent and the reading laser is refracted when it attempts to read those portions of the disc.
:P
There are several known cases of bacteria and fungus attacking this organic dye, not including the obvious danger that heat and sunlight pose to it.
"Regular" CDs use a polycarbonate substrate instead which is literally stamped into the CD during an injection moulding process. THIS is a mechanical change, giving the advantage that a stamped CD could very well last 50-200 years, whereas a burned CD-R that is not hermetically sealed will be lucky to last 10-20.
It seems that what we need is an inorganic hybrid of a stamping machine and a CD-R burner, something that can (using a much more powerful laser) physically inscribe the bits into a polycarbonate-like material. The nice thing about a technology like this being adopted, is that the firmware could be modified to allow the same machine to create CDs, DVDs, and whatever else they throw at us within that form-factor. Even better would be the ability to come up with your own (Open Source?) disc data storage format.
Anyone want to play devil's advocate on that idea? Apart from cost, I could see consumables and waste being an issue.
Jason Fisher
Not a bad idea, actually Apples last a while, well mind the Apple Lisa Harddisk that was there. Actually I have some working core memory (that one isnt working, but I have more) at home. My mac classic has never failed since it was new. My PC has failed a few times.
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
That is (or at least was, before stations went all robot all the time) a major problem with radio station control rooms, it's a major hassle to dust and vacuum while somebody's doing an air shift, especially when you have to be careful not to suck up one of those temporary repairs that have been hanging out the back of some piece of equipment for the last 20 years (and of course it was installed by an engineer who's been gone almost that long and never documented anything anyway).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
I mean, really. Your nick is only different to "Anonymous Coward" by one character, and I still didn't misread that.
This deserves to be modded, but not +Funny. Did anyone else read that as -1, Dummy?
Can you tell that I'm bitter about my recent experiences with dead or dying slot one and socket 370 boards and various VGA monitors?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Consider this: In my business, people are using machines as old as 30 years and some may be quite a bit older than those. These machines have everything from punch card readers to tape readers to special floppy drives that are impossible to find nowadays. And of course, these parts go bad, and as luck would have it in this industry, replacing one of these pieces of machinery can completely break a business. Especially with the economy doing as badly as it is now, and manufacturing is at such a low that everybody in this industry is suffering. But I digress.
The point I'm trying to make is this: If these things (CRTs with mold, rubber wheels melting, etc) are critical to the operation of a really old computer, then someone needs to manufacture them, just like people still manufacture replacement parts for old cars. This is most likely a better idea than replacing these systems with new ones for the following reason: These old systems are proven. A lot was invested into making them reliable and whatever bugs exist are well known by now. Replacing these systems would introduce problems for a long time to come... problems like software not working properly, which is a problem that management has a very difficult time accepting. Try telling your boss that some buffer wasn't flushed and therefore $50,000 just went down the drain. A rubber wheel melting and being replaced is a lot easier to explain to one's manager because everybody knows what a rubber wheel is. And how much does a rubber wheel cost? Even if it has to be specially manufactured and costs the end user $100.00, that's a hell of a lot cheaper than re-engineering the whole damn computer network. And putting up with stupid management (of which I am a member) giving you shit because three months have passed and the new computer network STILL isn't operational due to some stupid SQL program or perl script that has yet to be written, and we've gone ahead and ordered that rubber wheel anyway.
Negra Modelo. Me llamo Juanito Rodriguez y soy alcoholico.
Electromechanical gear from the 1960s often still works. Working cash registers and jukeboxes from the 1940s and 1950s aren't that rare.
It's getting worse as gates get smaller, too. Transistors used to last for many decades; now a decade is a good run.
A couple of items that I still use:
1. An Acer keyboard, (Model 6512, Circa 1994) I am typing on it right now. This thing is built like a brick and I happened on it when by workplace gave away all the pre-Y2K computers to the employees. Much stronger than an old IBM keyboard and built to last. It just happens to have an ATX plug on it. When I snapped a Ctrl key on a much more modern keyboard playing a game, I picked this thing up off the pile of old equipment because it was the only thing that would work with my modern computer. I still am using it to this day even though it has major grunge problems. It still shows no signs of wear.
2. Packard Bell monitors, These things are tough and again, built to last. 17" 1024x768 and still works great! I finally gave it up only because I was getting fragged because of the low resolution. I plan on using it for my Linux server down the road.
My point is that these items were used when I got them, did yoeman's service while I used (still use) them and will be around for a long, long time.
I don't consider having a "Windows" button a reason to give up my keyboard. Sure, it has a Num-lock light that will not shut off (Due to an incompatability with modern motherboards) but other than that it is very solid.
Far saner to code to a VM that will continue to work on future hardware and keep storage abstracted. My mainframe friend always tells me they still use punch-card readers, only they don't exist physically any more. Kind of of like how tar writes to "tape drives" that don't exist either, we have phased out tape for desktop backs, but the software is the same.
I maintain some really old thermal wax colour printers that have crumbling rubber wheels and it *sucks*: The consumables cost a ton, parts are extortionately priced, they are flakey compared to new printers, they have crummy DPI and they are sloooowwwwwww...... First decent budget I get, they are all going to die. Because I am going to replace one colour postscript printer with another, no-ones even going to notice (except it'll be faster, cheaper and better).
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"