Slashdot Mirror
Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour
femto writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is
reporting that the
Australian Computer Museum (archive.org) is to
close due to lack of funds. It is the largest computer collection in Australia. Failing an offer of a permanent home, they need storage space or money to pay for it. They also need some way to sort the collection."
I mean, I like them. They can be quite interesting, but how many people are interested in that motherboard from the 80's? Maybe 1/300 (random statistic, hopefully somewhere near correct, atleast for around here). I like computer museums, but I'd think that their would be lack of interest, and have always wondered how the low amount of people they get is enough to sustain them. I mean, lots of people go, but compared to just about any other large museum (at least around here, the Boston Computer Museum is huge), they really don't get that many people, and it costs a lot to run. I'd think that most computer museums would have gone the way of this one a long time ago, however unfortunetly
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Too bad people do not think that computer history is just as important as any other.
Most people don't see any difference between the box that sits on their desktop at work today to the one that would have in 1980, let alone understand enough to make an exhibit like this interesting.
Apart from which Australia has a rather small, widely spread population, so niche markets are harder to sustain.
It's just not a viable private enterprise out here. Perhaps the Powerhouse Museum, which tends to focus on technology and industry, could aquire some of the better pieces.
I am part of a group seeking to establish a museum of electronics and radio in another, smaller Australian city. If all goes well, we might even have a quite exceptional site coming our way.
It's necessary not only to have a suitable "business case" but to make it work! The problem is that there still has to be a critical mass of people who are savvy about electronics -- or just interested -- who come through the door to make it viable. Repeat visits is the next issue.
I wish them good fortune, and I'll be bringing their plight to the attention of our group. Maybe we can assist "if it all turns to custard".
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
I'm surprised the Powerhouse Museum hasn't stepped in to field this one. It's the sort of thing I'd have expected to find there...
I'm torn when it comes to saving computer history.
On one hand, nostalga runs deep with machines I spent a long time with. My Timex Sinclair, C64 and 486 computers were hard to depart with because of how much I learned and enjoyed using them. My G5 is starting to get that way too and I haven't even had it that long. I almost went looking for an old VAX machine to buy to re-live some of my college days (thank god for my wife, she was the voice of reason that day). So I can understand why people would want to preserve these machines.
On the other hand, old computers are (in the grand scheme of things) not that old. If we keep museums filled with each generation of computer then every couple of years we have to add a handful of computers to the stock. The industry moves so fast it's difficult to decide what's historical and what's not (aside from a few computers). So I can understand why people wouldn't be interested in a museum of computers (a dull subject for many to begin with).
I guess I have to fall back on the phrase "when in doubt, don't pay out." Sorry, guys.
Computers are not that historical. You might think that they are (no, not you trash80), but they are not.
I've been to the computer museum up in Boston (I think it is now part of the Museum of Science) and the Smithsonian American National Museum. In the latter case, the computers are part of a bigger exhibit that hightlights the Information Age. In this case think things like, telegraph, radio, televison, computers, etc...
At the end there is an interactive exhibit that kids can play with. The same held true for the one up in Boston, but I went there many years ago.
I think that many people were staring at me and my brother when we were bowing down to a lifesize picture/cutup of Seymour Cray (next to a bunch of CDC's). I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!
Finally, I saw my first Craw 1 at the Smithsoniam Air and Space Museum. This was great as I was tired and I could sit down (check out a picture of the Cray 1 and you will understand what I'm saying). They also had a display of real magnetic core memory. Most of you don't know what a true core dump really means!
The Australian Computer Museum needs to be able to educate the non geeks on why exactly what they have is important and why average joe should care.
One of the things that makes a museum interesting is the presentation of the pieces they have on display. On the other hand, if the pictures on this museum's site are any indicator, presentation is something they've missed completely. If you want people to come see a museum, you need to teach them something while they're there. I'd be interested in going to see a whole bunch of old computers sitting in a warehouse, but I don't think there are many people like me.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I think old computers are ugly. I can appreciate the old mechanical machines, they are a true work of art, but old boxes of transistors and PCB's are just not pleasing in any way.
I used to collect PDP-11s, so I can understand the attraction. My first (an 11/35) had core memory (for the youngsters out there, bits are stored in tiny magnetised iron rings, each ring has a wire running through it to sense and set the bit), and with a magnifying glass you could see each individual bit.
You mention boxes of transistors - I had friends in the DECUS NOP group (Nostalgic Old Products) who would debug broken hardware by sitting down with a PCB, a logic probe, and the circuit diagrams, and trace out the circuit until they found the disfunctional chip/transistor. Seeing how a CPU board, or a disk controller is built up from individual switches has been an educational experience for me, not just in a theoretical sense (a computer circuit is built from transistors), but from a real, hands-on, holy-shit-this-set-of-gates-is-an-adder sense.
Before I got a diode-matrix onto which to code my boot-strap I used to know the boot-strap code off by heart, and would toggle it in on the front panel in order to bring my machine to life.
Once you've got a PDP-11 of some sort, and have connections to other collectors, a hell of a lot of hardware starts coming your way. The number of different peripherals available for the PDP-11 was just astounding. 8" floppys, various removal hard-disks (I had both RK drives with 2MB storage and the RLs with a massive 5MB!), all sorts of tape drives, my favorite being the full height rell-to-reel tape drives with 1 metre long vaccuum columns which act as "springs" to damp the tapes movement.
There were teleprinters, terminals, and bus extension cabinets. Other people I knew had second houses completely full with old gear. I guess this is exactly the problem that the computer museum is facing.
The other problem is, as you mention, very few people are actually interested in the old hardware. And there's a world of difference of having the stuff yourself and tinkering with it, and simply seeing a restored old computer in a museum but not being allowed to touch it.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ... except
in D&D.
I *still* have my first computer: an old IMSAI 8080 I built from a kit. It still works. I even have cross compilers for it so I can still generate code for it when the PC came out.
The machine ran at a whopping 2 MHz.
I had 12 Kilobytes of EPROM.
4 Kilobytes of VideoRam ( Yup, I could drive four monitors independently ... each 16 lines of 64 characters. )
I had all remaining 48 Kilobytes of address space filled with 2102 1Kx1 450nS RAM, best you could get, in those days. It took six S-100 cards to hold them all... you could only get 8K on a card... and even then you had thermal problems.
And you know, when I turned the system on, I had system ready prompt by the time the monitor filaments warmed up enough to display an image.
And the pages would scroll past so fast they could not be read. I could prepare a whole new screen in one vertical retrace inverval. On a 2 MHz machine! Oooh, the wonders of assembly language.
Would I want to go back... well, uh, no. You see, it took weeks for me to code a barely operable word processor. And forget the luxury of C. If I wanted a float, I had a major programming project on my hands. I could only play with 8 bits at a time. A tic-tac-toe logic game was par for the course for making a decent computer demo. Even a rudimentary multiply was a royal pain...calculating trancendentals to any degree of accuracy could take several seconds.
But it *was* fun. And there was lots of blinking lights on that old box that made it even look like it was doing something... not these bland boxes of today whose only indication they are doing anything at all is maybe a disk access light.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
That's EXACTLY what we are trying to do. We want it to be hands-on.
As a small child I was taken on a school excursion to a museum that featured nothing but depression era biscuit tins. I kid you not. If Australia can support that, then surely it can support a reasonably sized space somewhere to stick a few random bits of hardware by forcing every ten year old in Sydney to visit it at least once.
Even better, put that sucker in Canberra and make it part of that essential round of things kids do on their school camp to the capital. What geek in NSW/ACT doesn't still foster fond memories of Questacon?
At a university open day a couple of years ago I got stuck supervising the computer science stand, and it's gotta be said that a lot of teenagers were fascinated by the various bits of crap the school had dug out to show them - disk platters a metre in diameter with labels on them saying "1 Mb" , actual transistors and so forth. If you present it in an amusing way (imagine a 40Gb iPod made out of a stack of these!) it could work. Even better if you can get some of the computers working.
All that said, it is ground that is at least partially covered by the Powerhouse in Sydney (although their computer history bit needed some work last time I was there) and Questacon (now renamed something lame like the National Science Museum) in Canberra. A partnership with those and similar organisations is probably a good idea.
I've seen the Boston Computer Museum - it's very good. But we are aiming smaller to start with, and to be interesting too. Much hands-on stuff, where possible. INCLUDING the original UNIX s/w!
We already have a good relationship with Powerhouse, but they have different museum goals to us (they are NOT hands-on). UTS has plans for all their space. And I thought our stuff WAS the Wax Museum!
I've just had an idea. There is an old abandoned heritage listed building on Parammatta Road, Homebush. It's about 300m west of your present location. The building is a grand old art deco ballroom. It is HUGE and on two levels. On the top level is a double height ballroom the size of a large gymnasium. The lower floor is smaller dance floor but still large.
For a while squatters were living in the place and had it open as a social centre called the "Midnight Star". As far as I know the squatters are no loger there.
The building is listed in the NSW heritage register. The owner can be found through Strathfield council. I once followed it up as I was interested to see if the building could be used for a swing dance function. The owner was a company based in Bondi. I can't remember the name, but it started with an "O" and was not in the phone book. I never got around to actually contacting them. The council was only able to give me the registered address of the ompany.
Anyway, given that the building is sitting empty, surely the owner would let you move the collection the there for free or a peppercorn rent? I guess they might be concerned that they end up with a building full of abandoned computer bits in case the museum fails. In that case, perhaps propose a refundable deposit equal to the cost of removing the equipment?
Reply to this if you want me to get in touch via email.
If it's anything like the computer museum here in Jyväskylä, Finland, then actually YES there's huge stacks of 486's everywhere... But those aren't the ones presenting any storage problems - it's the huge hard drives and stuff from the 50's and 60's that you can't move around without a forklift. And they really can't be sold away to make money - some of the craziest drooling slashdottir MIGHT have the hots for some slick 70's rackmount computer, but nobody wants a room-sized pile of junk metal that could maybe store maybe a megabyte, and in a data-seeking competition would lose to a VIC-1541, if you could afford the electricity to turn it on.
"The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand", or so I have read.
Check this out for a massive graphics card, triple PCB, full length, simm slots, whoooooaaaaa. Those damn new cards are boring to look apart from a fan.
0
:) but I can see some really boring ones.
http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo.pl?id=egs11
Google for http://amiga.resource.cx/ if you are worried about the much abused "cx" tld.
Loads of Hi Res PCB pictures, some make good desktop backgrounds
for old data conversion? I remember reading last year about a company which was loaning out older computers so that people who had old data could still read it and convert it to another format. Someone had one of those wonderful 5" floppy disks with a bunch of scientific data they had gathered back in the day and couldn't find any older computers that would still read it, until they went to a place with a bunch of old computers to read and convert the data. Another possibility is if you can get a place to store it, discuss with local schools and colleges if they'd be interested in doing low cost field trips.
-Gamma