[vcf-midatlantic] Museum report

[william degnan]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

> 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?
>

Dude - at this point with the many posts here, please snip and bottom post,
thanks.   Just please try to be more aware  of the flow of threads.

-- 
Bill