[vcf-midatlantic] Museum report

[Joseph Oprysko]

Yes, Athana is the one Vendor I found who still manufacturers new floppy
disks and other media packs. Maybe we should invite them to display/sell at
VCFe.

On Wednesday, December 30, 2015, Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

> On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>
>>    We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100
>> years.  There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff,
>> and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
>>
>>    Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume
>> manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for
>> us to be able to replace those components.
>>
>
> Ugh. I haven't bottom posted since my FidoNet days.. feels.. wrong.
>
> Anyway, there are some wonderful analogies in the music world. My family
> had a wonderful Steinway B piano from the 1930s and I was absolutely
> convinced we would keep it in the family for another 100 years until my
> repairman explained that pianos just don't last that long. The famous
> example is Beethoven's piano, from the early 1800s, which is kept loosely
> strung and thus cannot be played at all. To do otherwise would risk severe,
> if not permanent, damage to the piano since the frames are under such a
> massive amount of tension. I've also seen 300 year old violins completely
> reconstructed to be essentially brand new. Violins worth $300,000 and more.
> At the same time, there is a set of Stradivari instruments at the Met
> Museum worth literally millions of dollars under glass.
>
> It is only a matter of time until we will have to decide whether computer
> museums are for using vintage computers or looking at vintage computers. My
> take is to have one of each under glass for viewing and, by whatever means
> necessary, make the other ones work.. a living museum, if you will. I seem
> to recall the Computer Museum in Mountain View is heading in this direction
> with several items under museum glass. Too much so, if you ask me, but they
> get extra points for having a working PDP running Spacewar.
>
> I don't see people making modern replicas of floppy disk drives (economies
> of scale barely support the SD card etc. solutions), but I didn't like
> floppy drives when they were cutting edge technology, either. So we might
> be looking at the very real possibility that we can show computers exactly
> as they looked, but can't use them exactly as they were used, much like
> Beethoven's piano.
>
> And I say this as someone who takes much joy out of showing every one of
> his high school students what it sounds and looks like to boot 8bit
> machines with floppy disks.
>
> Best wishes,
>
>             -Adam
>
> ---
> Adam Michlin
> Computer Science Teacher
> Pope John XXIII Regional High School
> Sparta, NJ
> Administrator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cptrsci/
>


-- 
Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot.
Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do.
Normal Person: So you go surfing?
Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a
lot...
Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level.
Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?