Need contact information for dkdkk

[Tony Duell]

> Heh, possibly... I think a lot of the time museums spend too much time
> trying to attract people who can do a bit of everything - which is all

I tend to confuse Bletchley Park with the CCS, so I might be moaning 
about the wrong lot. But (IIRC) the CCS's method of using its members' 
knowedge leaves a lot to be desired.

IIRC, the membership form asks for up to 4 computers that you have 
experience of. I had a serious problem with filling in that section. 
Should I list 4 machines that were relatively common, on the grounds that 
I'd then get to do something. Or should I list 4 rare machines, which I 
knew somewhat less about, on the grounds that I might well be the only 
person to have any knowledge of them at all? 

There is another problem, best illustrated by an example...

Suppose you have a non-working HP9810 calculator (well, it's almost a 
computer :-)). You have a choice of 2 repairers.

A) Worked ofr HP as a service engineer for many years. He's got the
official service manual (which is a boardswapper guide), and can follow
the instructions which are basically to replace all the plug-in PCBs until
it starts working again. The fact that you can't get replacement boards
any more is another matter... 

B) Has never worked for HP or any other computer company. But he was 
given a broken 9810 a few years back and spent a couple of months working 
out how to repair it. This guy can connect a logic analyser to an 
undocumented internal connector and trace the CPU microcode. He's got his 
own microcode listings and can thus tell just what the darn thing is 
doing. 

Now, who do you pick?

There's also the problem that somebody having no experience of <foo>, but 
who is generally clueful about similar stuff might well be more use than 
somebody who's had a few months user-level experience of <foo>, but who 
has never gone further on any machine.

-tony