To fix and emphasize what Lee says:
In article <123vmpq9jrnb7e8@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Lee Courtney <lcourtney@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>"William Donzelli" <aw288@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:Pine.SUN.4.20.0604131759280.1888-100000@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> I just threw out the 3380 and 3390 books.
>>
>> I have not climbed on my soapbox lately, but now seems like a good
time.
>
>Want to second everything William said and add some quick points about
the
>Computer History Museum (CHM - www.computerhsitory.org):
Computer History Museum (CHM - www.computerhistory.org):
Things edited out just to shorten the followup.
>1. Have a mainframe system, hardware, manual, software, ephemera
(t-****rts,
>toys, swag, etc) you are tossing? Take a look at
>http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/donateArtifact/.
....
>2. Don't assume because the item is too old, too new, too big, has
software
>with too many licensing hassles, the Museum will not be interested. We've
>implemented some solutions to meet the needs of all parties involved,
>including meeting IP and licensing restrictions.
Ah, Lee, we need to work on the English of that former sentence. 8^)
>3. Worried about licensing issues? We've handled such issues many times
>before,...
>
>5. If CHM can't accept a donation, we work with many other Museums and
>organizations that may be able to accept an item.
Let me place emphasis on this: we will help you find a home.
>6. I agree with William that there seems to be cut-off around 1975 for
what
>qualifies as a "historic" mainframe system. Have something after that
time?
>Drop us an email. We have been accepting donations of fairly recent items
we
>think reflect im****tant developments or will be im****tant in the future.
The Musem generally accepts history to within 10 years of the present.
We realize that this might be silly in this industry, that this can be a
recipe for losing history. Things less than 10 years get accepted on a
case by evaluation case basis. I just donated a Swiss Army Knife with
128 MB data stick for the storage section. That's a 2003-2005 artifact.
I got a 2 GB upgraded knife. Same may go for campaign literature, tee
****rts, coffee cups. We ar trying to recover some of the machines used
for sequencing the human genome. Let our curators and staff examine and
argue for your artifact.
>7. IBM is a great cor****ate sup****ter and friend of the Museum. However,
>we'd love to cultivate ties and build up the collection of non-IBM
mainframe
>artifacts. Unfortunately we have few if any artifacts representing the
Seven
>Dwarfs/BUNCH - Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell. Would
love
>to build up the collection of hardware/software/other artifacts for these
>and others such as GE, RCA, SDS/XDS and others.
I was just spent yesterday working at the Almaden Research Lab and
there they also have been attempting to emphasize history as well (Blue
Gene).
IBM's hasn't written the $15M check that Bill Gates did.
I regret that I tossed out my Cyberplus manuals (so does Bill Ragsdale).
And my Denelcor and Elxsi manuals.....
We do the best we can Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell
hardware
with a 1900, various univac pieces (we could really us an ISP), and we
have historic pieces of NCR, CDC, and Honeywell hardware and software.
But the Museum needs more diversity. We need examples to show that it's
an International field. Did you catch the language Windows booted up in
in Arnold's movie True Lies? We need examples of the various
multiprocessors of the 80s, we need some of the minis, but we can also
use robots, some of the weird peripherals, etc. And we need the stories
which go with them.
Hey we even had Series/1 stuff brought up in the GRiD Compass lecture.
Remember lectures Lee.
>8. In the last couple of years we have been putting extra effort into
>historic software artifacts and proactively collecting examples we think
are
>im****tant and in danger of being lost. See our "Hit List" at
>http://www.computerhistory.org/cgi-bin/wishlist.cgi.
Have some very good
>results with FORTRAN, Augment/NLS, and getting traction with APL,
Multics,
NLS: I just ran into Engelbart last evening.
>LISP, and CDC software, as well as addressing the sticky issues around
>copyright, licensing, etc.
FORTRAN: Backus is a Fellow of the Museum.
>And be sure to take a look at the Museum's web site, especially the
Special
>Project page (http://www.computerhistory.org/events/special_projects/),
and
>visit if you're in the San Jose-San Francisco area.
Remember lectures Lee.
>Lee Courtney
>courtney@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>CHM Volunteer 1997-present
Some items may be considered tax deductable under certain circumstances.
Eugene Miya
NASA-CHM Liaison 1996-present
Western Representative for the National Air and Space Museum,
Smithsonian Institution
>"William Donzelli" <aw288@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:<Pine.SUN.4.20.0604131759280.1888-100000@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>...
>> > I just threw out the 3380 and 3390 books.
>> I have not climbed on my soapbox lately, but now seems like a good
time.
....
>> The problem I see is that this early mainframe stuff - lets call it
>> pre-1975 - tends to get the lion's share of interest. The post-1975
>> mainframe stuff tends to get ignored, and I think this is a shame.
Let's
>> face it - the hardware is just about gone. Is anyone still running a
3033?
>> 3081? 3090? Just how many 3380s are still spinning? For that matter,
are
>> there any 3033s even left? I doubt it. 3081s or 3090s? Slim chance. The
>> last of the 9021s are starting to go, and I know of just one that has
been
>> saved.
We are in touch with places like the FAA, the NSA, the DOD, etc. for
some of this stuff. But redundancy is good for fault tolerance.
>> The same holds true for the documentation and software, although by its
>> nature tends to hang around longer. Some day we will find that all
those
>> 1401 manuals we saved outnumber the 3081 manuals by a very wide margin.
>
>> This mainframe "near history" is just as im****tant as the stuff from
the
....
>> interested, such as the excellent Computer History Museum in the Bay
Area.
>> You may be surprised to know that much of this stuff is wanted.
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