List charter mods & headcount... ;-)

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Wed Jun 16 00:19:03 2004

> Thank Gawd for that.
Unix *IS* user-friendly, it's just picky about who it calls a friend ;)

I'm thinking of several ways to avoid this becoming a windows support area.
I'm not hip on windows being a valid topic here, or commodity clone PC's for
a lot of reasons. Key of which is that in my opinion, that system is
responsible for the decline of the true art of computer science (but albeit
the rise of giant computer industry). The systems, and in general a lot of
the software after that are so cookie-cutter as to not have any soul. While
faster, cheaper, etc... there are no really new ideas in them. Just
reapplication of age old concepts. It's the period when these age old
concepts were discovered, put forth, and formed that we really seek to
preserve.

One can make a good case for the initial home PC market - c64, apple, exidy,
atari, trs80, etc... as being historically significant. One simply can't
make that argument for later generic clone PC's.

In my mind, most of us here wish to preserve the ART of computer science,
not necessarily machines of a specific age - thus I think an age limit isn't
really a great way to do this. Also, I think IBM 5150's are on topic for
example. It's a nebulous thing to pin down. Easy to understand but hard to
express.

I don't think any of us started collecting with the first idea being "I'm
going to collect systems that are 10 years old". We aimed for specific
beloved machines.... PDP8's, 11's, HP1K's, DG nova/eclipse, etc. Most of us
then branched out into other systems in that period, because there were
other interesting systems in that timeframe. I'll have to give this some
thought...

Jay
Received on Wed Jun 16 2004 - 00:19:03 BST