Housing collections

[Jim Leonard]

Richard wrote:
> In article <43B30E61.4000004 at oldskool.org>,
> [Note to Jim: adopt a shorter line length for easier > quoting :-]

I have Thunderbird set to wrap outgoing at 79 characters... what would you 
suggest?  :-)  WAIT -- never mind -- I see your point.  It is now 76 :-)

>>I've gotten past that fear by making sure I have duplicates of everything.
> 
> From what I've read about collecting, this is important if you intend
> to keep things working.  You'll need at least one spare unit for
> parts, possibly more.  I think a conservative estimate on older
> equipment I read somewhere was to keep up to 3 units as spares,
> depending on the rarity of the item and what tends to break.

...unless you like PCjrs, as I do, in which case you collect 5 or 6 as they're 
somewhat flimsy machines (for example, what is supposed to pass for case and 
shielding is plastic lightly coated with what looks to be "spray-on metal"  I 
believe IBM was awarded a patent for the process, but I don't know what the 
process is.)

> I suspect small computing history museums are no
> different, but its not very exciting to look at a shrink-wrapped copy
> of Word 1.0 in a case (albeit actually using Word 1.0 probably isn't
> exciting either).

All of my nostalgia and history involving computers has come from experiencing 
them, not looking at them.  So that's why I'm a firm advocate of "hands-on" 
computing museums.

I'm enough of a purist that I only use emulators that properly emulate both 
scanlines *and* disk-drive noises (and in the case of arcade emulators, the 
only one I've ever loved was Vector Dream as it emulated screen burn-in, 60Hz 
hum, the sound of the coin hitting the bucket, etc.)
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)                    http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project?             http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at             http://www.mindcandydvd.com/