Slashdot Mirror
Australian Computer Museum Looking For Space
tqft writes "The Australian Computer Museum Society needs space. Basically they have nowhere to store their large collection of hardware. Can you help? Do you or your employer have the floor space they could use? Or should it all be trashed?"
Most of the suggestions so far are "Bring 'em on!" and dump it in a landfill. Sigh, moderators on crack.
In case of the normal computer museums I've seen we're not talking about your average PC or even an Apple 2. Sure, I have ~30 computers in storage and most of the space goes for big VAXen and PDPs but normal museums have huge mainframes, like IBM 360s and like.
It is history worth preserving and a magnificent history at that. Think of all the IBMs, DEC-machines (KL-11 anyone ?), Crays, Burroughs machines and even old tube/relay-based number crunchers.
You ignorant twats can't appreciate anything older than a Amd Athlon.
This is Australia for god's sake!! If you can't find a spare 1000 m^2 in Australia you really are not looking very hard! How about doing something like that airplane park out in Nevada? Build a shed, cover it with Kangaroo repellant, stick everything in there and deal with it later.
And they can take the antique POS I use at work there when they do it.
Why are humans soooo interested to keep all the old stuff around?
Because it has historical value. It's a trail of where we've been, that's all. Yes it's all sentimental, but keeping at least one example (and not a warehouse-full of the same samples) allows students to see where we've been, and how we got to where we are now. Even if it's acedemic, learning the incatracies of the C-64 hardware now in 2003 will help somebody follow the path to 64-bit programming in a step-by-step fashion. I still want to pick up a Vic-20 from some pawn shop just so's I can start following what the hell all these slash-dotters are talking about, but I understand the process of evolution. Hopefully this is still applicable.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.