Goodwill Computer Store Austin, TX

From: g_at_kurico.com <(g_at_kurico.com)>
Date: Mon Nov 5 23:53:31 2001

See comment below:

On 5 Nov 2001 at 7:03, Sellam Ismail wrote:

> On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
>
> > I met up with Bill Bradford today in Austin. One of our activities
> > was to visit the Goodwill computer store there (you know, the one with
> > the museum in the back). Well, it turns out that the general public
> > is no longer allowed to see the museum pieces (either that or the
> > museum pieces are no longer there), and it's all due to some freaks
> > who broke in and stole -- guess what -- A FREAKING *NINTENDO* *SUPER*
> > *FAMICOM*!
>
> A museum that doesn't allow visitors? What's the point of that?
>
> Like I argued way back then, they should just sell the damn systems. It
> makes even more sense now than before.
>
Actually they are just closing it until they figure out a way to help prevent stuff like this from
happening again (moving a rotating subset of the display out front where it can be watched,
enclosing the entire collection instead of just the "small" stuff, etc). It was also more than the
loss of the Famicon, various other things have gone missing since the museum opened, so it
isn't just a knee-jerk reaction by Jaime.

Though I do covet some of the items in the museum, there is at least one positive thing that
having it at Goodwill has over it being in the hands of a private collector, and that is that the
items are available for many more people to "enjoy". Now they might not get as much as
someone on this list who can "truely appreciate" it, but a great many people have seen it and
had positive experiences. I think having something like this is very good at raising the
awareness amongst people that these old computers aren't purely boat anchors. A few of the
systems there were saved from the scrapper by the virtue of the person seeing the museum
and donating versus junking the systems.

So as was discussed ad-nauseum previously, I think that overall the Goodwill Computer
Works museum is a net positive for classic computing. They are not perfect, but a great deal
more of these systems would be landfill right now had it not been for their efforts. If anyone is
ever in Austin, I encourage you to check it out (though you might want to drop me or Bill an
email first to make sure it's open).

George
Received on Mon Nov 05 2001 - 23:53:31 GMT