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Hardware Technology

Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour 179

Posted by timothy from the mad-max-perhaps dept.
femto writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the Australian Computer Museum (archive.org) is to close due to lack of funds. It is the largest computer collection in Australia. Failing an offer of a permanent home, they need storage space or money to pay for it. They also need some way to sort the collection."
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Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour More

Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour

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  • Hopefully they will sell off some of their stuff and get money for a smaller place until they can gain more revenue. Until then... I'll sort their stuff.

  • Antique computers? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You mean, like, 486's?

    /me ducks.
  • Thats to bad they dont have any funding. I seem to have a few computers for there museum.

  • RIP Bob Bemer - The Father of ASCII (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:37AM (#9515158)
    I just read some sad news on CNN.com - computer geek/futurist/programmer Bob Bemer died [cnn.com] on Tuesday at his home in Texas. He died at age 84 after a long battle with cancer. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to computer science. Truly a geek icon.
    • Its sobering to think that not only the machines we all knew and grew up with are passing away into oblivion, but also those who designed those early machines are also passing away.

      Those were the days when this technology was still full of unknowns and dreams of possibilities were limitless. Just the word "computer" conjured images of electronic brains doing what was in our wildest imagination. Oh, the stories that were told in those days.

  • Heapsort! (Score:5, Funny)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:38AM (#9515166) Journal
    the Australian Computer Museum... need[s] storage space... [and] some way to sort the collection.

    While Bubble Sort [wikipedia.org] is always a sentimental favorite, I suggest Heapsort [wikipedia.org] for its O( n log n) runtime, even in the worst case, and, even more importantly given the Museum's lack of storage space, Heapsort's use of only a fixed amount of extra space in which to do the sort.

    Also, there is a BSD'd Heapsort implemented using forklifts and standard warehouse storage crates.

  • Not very exciting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:39AM (#9515170)
    Beyond the /. crowd, nobody really cares. They need to somehow figure out how to appeal to a broader audience. This isn't meant to be a troll, I believe it's the truth.
    • Thats a very good point. They are aiming at a very small percentage of potential customers... what they need is some government funding.

    • the solution (Score:3, Funny)

      by nazsco ( 695026 )
      Just install netBsd on all that hardware, including the mechanic ones, and host some p0rn.

    • A youth hostel would seem like an ideal addition to a computer musesum. The museum would get more visitors, and the kids would get a place to crash.
    • They should take a hint from the Science Fiction Museum [about.com] in Seattle. We went on opening day last week (by fluke actually) and it was actually fairly interesting. Quite a bit of money was put into it but they made it good enough for my mom to be able to tolerate it - she actually even found some of the things interesting.

      The Australian Computer Museum needs to be able to educate the non geeks on why exactly what they have is important and why average joe should care.

  • I'll help (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:40AM (#9515175)
    If they have any G5 Macs, they can store them at my place.

  • Sorting... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NemosomeN ( 670035 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:41AM (#9515182) Journal
    Wouldn't chonologically be the obvious way?
    • Yes, but at the same time it would be nice to see, say, all Apple computers lined up chonologically. But again, it would also be interesting to see all computers from a certain year.
      They could put the machines chonologically, and then put up timelines with pictures of machines from differens manufacturers on some wall.
  • I mean, I like them. They can be quite interesting, but how many people are interested in that motherboard from the 80's? Maybe 1/300 (random statistic, hopefully somewhere near correct, atleast for around here). I like computer museums, but I'd think that their would be lack of interest, and have always wondered how the low amount of people they get is enough to sustain them. I mean, lots of people go, but compared to just about any other large museum (at least around here, the Boston Computer Museum is huge), they really don't get that many people, and it costs a lot to run. I'd think that most computer museums would have gone the way of this one a long time ago, however unfortunetly

    • "They can be quite interesting, but how many people are interested in that motherboard from the 80's?"

      I doubt very much that such a museum would be bothered about displaying old PC motherboards at all.

      Most of the good stuff would be from the late seventies and really early eighties, PC's that are totally unlike the ubiquitous x86 compats we know these days.

      I'm talking about things such as the old Trash 80's and Commodore PETs. Being an Aussie museum I'm sure they even have a good selection of "Australias Own Personal Computer", the venerable Z80 based "microbee".

      Those were the true glory days of computer hacking. The very first microbee's came as a PCB and a box of components. It was up to the owner to solder all the resistors, caps and chips into their proper places!

      I saw a bloke once who wasn't quite clued up on the whole "solder" thing. He decided to superglue everything onto the PCB instead.

      • Re:I've never understood how computer museums surv (Score:5, Interesting)

        by anubi ( 640541 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @03:01AM (#9515760) Journal
        I know about the attachments to the old thing.

        I *still* have my first computer: an old IMSAI 8080 I built from a kit. It still works. I even have cross compilers for it so I can still generate code for it when the PC came out.

        The machine ran at a whopping 2 MHz.

        I had 12 Kilobytes of EPROM.

        4 Kilobytes of VideoRam ( Yup, I could drive four monitors independently ... each 16 lines of 64 characters. )

        I had all remaining 48 Kilobytes of address space filled with 2102 1Kx1 450nS RAM, best you could get, in those days. It took six S-100 cards to hold them all... you could only get 8K on a card... and even then you had thermal problems.

        And you know, when I turned the system on, I had system ready prompt by the time the monitor filaments warmed up enough to display an image.

        And the pages would scroll past so fast they could not be read. I could prepare a whole new screen in one vertical retrace inverval. On a 2 MHz machine! Oooh, the wonders of assembly language.

        Would I want to go back... well, uh, no. You see, it took weeks for me to code a barely operable word processor. And forget the luxury of C. If I wanted a float, I had a major programming project on my hands. I could only play with 8 bits at a time. A tic-tac-toe logic game was par for the course for making a decent computer demo. Even a rudimentary multiply was a royal pain...calculating trancendentals to any degree of accuracy could take several seconds.

        But it *was* fun. And there was lots of blinking lights on that old box that made it even look like it was doing something... not these bland boxes of today whose only indication they are doing anything at all is maybe a disk access light.

      • That Dick Smith VZ-200 was quite popular. It booted up much faster than the slothful C-64 or ZX Spectrum! (RAM test? we don't need no steenking RAM test!)

        And then of course the Dick Smith CAT was an Apple 2 clone.

    • I've seen the Boston Computer Museum - it's very good. But we are aiming smaller to start with, and to be interesting too. Much hands-on stuff, where possible. INCLUDING the original UNIX s/w!

  • Computers History (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:42AM (#9515192) Journal
    Too bad people do not think that computer history is just as important as any other.
    • It's true.

      There's been a lot of great minds, great people, and revolutionary science that's gone into computers since their creation. Computers have changed the world forever, and continue to do so at an alarming rate.

      Most people just don't seem to take much interest in these machines. I think it's like an automobile. Most people have absolutely no clue how an internal combustion engine works, and they don't care, and they don't want to know how they've evolved in the last 80 years.

      The same applies
    • Too bad people do not think that computer history is just as important as any other.

      'History' is the plow used in 1844 to till the soil. 'History' is a muzzle-loaded rifle built around the time George Washington was president.

      It's hard to think of computer 'History' when the songs on the radio when it was made are still played on today's "Mix' radio stations, and not even the 'Oldies' stations. Computer museums tend to be more nostalgia museums and so it's really hard to get that feeling that you are to

      • Re:Computers History (Score:3, Insightful)

        by keefey ( 571438 )
        It also depends on the scale in which progress happened. The plough didn't change in many many centuries, and changes to it were progressive and slow. Same with many many technologies, but computing was so fast, and expansive, changing the way everything (including your "Mix" stations) operates. Nothing in the history of human kind has required such a constant learning curve, and such a dramatic upheaval of life as we know it. And this is not important enough to be put on display?

        Who cares that my grand m

  • tsk tsk (Score:4, Funny)

    by countach44 ( 790998 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:44AM (#9515200)
    On top of closing their site is slashdotted, must we kill their bandwidth also?

  • I must have the other point of view then.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kiwioddBall ( 646813 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:46AM (#9515212)
    I think old computers are ugly. I can appreciate the old mechanical machines, they are a true work of art, but old boxes of transistors and PCB's are just not pleasing in any way.

    If some work went into aesthetic design (e.g. Apple) or were exceptioanlly groundbreaking or they defined culture (e.g. old arcade cabinets) they would be interesting but in my personal opinion they aren't (feel free not to share my point of view).

    It is sort of like setting up an old dishwasher museum really. Technology has advanced but they're not that interesting to look at either.

    Emulators preserve the real point of interest in old computers.
    • It is sort of like setting up an old dishwasher museum really.

      There's one of those just a handful of blocks from me, but they diversified into refridgerators and stoves and I think that's what's keeping them going.

      Old fridges are cool, as opposed to the modern kind which are intentionally designed to last for an average of 7 years.

      KFG
      • Old fridges are cool, as opposed to the modern kind which are intentionally designed to last for an average of 7 years.

        Even so, the modern kind are generally still cool for those seven years.
        • Even so, the modern kind are generally still cool for those seven years.

          Well, looks like I'll have to get me a really old one or a really new one then.

          I had an old "monitor top" in an apartment about ten years ago, I should have made an offer on it. I probably could have picked it up for a song. Literally. The landlord liked my singing.

          It did kinda make the lights go dim a bit when the compressor kicked in though. Cool it was. Efficient it wasn't.

          KFG
    • I think old computers are ugly. I can appreciate the old mechanical machines, they are a true work of art, but old boxes of transistors and PCB's are just not pleasing in any way.

      I used to collect PDP-11s, so I can understand the attraction. My first (an 11/35) had core memory (for the youngsters out there, bits are stored in tiny magnetised iron rings, each ring has a wire running through it to sense and set the bit), and with a magnifying glass you could see each individual bit.

      You mention boxes of tra
    • Silicon Graphics machines have always been a pleasure to behold. As far back as I've seen pictures of them, anyways :D
    • I beg to differ. I used to have a small collection of printed circuit boards and the like scavenged from old computers. I kept them because they were interesting to look at.

      Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ... except in D&D.


  • Those are probably the least "happy" snaps I've ever seen. The most exciting caption is "Wrapped in plastic".

    Still, check out the calculator awaiting repair. Nice antique!

    • Re:Happy snaps? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ACMS Prez ( 791079 )
      The pictures (and the site) are a few years out-of-date, and really were a "trial run" of the website. When we get time (huh!) we will be posting much newer ones in a much better format site.

  • It is very important... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cyb3rBull3ts ( 779853 ) <cyberbullets@sha w . ca> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:49AM (#9515238) Homepage
    To keep this museum alive.

    Sure it may only hold 100 years of information right now (a guess on years) but give it another 100 to 200 years our great great great grandchildren will want to see our first computers.

    It's easier to save the hardware now instead of trying to find it in the next 100 years.

  • Nobody cares... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keefey ( 571438 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @12:50AM (#9515241)
    Pretty much the same is happening in the UK with Bletchley Park, with no government funding these museums are dying away. Perhaps it's because they are deemed as modern history (after all, computing has only really taken off in the last 60 years), or because the majority of the public just don't understand anything beyond their TV remote control, but it's a shame nonetheless. Bletchley should be relabelled as something "non-geeky", and the Australian one should be merged with a larger industrial museum, after all, these are the machines that took the Industrial Age onto the Information Age...
    • Most people don't see any difference between the box that sits on their desktop at work today to the one that would have in 1980, let alone understand enough to make an exhibit like this interesting.
      Apart from which Australia has a rather small, widely spread population, so niche markets are harder to sustain.
      It's just not a viable private enterprise out here. Perhaps the Powerhouse Museum, which tends to focus on technology and industry, could aquire some of the better pieces.
      • I agree with most of what you said, but do think Sydney could possibly cover it, after all, there's more people living on top of each other here than in most places I have ever seen!

        However, there'd always be a lack of interest unless it was put in the context of something - for example how computing changed manfacturing, how it changed the war, how it changed home entertainment etc, rather than just a random collection of bits of plastic and chipsets.

  • Tick Tock Tech (Score:2, Insightful)

    by platypibri ( 762478 )
    A Tech University (the MIT equivalent in OZ, for example) is the logical spot for such a thing, then the nerds have easy access, causual visitors can lookin in, and the average citizen can opt for the Wax Museum instead.
    • The UTS (University of Technology Sydney) building is probably too small to fit a computer museum, but they could always help fund the museum remotely.

    • Re:Tick Tock Tech (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ACMS Prez ( 791079 )
      We already have a good relationship with Powerhouse, but they have different museum goals to us (they are NOT hands-on). UTS has plans for all their space. And I thought our stuff WAS the Wax Museum!

      • Re:Tick Tock Tech (Score:3, Interesting)

        by femto ( 459605 )
        Sorry about the slashdotting, but I hope it helps your cause.

        I've just had an idea. There is an old abandoned heritage listed building on Parammatta Road, Homebush. It's about 300m west of your present location. The building is a grand old art deco ballroom. It is HUGE and on two levels. On the top level is a double height ballroom the size of a large gymnasium. The lower floor is smaller dance floor but still large.

        For a while squatters were living in the place and had it open as a social centre

  • let's just Xgrid them together and have them solve their own problems.
  • I used to have a collection like that in my basement :)

    I had a few VAX's, NeXT's, an Apple Mac Classic, an HP PA-RISC box, and a Sun NeWS box, among other things. I had to sell it in a garage sale when I left Illinois, but thankfully it went to a good home (some guy from NCSA or something). I thought I was going to have to throw it away.

  • DUPE (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This dupe story is over a year old!!!

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/20/014320 7&mode=thread&tid=137



    • Re:DUPE (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's not a dupe. It is a new story. It's just that 12 months later, the museum has hit the wall again. It sort of indicates that the musem's problems will be a difficult to solve.
  • ...I suggest they use awk and sed.

  • How else would you sort computers? Binary Sort!

    --nerviswreck

  • I am part of a group seeking to establish a museum of electronics and radio in another, smaller Australian city. If all goes well, we might even have a quite exceptional site coming our way.

    It's necessary not only to have a suitable "business case" but to make it work! The problem is that there still has to be a critical mass of people who are savvy about electronics -- or just interested -- who come through the door to make it viable. Repeat visits is the next issue.

    I wish them good fortune, and I'll be bringing their plight to the attention of our group. Maybe we can assist "if it all turns to custard".

  • Give the computers to some of my clients... (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheOtherAgentM ( 700696 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:22AM (#9515394)
    It might even be an upgrade. I can't imagine them being much older than the stuff they're running now.

  • Powerhouse Museum (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Citizen Gold ( 540740 ) * on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:23AM (#9515397) Homepage Journal
    I'm surprised the Powerhouse Museum [phm.gov.au] hasn't stepped in to field this one. It's the sort of thing I'd have expected to find there...

    • Re:Powerhouse Museum (Score:4, Informative)

      by YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT ( 651184 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:53AM (#9515535) Homepage Journal

      I think if you have a look at their homepage you'll see that the PHM is indeed holding some of their stuff. But even the Powerhouse has finite storage space. Even the University of Technology, Sydney, just around the corner from the PHM probably wouldn't be able to stow them - the CompSci faculty recently moved into new and luxurious buildings, but they lack in terms of warehousing capacity or open space to place a free standing exhibit.

      YLFI

  • Screw the museum... (Score:4, Funny)

    by domukun367 ( 681095 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:23AM (#9515401)
    ...just come to my workplace here in Sydney - they have IBM Mainframes, SNA, Connect Direct, even Windows 95 for god's sake!

  • To save or not to save (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ibullard ( 312377 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:27AM (#9515418)
    I'm torn when it comes to saving computer history.

    On one hand, nostalga runs deep with machines I spent a long time with. My Timex Sinclair, C64 and 486 computers were hard to depart with because of how much I learned and enjoyed using them. My G5 is starting to get that way too and I haven't even had it that long. I almost went looking for an old VAX machine to buy to re-live some of my college days (thank god for my wife, she was the voice of reason that day). So I can understand why people would want to preserve these machines.

    On the other hand, old computers are (in the grand scheme of things) not that old. If we keep museums filled with each generation of computer then every couple of years we have to add a handful of computers to the stock. The industry moves so fast it's difficult to decide what's historical and what's not (aside from a few computers). So I can understand why people wouldn't be interested in a museum of computers (a dull subject for many to begin with).

    I guess I have to fall back on the phrase "when in doubt, don't pay out." Sorry, guys.
    • The industry moves so fast it's difficult to decide what's historical and what's not
      Easy: Keep an eye on pricewatch and/or ebay, and once the shipping is more than the cost of the item, buy buy buy and catalog. It would just be petty cash, and would be decently historic that by the time it was ready for the showroom, it would -be- historic. The only cost for the operation would be staffing and space.

  • looks like junk to me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by js3 ( 319268 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:33AM (#9515447)
    how can the call it a museum if the stuff is not even sorted? it looks like a warehouse full of old computer parts that need to be sorted (not a museum). Maybe they should concentrate on sorting and taking out the good stuff before lobbying to have them saved.

  • Boston and DC (Score:2, Interesting)

    by craw ( 6958 )
    Computers are not that historical. You might think that they are (no, not you trash80), but they are not.

    I've been to the computer museum up in Boston (I think it is now part of the Museum of Science) and the Smithsonian American National Museum. In the latter case, the computers are part of a bigger exhibit that hightlights the Information Age. In this case think things like, telegraph, radio, televison, computers, etc...

    At the end there is an interactive exhibit that kids can play with. The same held tr

  • Hmmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:37AM (#9515469)
    >> It is the largest computer collection in Australia.

    That reminds me about the Presidential library that burned down. They lost both books. And he hadn't finished coloring one of them yet.

    • Re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Informative)

      by goon america ( 536413 )
      Amusingly, this joke originated with Jack Kemp, about Bob Dole ("Bob Dole's library burned down..."). Years later Kemp was picked as Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election.
  • I saw the parenthetical "archive.org" after it and thought the Wayback Machine was threatened (other than with a slashdotting).

    Whew.

  • The good museums of this type are boring (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:43AM (#9515490) Homepage
    One of the best is the Kensington Science Museum in London. Their collection is excellent, with the originals of many famous machines. Yet few people are interested in those items; all the crowds are around the dumbed-down "interpretive exhibits".

    The Kensington Science Museum has early computers, all the way back to Babbage. The first locomotive, the first lathe, Watt's first steam engine - they have it all. And that stuff you can at least figure out by looking at it.

    Electronics is much worse to display. The Henry Ford Museum used to have display cases full of early electronics ("Capacitor, Cornell-Dublier, circa 1932"), ignored by almost everybody.

  • Presentation? What presentation? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wateshay ( 122749 ) <bill@nagel.gmail@com> on Thursday June 24, 2004 @01:50AM (#9515520) Homepage Journal
    One of the things that makes a museum interesting is the presentation of the pieces they have on display. On the other hand, if the pictures on this museum's site are any indicator, presentation is something they've missed completely. If you want people to come see a museum, you need to teach them something while they're there. I'd be interested in going to see a whole bunch of old computers sitting in a warehouse, but I don't think there are many people like me.
  • I like the idea of someone storing all sorts of old computers but I'd rather pay to be able to freely use the computers of the future.

    www.eff.org

    sorry if that's heartless
    • Not heartless, just stupid. Someday, if nobody preserves the computers of the past, there will be a time when nobody remembers when computers ran code freely without DRM or GUIDs, or the time when computers broke away from their guardians and anyone could afford one, and the times when people and their computers communicated freely over a cooperative internet. People have short memories, they won't remember a time when there was anything besides Windows 2025 and Skynet. And a whole generation will never kno

  • They should (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They should build the world's least powerful Beowulf cluster.
  • ...we have the Big Pineapple, the Tractor Museum and the Giant Koala - and we can't find the money to keep the Computer Museum open?

    This country has its priorities ass-backwards.

  • They also need some way to sort the collection.

    Here ya go:

    collection.sort();

    Glad I could help.

  • <rimshot> (Score:2, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 )


    > Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour

    Have they asked Jesus for help?

  • It's possible, given size considerations, etc, that we could offer hosting through my site, OldOs.org [oldos.org].

    (We are hosted by X-Gravity Web Hosting [x-gravity.net] who graciously provides us with beer-free hosting). Contact me at jason l f at g mail dot com (remove spaces, convert at=@)
  • Aww poor people, they not only need huge funding to hire storage room for all their precious vintage machines but they will also have huge hosting bills to pay for the bandwidth used by thousands of slashdotters visiting their site. Hehe, you go, Slashdotters! Slashdot is always a helping hand in times of need.
  • "They also need some way to sort the collection."

    Why can't they just use a bubble sort?

  • The same problem was mentioned last year.

    Dupe! [slashdot.org]

  • It's their own fault (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Thursday June 24, 2004 @03:52AM (#9515911)
    An old calculator is interesting to play with, but it's not exactly a gem from emperor's crown. By that standard, most of us have a "museum" in some closet. They took everything offered and of course they ended up with a pile of useless junk that will be (and should be) thrown away.

    So what's valuable? Well, for one thing technologies that are no longer used today, in components that are still functional and that people can understand by looking at them. Like a working punch card reader/writer, or the original "tty" dump terminal with a daisy wheel printer.

    For most of other things, emulation is the way to go. There is something to be said for teaching CS101 using a computer where programs are entered by storing machine code in memory with dip switches and then explaining how things have evolved. But it's probably cheaper to just make a modern device with the same interface that fits in the pocket.

  • Interest is relative (Score:2, Interesting)

    by miskate ( 730309 )
    As a small child I was taken on a school excursion to a museum that featured nothing but depression era biscuit tins. I kid you not. If Australia can support that, then surely it can support a reasonably sized space somewhere to stick a few random bits of hardware by forcing every ten year old in Sydney to visit it at least once.

    Even better, put that sucker in Canberra and make it part of that essential round of things kids do on their school camp to the capital. What geek in NSW/ACT doesn't still foster f
  • Folks in the UK might like to take a look at the museum of computing in Swindon, UK. http://www.digitalhistory.org.uk [digitalhistory.org.uk]. It's a small-scale operation that needs your support too. I couldn't compare the this one with the Australian one, but we do need to preserve our history.
  • These people seem to be forgetting that they are storing computers - if they need a method of filing them I suggest they use the most recent computer in their archives. This would be making effective use of the resources until better funding could be arranged.

  • Adelaide had one of the nicest little Telecomms Museums around,
    run entirely by volunteers (ex-Telecom's people).

    But Telstra (ie, Telecom re-badged) soon got hungry
    for dollars & closed it down, in the early 90's.

    The building was put up for sale, but - being
    Trust-listed (so that it'd be pretty hard to
    make any significant changes to the building
    that it was located in) - who would buy it?

    Today, it sits there (next to the GPO) still
    being used as a warehouse (if it is used at all).

    Le
  • Is bceause everyone who has any intrest in them have a computer museum of their own.

    Look at my house. In the attic is an Mac Clasic (which I am sure that I will find a use for one day) a bunch of old PC's and parts from god knows what gizmo. If my wife would let me I have a BeBox, an SGI O2, beer fridge made out of an old mainframe....

    I bet everyone that posted to this artical has the same as me.
  • Are there many loom machine museums still around? Or telegraph equipment museums? Or phone museums? I mean, is there a place to see what phones really looked like in 1967?

    I mean, maybe there are these museums, but there aren't many of them.

    The truth is that whenever you're dealing with technology, people can get very blind to the past. The only importance given to technology is in what's the newest. So I think, especially in technologies that changed rapidly, there really isn't that strong of an effort to
  • The entire story has to be untrue.

    I mean computer storage is cheaper now than it ever has been in the past. I mean heck, Google is giving me tons of free storage, Yahoo is giving me tons of free storage too. I can go to Fry's Electronics and pick up an ungodly amount of compuer storage for a few hundred bucks.

    Geez, you would think that these people that work in a COMPUTER museum would know how to add a freaking hard drive for additional storage...
  • for old data conversion? I remember reading last year about a company which was loaning out older computers so that people who had old data could still read it and convert it to another format. Someone had one of those wonderful 5" floppy disks with a bunch of scientific data they had gathered back in the day and couldn't find any older computers that would still read it, until they went to a place with a bunch of old computers to read and convert the data. Another possibility is if you can get a place t

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