I just made contact with Don's wife, Bristol. They're not sure what Don
died of, but he'd had cancer for 18 years and he died a couple days after
entering the hospital after falling ill.
Understandably, she has no idea what Don has in his garage. I offered to
help her sort things out and to get money for whatever computers are in
his collection that are worth anything, and of course I informed her of
the importance of Don's disk archive. She's very nice and willing to pass
the collection along but she first wants to run everything by her nephew
who knows about computers before anything happens, which is
understandable.
This process will take some time. Bristol has many other things to deal
with of course, but she informed me that she will make sure none of the
computers or software will be discarded until they can get a full idea of
what they have. She said they already took 5 computers to recycling but
she didn't think they were anything of concern as her computer savvy
nephew was the one who chose them and felt they weren't old or valuable or
anything. At any rate, she assured me that nothing will be taken for
recycling until we figure out what's all there.
I'd like to enlist the help of some local San Diegans to assist with the
inventory of Don's collection. I will probably end up making a trip down
there in the future to either help with the dispersal of his collection
and/or retrieve the disk archive. It would be a great help to Bristol if
someone with knowledge of vintage computers can help her nephew identify
the valuable machines so she can decide what she wants to do with them.
And of course, to help identify the disk archive. I would imagine (or
hope at least) Don had it pretty well organized and labelled, but we need
someone to identify and separate it from the rest of his collection.
Also, I want to give Don a tribute at the upcoming VCF 7.0. I'd like to
talk a bit about Don's life and what he did for a career and all that.
His wife didn't know much about Don's computing career and so I'm hoping
that some people on the list who got to know Don and his history can
share it with me.
I'll keep the list updated as the process moves along.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
Received on Wed Sep 22 2004 - 12:57:44 BST