On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Mr. Paul E Coad spake thusly unto us:
> This raises the question of how people got into this hobby. Was it
> a single event or something which happened over time (with or without
> you being aware of it?)
Well, I'm not sure whether there was a single event that got me
started (other than an offer of my original Nova 1210), but I can
honestly state that there was an event that made me get serious about
the preservation of older machines.
That event was my missing the acquisition of a PDP-15 by about a
half-hour in 1987. I had expressed an interest in the machine, and was
told that it was going to scrap _very soon_, so I should grab what I
wanted. I was going to try and make arrangements to get the machine
picked up (it was fully configured and quite large) and get the machine
home. I arrived (hurriedly) to do an initial disassembly and triage
on the system, only to find that the bone man had come earler in the
hour, and all that was left of the system was an empty space where it
once was. I knew then that -15s weren't very common, and when I realised
that the count had just dropped by one, I was fairly beside myself.
Other than that anecdote, I've been collecting for about 10 years
or so; my stash is fairly well focussed on minicomputers, although I
do have the odd micro here and there. Minicomputers are where I desire
to keep my energies, especially those of DG manufacture. With DG, at
its' peak, being only 1/5 the size of DEC those machines are pretty
hard to come by nowadays. Any leads, of course, would be vastly
appreciated. :-)
While I'm greatly pleased that folks are preserving microcomputers,
I've never felt a "bond" to that particular realm of design. I like
things like time-states, core memory, and pulse-logic. I guess that
makes me an "old fart".
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:carl.friend_at_stoneweb.com | |
|
http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
Received on Wed Apr 09 1997 - 20:45:51 BST