[vcf-midatlantic] Hard drive art

[Dave McGuire]

On 4/17/19 7:59 PM, Matt Reynolds wrote:
> Facebook groups show this argument time and time again.  There's no
> shortage of "white knights" who claim how awful it was that something
> was "arted", but are also quite often the same people that are not
> willing to drive out of their way to pick up something offered up for
> free, or have no space to store more stuff because they are already at
> capacity.

  Not here.  There are loud-mouthed idiots all over the place, sure, I
get that, but don't paint us all with that brush.  I've put so much
time, effort, and money into building a public museum over the past
decade that I'm very close to not being able to buy food as a result.

  *I* am having a lot of trouble finding operational or restorable hard
drives for most any platform.  *I* pay real money for them.  People who
come to LSSM/MACT do so primarily because nearly everything there is
functional and demonstrable...functionality is important, at least here.

> It all comes down to the same thing - there is a lot of stuff out there
> in the world, the vast majority of society likes to march onward rather
> than look backward, and those of us who wish to preserve things from the
> past for what they were, are a minority.

  With respect, if this were true, museums wouldn't be as heavily
traveled as they are.

> I personally am in the "look backward" camp.  I have a lot of artifacts
> from a lot of different hobbies.  I clearly appreciate history, but I
> also appreciate the "arters".  At the end of the day only so many people
> care about working 50s TVs and room-sized computers, and if additional
> small pieces of these things survive in artwork form, then it still
> keeps more out of the landfill and it survives into the future a little
> bit longer.

  The guy was talking about platters from an IBM RAMAC 350!  I assure
you that, should one of those EVER turn up, it would not hit a landfill.

  I know the guy didn't tear down a 350...but in part because of the
market that he represents, someone did.  I do not blame the OP for the
destruction of that particular RAMAC 350, to be clear, but I do shed a
tear for the one that got torn up, because I know what a big deal it
would have been for it to be sitting at LSSM/MACT.

> I think there is enough stuff out there for everyone.  There's room for
> the art folk and the historians, and it sounds like in this case we have
> one who is conscious of the hobby and has done their research and is
> still making some of the stuff available to the hobby.

  I agree that there is room.  But there are plenty, seriously PLENTY of
old computer parts that can not reasonably be restored.

  Once again said with respect, your argument seems to be based on
"there's enough to go around", "nobody who decries 'arting' of artifacts
is willing to put forth effort to save the stuff anyway", and "hardly
anybody cares anyway".  I disagree very strongly with all of those
points.  I feel that I can speak from a position of some knowledge on
these points.

  And let me just throw in, the number of off-list comments I'm getting
supporting my position here makes me want to vomit.  Seriously.
Supporting someone privately, rather than publicly, is far worse than
not supporting someone at all.

  (I'm sorry man, I'm in a really crappy mood today, I am not mad at you
here.)

              -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA