"not all of those whole-drives go to the landfill or become recycled" I would argue that you may have a limited view as well, and while I may not have a complete picture of what vintage hard drives are currently used for, I believe my point is still valid. For all the points you mentioned, EVERY hard drive eventually stops working and is thrown away or recycled(aside from the 1% that go to museums). Furthermore, I would suggest that hard drives with moving parts will soon no longer be produced or used. I'm no futurist, but I'd bet they are mostly gone within 20 - 30 years. I would ask you how long you honestly think people will be attempting to use these drives from the 60s-80s? I expect my art to last lifetimes, can you say the same for any vintage computer today? you referred to yourself as the "old-guy", I'm not exactly in my 20s either. I'm a programmer by nature, and have a love of hard drives that has existed most all of my life. With that being said I have had my fair share of drives die, data lost, and attempts to transfer old data from older storage devices so I certainly understand your point of view. Now, at this point I've already disassembled most every hard drive I've bought, including 36 8"-10" drives, 179 5.25" drives, and about 54 3.5" vintage drives. Over 200 different models. The only things I've not yet fully disassembled are from 1" and 2.5" drives, I imagine these don't qualify as vintage. I've sold 90% of the circuit boards, 95% of the scrap aluminum and other outer casing materials. At this point I've invested about as much as I can into my art supplies, so I more then likely won't be buying many more vintage drives unless I start recouping my investment into my hobby turned side business. What I don't use in my art I sell on e-bay or recycle. I'm more then happy to sell the things I sell to anyone reading this. I have a collection of parts I've yet to list, and some I could be convinced to sell for the right price.. Aside from my art, everything I've sold on e-bay has sold for under it's value, so I'm not exactly trying to get every penny I can, I just can't loose $. I would love more avenues to get old drives, they get harder to find every day. Doing some On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 11:30 PM Herb Johnson <hjohnson@retrotechnology.info> wrote:
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