----- Original Message -----
From: "John Allain" <allain_at_panix.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:40 AM
Subject: Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;-)
> > which is allot harder to do today when there are more
> > people in the hobby.
>
> I'd like to believe that's true, that there are more people
> collecting, but don't have anything to support it. What do
> you base the statement on?
It's a gut feeling backed up by the popularity of retro computing sites
poping up in the last few years. I don't know if all vintage equipment is
being collected more, but there are alot of new people in the 8-16bit
computer scene. Just like in fashion, cars, music, and movies once something
gets to be 20 years old it gets popular again. Some of the craze is from
retro gaming that is gaining in popularity, not everyone likes to run
emulators so they start digging up the old computers and a few branch off
into other systems. What I don't know is how many old timers have ditched
their collections in the last few years and moved on. Sites like eBay have
helped collectors by giving them a market to find the old machines they
want. Lots of software that was assumed lost forever has been showing up in
the last year or so, so people are actively looking for the items in
question. You would have a better feal on the collectors who specialize in
mini's and mainframes, I bet if somebody never used one or seen one in
operation they might not be too keen on collecting them because of size,
power, and complexity. The smaller desktop type systems (home computers) are
what I see as being actively collected by the younger generation (Atari,
Commodore, 68K apple, early PC's, Tandy, etc).
> John A.
>
> > P.S. Anybody here get into the Computer Chronicles TV show
>
> Fine show. And no replacements that I've found either.
> The PC monoculture wins out again (grumble).
>
The link below will take you to their downloadable archive (I was getting
350K/sec this morning)
http://www.archive.org/movies/computerchronicles.php
Received on Thu Jun 17 2004 - 09:24:42 BST