rarest computers. was: RE: Xerox Alto Restoration + Emulation

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Aug 3 06:10:28 2004

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 03:13, William Donzelli wrote:
> 3) How many people have *significant* machines? One that made a dent in
> history, even if it was something as mundane as an Apple II or a
> PDP-11/34?

Do you mean significant as in it might be a really common machine, but
that particular one was used for something interesting / significant /
important?

Personally I like finding stuff like that - particularly machines (or
even just stray hard disks, floppies, or paper-based data) which have
been in use at old hardware or software manufacturers themselves. It's
kinda nice finding 'lost' information, or stuff that gives an insight
into the company themselves, or provides a snapshot of what they were
doing at such-and-such a time.

Typically people seem to collect such things for the hardware itself;
i.e. hard disks or floppies get re-formatted and paper documentation
gets thrown in the bin. Seems a shame that often no effort is made to
preserve the data from the time itself, just the physical hardware.

cheers,

Jules
Received on Tue Aug 03 2004 - 06:10:28 BST