Don's archive

[Jay West]

I reviewed the email thread about this yesterday, but wanted to give it a 
little thought before replying.

First, I'd be happy to contact Winnie - possibly to try and give her a 3rd 
person view of the situation so that she understands that Don's software & 
docs - while not "valuable", is "valuable". As an option, I could pursue 
trying to make arrangements to obtain it - perhaps there's some personality 
issue between her and Vince (this is NOT a slam against Vince at all - 
sometimes personalities just don't mesh, prior perceptions change, etc.).

However, that all being said I am of the opinion after carefully reading all 
the posts on this topic that I've seen... that Winnie has no intention 
whatsoever to let go of the documentation and/or software. One could imagine 
she needs to hold on to it as something tangible of Don. One could imagine 
that based on the way some things were phrased, that she is under the 
(false) impression it is worth a kings ransom in real dollars and is holding 
off disposition because she's frantically searching for an appraiser to tell 
her what she wants to hear. I'm not making judgements here, just pondering 
the technical possibilities.

I've seen the posts talking about having a museum get in contact with her. 
Perhaps this would be a good thing, but again my own impression is that if a 
museum calls, most people are likely to smell $$$.

So if Vince would like me to contact her, I'd be happy to - I'm pretty good 
at that kind of discussion actually. My own opinion so far though is that 
Vince is the best person to still pursue this, and getting another person(s) 
directly involved with Winnie will only hurt, not help. Not to mention I 
suspect she won't let it go anyway, at least until she hears from several 
appraisers. Perhaps I could draft a letter (from ClassicCMP) explaining some 
things she should consider, get the letter to Vince, and have him deliver 
it. That way he's still in front, but perhaps some additional thoughts to 
her may help Vince as "ammunition" or at the least give Winnie reason to 
thing that Vince's ideas/comments aren't "just his", and a lot of people 
feel the same way.

With regards to starting an S100/CPM repository... well... someone should 
really look at all the Heathkit stuff I got. There's a room full of CPM 
stuff, including several cases (case being about 1.5 foot by 3 foot) of 8" 
floppies, cases of 5.25 hard sector floppies, and pretty much every piece of 
software and newsletter ever released for the heathkit CPM boxes. I do not 
have time to do that. But, I strongly suspect what I have would be a good 
start on a CPM archive.

And of course, the ClassicCmp server exists not only to run the mailing 
list, but to house documentation and software for vintage systems. There's 
quite a few vintage software repositories on the ClassicCmp server (the 
newest one is the TRS-80 archives) including the swtpc archives, 
retroarchive, rainbow archives, bygone, and of course, a full mirror of the 
#1 classic site - bitsavers.org. I believe there's about 70gb free on the 
server archive drives (and enough money in the kitty still from donations to 
add more disk if need be), so if a CPM/S100 repository is started, feel free 
to host it there. The ClassicCmp server is well connected and well cared for 
so it's a safe spot. Simply put, I'm offering to host a CPM/S100 archive 
"Don's, or a new one", at no charge, forever.

Kind regards,

Jay West