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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?"
I think I might be able to fit a few more computers in to my bedroom. Bring 'em on I say!
Look up! It's all the space you could ever use!
you can use my landfill in China but you must pay me $20 per item to haul this poisonous shit away to a country without stupid laws or status quo's against official bribes.
I can use the hard drives to generate free electricity
Let me in on the final solution, since I have quite a large amount of computer crap, including:
And that's just the stuff I can see without turning my head. And based on other stories/comments/etc., I KNOW I'm nowhere near the worst "collector" out there.
I'll store a few away, I've got some space right here on my desk. Don't happen to have any new 3.0+ghz boxes that need to be 'stored'?
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Hmm, I suppose a "Computer Museum" (considering the speed of technology) would be the only type of museum Australia could really have...
I've heard the paintings in the Australian art museum are almost dry now.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yeah, but these guys sound as if they have a few mainframes as big as your house!
From the arical: If the Australian Computer Museum Society, based in Homebush, NSW, cannot find an angel with a spare 1000 square metres of warehouse space in the next six weeks, its computer collection may be crushed.
"If we can't find a benefactor willing to give us a home for a peppercorn rental, all this will have to go to SimsMetal," says David Hawley, president of the Australian Computer Museum Society. "And we need a new home within the next six weeks, because it is going to take us six months to move it all."
Sounds like they have way to much and 90% of it SHOULD be trashed. C'mon, that's more than 100,000 sqrFt. Can you imagine a WalMart filled with junk because thats what they are asking for.
It's in Sydney.
You find it buried on this page - looks like its currently at a self storage center in Sydney. (Near where the olympic village was).
Why post an Auscentric article like this to a USian site is beyond me, but for those interested, the map is here
This is a great cause for the government to step in, wouldnt you agree? I love knowing about the past computers, how they were concieved, what happened that brought us here. I suspect the next generation would be just as curious. To loose this would be a total disaster.
If they can not find something, the goverment should find something for them, even if its temporary, until the find somewhere permeant!!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Look up, preferably when you're outside.
You're asking me?
I have a house full of old computers and typewriters and terminals...and then there is stuff in storage and more stuff at friends and relatives houses...you're on your own. And don't look for someone to buy it as scrap...they'll spend their time trying to get you to take more junk off their hands.
Museum....is that what you call it? That's rich...very funny. I tried that line years ago, and no one fell for it then, so I think you need to face up to the fact that you have a lot of junk...just like everyone else.
To look up.. its past all that blue stuff.. :-P
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
When I stood for election to the Australian Computer Museum core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the Australian Computer Museum project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
Australian Computer Museum used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Why are humans soooo interested to keep all the old stuff around? I mean, being human I do realize that there are value in history - but am I the only one who thinks that some of this history can be re-created?
This can't be said about ecosystem because that's something we don't, and may not ever fully understand - so it is beneficial to keep species around because they can have potentially very important uses, but old computer hardware are stuff that was created by humans in the first place, so - despite some token items, why do we keep it all instead of dedicating resources to creating new and better stuff?
It's like a child who builds some lego creation but would not tear it down even though his current abilities in making lego based stuff are so much more advanced.
and, this question I think was asked on DS9, by who I forget - but certainly a Cardasian.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Quit tryin' to use Slashdot as your own personal eBay.... ....So, how much for that dual PPro? :)
Get rid of the duplicates, or at least keep no more than two of a kind (hey, it worked for Noah). The magazines and crap can either be recycled or take the choice ones only (and scan them in).
Once you have the collection down to a more manageable size, then ask for help. Storing loads of junk at someone else's expense is a little much to ask.
Or, have a yard sale and give the shit away. At least _someone_ might enjoy it. A Beowulf cluster of junk collectors, if you will. Cost: zero.
Why store it? Use it to power a few small Aussie towns!
See last article.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
And anyway, there seems to be quite a few Australian readers/posters/self rightious slashdot zealots (just kidding). So in that case, I better get moving before they beat me to it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I saw a show on television which claimed that some parts of the outback don't get measurable rainfall for years at a time. Why not haul all this stuff to the outback and throw a tarp over it? I read that 95% of Australia is empty desert so this seems like the perfect solution. Old mines are a good bet too. Salt mines are very popular with folks who want to store stuff.
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.
... there was plenty of space in the outback...
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
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.
They should pick out the significant stuff or things that introduced some new technology and get rid of the rest!
I don't go asking others to store all the stuff that I have around the house, if I want to recover some space then I sort through it and throw the useless stuff out... but that takes some effort so I don't do it very often, maybe they are as lazy as me?
--- No 16-bit support in Vista? Half of our modules still use it! ---
An old AMD computer, processor type forgotten. (Probably about a 400 Mhz) something.
Ugh. Old? So old you don't even remember?
Wow. That's not exactly a collection you have going on there. That would be ontop of my desk at home.
Dick Smith is supposed to like rescuing things. There's contact details on this page -- anyone got a fax they can use for personal business such that they can fire off a heads-up?
There's lots of space over here in Canada... Just change the name and you've got yourself a deal. =)
A standard football (American) field is 57,564 square feet. These people need only 10,764 square feet. Thats only 18.7%!!!! Are you serious that this group of geeks can't scrounge up the cash to get this much warehouse space?!?! Sounds like they're not trying very hard - I rent about 6,000 square feet for $1,500 a month.
Smells like some sneaky PR work by the museum ;)
1400 Smith St in Houston, TX. Enron's headquarters is a gigantic 50-story building and is only using about 10 of those floors now.
That's 40 floors of free space.
In stunning AmberVision (tm): http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/last.pdf
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Mirror here
My other half makes me throw all my junk out, I don't see why this place should be any different !!
- A fuzzy 17 inch monitor
- An old Indigo2 computer sans hard drive (and more imporantly, sans hard drive bracket.)
- A dual Pentium Pro 180, with 3 GB SCSI hard drive
- An old AMD computer, processor type forgotten. (Probably about a 400 Mhz) something.
- Some sort of IDE raid card
- About 12 hard drives totaling 8 GB of storage
When I was your age, we didn't have monitors. We used mom and dad's TV! The Indigo2 wasn't even planned at that point, dual CPU's and IDE disks were pure rocket science.Since you call this fully useable equipment "old" (keep in mind, the stuff you mention make perfect *nix firewalls/servers), here's some of the stuff I've got at home, in my own personal little "museum" -- from the top of my head: Probably 100 kilograms of 8086 PCs, Oric-1, Apple ][, C64, Texas Instruments TI99/4A, lots of Amiga 500's, a few 68k Mac's, and lots of old game consoles (b&w ping pong).
Now that's the stuff that works. From the stuff that unfortunately doesn't work anymore, the list is too long. An example would be the extremly rare West PC 800, a "dual cpu" 6502/Z80 Apple][ clone made in Norway in the early eighties. It's so rare, I can't find any spare parts, nor info about it on the net.
Oh well.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
Make a museum of course, but they need to look at the computers as some sort of resource not just a junk pile.
Take the best pieces and display them. Take the rest and sell the componants to someone who could use them, OR:
Other museums might be interested in a purchase.
Rumor has it that early chips used gold in the manufacture and I have seen on the net people offering to pay for old chips.
Ebay is known to sell documentation and boxes for more then the computer itself is worth.
Old databases may need to be read, that only old hardware can do.
Clusters of old computers can do work such as folding@home, and the museum could offer visiters do donate a small amount to be listed as supporters of a mass computing system to cure disease.
A cluster could also be made to offer businesses some cheap run time for app testing.
OK this is only barely on topic, and maybe I'm just lazy or something - each time I've went looking around online to find the speed of a PDP11 I can't find an answer that fits in with my perception of computer 'speed'. Maybe I'm too young, or thinking in terms of new machines too much.
So for anyone who's been there done that, used one (or some, or them) what equivalent speed do they have to a current machine? C64 speed? early 386 speed? a tenth of a commodore 64? or were they an entire range that ran everything from half a hertz to blinding fast.
I feel I should be googling this but there's so much other cool archaic stuff I've always been distracted in the past.
Computer history is still critical. What happens is that everybody throws the manuals away, throws the machines away, and then twenty years later some bright fellow looks at all the people who are still being crippled for life or killed by bomblets in Vietnam. He thinks about the ongoing efforts to clean the countryside up and has an idea. "Hey, don't we have records of approximately where we dropped those?" "Sure," somebody says, "they're on the tapes in vault A-217X."
Well, the bright fellow goes down to the vault, gets the tapes, and finds that many of them haven't crumbled. Problem is, he doesn't have a machine to read them, so first he has to build a new drive to read the tape, then he has to re-engineer the computer and OS that were used to make the tapes, then he has to figure out what the bombing codes on the tape stand for. This is real life, not a hypothetical.
So you never know what might help, or even save lives. It has all the value that recording any kind of history has. These people aren't just piling this stuff up in a room. That would indeed be collecting junk, since a dead computer is merely a metal curiousity. You can hardly learn anything comparing a computer from 1980 to one from today by gross phsyical examination. The goal is to keep the machines operational on a constant basis. We need to keep in contact with that history, and a country the size of Australia certainly should be able to support a museum as large as a Wal-mart, let alone the small actual size of this thing.
It's a little like scoffing at the idea that any library need ever be as large as the Library of Congress just because you don't need such a thing in your neighbourhood. A whole country may very well need one.
To begin with, I could quote maxims about "Those who forget the past..." but I'm not that interested in the future consequences so much as understanding the present. A good example of this is a piece of history that's still with us that many people are already aware of: "dumping core." That's not terribly obscure, and is largely a jargon kind of thing. But what about using "!" to mean "not"? What about other semi-arbitrary parts of programming language semantics? Where did that come from and why? What about word sizes? Sure, most things are in powers of 2 now, but has it always been that way? No. Why not? We're constantly dragging bits of the past around with us, often long after it has stopped making sense to do so. Historical computers are important in that regard, as studying them helps us realize why we do things the way we do them.
That being said, it seems like there isn't much in their collection that is unreplaceable from other collections. However, I think that the reduced availability of these machines for study and experimentation would be a bad thing.
You've got an Oric? Gimme!
... *damn* I've got a lot of trash.
:-)
Okay. I'll raise you two ZX-81's, a Sinclair QL with two of the brain-dead streamer thingies, a TI99/4a *with* a game cartridge, a 1541 drive for my C-64, an 8-inch floppy for my ][e & clone, a couple of IBM 5140's, and an MSX with a 5 1/4 floppy drive. All LNIB (just kidding).
[rereads the above]
yes, we have no bananas
museum ( P ) Pronunciation Key (my-zm)
n.
A building, place, or institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical, or artistic value.
_____________________
If they threw all their 'junk' out they wouldn't be a museum anymore, you see.
the bluebrain wrote:
:-) But if you really want one, you might want to check out some of the old stuff at eBay from time to time... If you have a few bucks spare, you might want to take a look at this one, perfect condition -- but hurry, only 10 hours left! :-)
:)
> You've got an Oric? Gimme!
I won't sell it for anything in the world
But seriously, eBay is a great spot for buying old computers.
Well, especially if you're a fanatic nostalgic like me.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
I thought that thing Agent Smith put in Neo's gut looked suspiciously like a vacuum tube...
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I've got one spare Indigo2 HDD bracket :)
I'm running out of space myself, and if i can't solve it quick I'll have to give up my collection of MFM hardrives...
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Screw that! I'll give you 50 LCIIIs, a 520ST, a bunch of IIGSes, and 1541!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
In Canada we have perhaps more free space. Peronally I can host one PC server (if it still works and it's not really noisy!) in my apartment. Send it over here to Canada.
Less is more !
Museum looking for space
I would just tell them to look up during the night. You can't miss it.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Hah, I got an Osborne Executive (with two 5 1/4 disk drives), Axil Sun workstation, Hyundai Sun workstation (works, complete with 21" Hyundai Monitor, tape drive, spare keyboard, mouse), c64, Dragon 32, Amiga 2000, Amiga 500, a closet full of PC-hardware, a Thinkpad 716CS (butterfly), and a Z88 (Sinclair) portable computer.
Of course, I'm single.
Perhaps they should contact a local observatory for some help in finding the elusive "space" :-D
A little planning goes a long way...
I'd bet they could have comparable computing power with something like 10 or 20 modern desktop computers. That ought to solve their storage problem.
But more seriously, is there anyone out there who speaks Australian? What is a "peppercorn rental"?
That's all I have to say...computer museum.
Why have a computer museum when you can use all that computing power. Everyone knows linux can be installed on anything and if we daisy-chain all these bad boys together who knows what we can do with this sort of computing power.
WE COULD PLAY OREGON TRAIL!
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
Australian Computer Museum Looking For Space
:)
That's dumb, just look up! You'd need a space shuttle to get ther.... huh? Oh, yeah nevermind..... RTFA? I can't even be bothered to read the text below the headline!
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
Probably 100 kilograms of 8086 PCs
So, including the cases and drives, that works out to about.. two of them? =)
Bitchslapped. Neat.
This is Sydney, unfortunately. If you own a spare 1000 m^2 in Sydney, then you're already a millionaire. And that's without even building anything on it. Property prices have become obscene in the last few years. A shed covered with kangaroo repellent would probably sell for a cool $300k in Sydney. More, dependent on position.
DeeK
while most of /.ers think that `my basement have plenety of them, just trash'em', here is why:
many artifacts of museum used to be very common, yes, those computers may be very common now, how about in next 10 years? next 100 years? What is common now may not be common (or even rare) in the future.
you have computers in your basement, what if you need to move to another living space? will you take them with you? What will they end up the day when you died? I guess most of the stuff in your basement now will end up in landfill.
a systematic way to preserve artifacts is a good thing, even if somebody-has-them-already. Who knows when will disaster come? Having a copy is always a good thing. (remember the raided museum in Bagdad?)
why not protect'em when you can?
p.s. no my apartment does not have basement :)
They should find an Australian Space Museum that needs computers.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Seriously, if there are significant machines in the collection (and there certainly appear to be), and the alternative is the dumpster (shudder!), the Aussie museum should contact them ASAP and see what can be arranged.
Someone go teach them about Ebay.
Haha! The next time I get moderator points, you're going UP, mister! :-D
:)
But yeah, those babies are heavy. I even have a Hewlett-Packard NetServer/100 at home. Dual-SCSI, 100MHz, 48M RAM, and all that fancy stuff. And yes, it weighs 35 kilograms. That's about the half of my weight!
I got it for free, and when I carried it to the car, I got big, black bruises all over my pale arms!
So as you might guess, I'm not the tanned body builder
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
Australian Computer Museum Looking For Space
What a coincidence, the Australian Space Museum is looking for computers! Why don't they just trade?
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Is that you, dad?
Ive always enjoyed older technologies, seeing them run again. I have XT PCs, commodore 64, and am thinking of some really old larger-than-fridge AS/400 systems etc, to setup and network together. My home network is already arcnet and tokenring, but I'd love to go into larger and older machines, especially if they can be networked and some version of apache run off it. That could almost beat that cluster of Linux PDAs as a web server.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
If your machine has the Z80 on the motherboard, my guess is it would have been the same sort of thing, just more integrated.
One man's trash is another mans's treasure. No trash here, except for your post :)
It's not gone, they just combined it with the Children's Museum...
...instead of making a museum around it. You are guaranteed to have more fun, and you might get a fruit smoothie out of it like The Cheat did.
(flash required)
Outback. Tent. 'nuff said.
In all seriousness, doesn't Australia have plenty of desert? Arid places make excellent places to store most equipment of this kind.
A tent is probably too flimsy... get one of those big metal half-pipes that they use to house enlisted personnel here in the 'States. At least... they used to... maybe it's not that bad anymore. I think they're called "quonset huts" or something like that. They're real cheap. Get some generous station owner to loan you a few acres, and put quonset huts on them. Just make sure they're properly ventilated because excessive heat could destroy the equipment.
I don't know how arid the desert is there, but the other night they were doing a thing on Discovery about that bomber that crashed in the Sahara, which is probably one of the most arid deserts. The radio still worked after 20+ years--and it was a tube radio.
OK, if you want to keep this stuff in Sydney, that's more of a challenge. You know what they say about real estate--location, location, location. Do you really want to pay for location? Maybe there is some lonely outpost in the desert that could use the tourist dollars more than Sydney. Yes, you'd make more money from admissions in Sydney, but that's a moot point if you can't buy the land to start.
Even big name museums have this problem. The U.S. National Air and Space museum is building an annex way out in the 'burbs at Dulles airport. Real estate on the downtown mall is almost all used up, and other locations in the city are too expensive. The massive new hangars at Dulles will be able to display exhibits like the Enola Gay, as well as many other large (and less controversial) aircraft. I think that's a good example to follow.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yes it is integrated into the motherboard. At the front panel there are two leds which shows the current CPU in use.
This computer also came with a lot of extra equipment by default (add-in cards) such as 256K RAM, 300-baud modem, IR keyboard, and a burglar alarm for your house..!
I'm going to take lots of photos of it and document this rare machine at my best, since noone else seems to have.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
Yeah, really! Posting this on /. is likely to only get responses like "Coober Pedy opal mines!" or "How 'bout building a dome over the Great Western Desert?" Seriously looking for empty space in Sydney is better off googled etc.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon