All good responses, Brian, you've thoughtfully described your process and activities. If my judgement matters, you're doing some of the right sort of stuff within the vintage ecosystem. As you state, you have some purposes and intentions that are certainly of value; and you produce items which are a product of your considerations and efforts and investment. I did not suggest your art lacked consideration, value or merit. But you also compete for use of those drives you buy whole - "could have purchased" suggests that. You mention such use as "those who want to prolong their own vintage computers". Well, that's a limited view. So this discussion is not about "agitation", yours or mine. This is a mutual learning conversation, in principle why people post in forums. I can tell you as a fact, not all of those whole-drives go to the landfill or become recycled. Several of my colleagues recently engaged in buying 8-inch hard drives, to restore Intel brand Multibus (call them "industrial") vintage computers. They were doing component level repair, and reverse engineering of their software and hardware. Whole drives, even not completely working, allow them to do this. And of course they hoped for working "HDAs" (hard disk assemblies, the working platters and heads) not only for repair, but to *recover original software* not otherwise available. Some go to great lengths to extract operating information about vintage computers; they make it available, often freely, to others. I've offered S-100 manuals for DECADES. That's not about "prolonging my own vintage computer". And, just as you suggest your art has an extended lifetime; so does purposeful recovery and restoration of vintage computers. Lessons learned and software and hardware recovered, as I've described, is and will be used to restore additional computers of the same kind. The effort is itself a demonstration of restoration possible for other computers. That encourages others who otherwise would give up such an effort. You can visit my Web site, to see many restoration examples. People tell me, they learned from my "art", and went on to other kinds of vintage computing, or modern "versions" of vintage computers. The contents on some computer drives may happen to include data of personal value. Some start with wanting to "restore their own computer", or their first computer, or their parent's computer. But people who are *persistently* involved in vintage computer restoration restoration, recovery (or expansion) of *technology* is often their primary value. Most of that work is done by individuals or collectives, not (in my experience) by institutions. Few have a large budget; you mentioned yours; budgets vary. Also: I have clients who use vintage computers for purpose; they lack my technical skills, or resources. They need drives for continued operation. Some purposes are industrial, unique control equipment hard to replace. Other clients, well, they are satisfied with their vintage software, which won't run on modern hardware; or runs poorly. Modern alternatives have needless complexity, or excessive cost. Who am I to tell them they are "prolonging"? Or to pass judgements on their personal interests? Pardon me, or them, for being old and continuing use of a known tool! There was a time, when computers were not disposable consumables, and software worked adequately. That's another kind of "preservation", that point of view. So, you have some feedback from me, representing the "other side" who have continued purpose, of value, some beyond personal; for these drives, those "personal computers". We have things in common, we both have our reasons, but we are in some competition. I'm glad you give "us" some consideration. If I determine some of my drives no longer serve any purpose, I'll consider offering them to you as opposed to scrap. And I'll see if you have some boards I may use for repairs. Thanks for the discussion and the exchange of considerations. Herb Johnson On 4/15/2019 7:50 PM, Brian Brubaker wrote:
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, I'm very sorry if I caused any agitation as a result of my art.... -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info