      For the Record

      by Ron Mitchell

      David Cobley, (Qualicum Beach BC) ADAMite first class, good friend 
      and VISA ADVISA editor back in the good old days, recently brought 
      to my attention an article appearing in one of our Canadian 
      Computer rags (The Computer Paper) about collecting computers.

      Collecting computers? Imagine. There are actually other people in 
      the world other than me who do this? The article became a 'must 
      read' and I hustled down to the local newsstand. 

      In the April 1996 issue of the Computer Paper there it was; an 
      article by Keith Schengili-Roberts (pp28) entitled, "Preserving 
      old memories, Computer collectors chronicle the 20th Century". 

      The article notes that computer collecting is a fairly recent 
      phenomenon undertaken by a few who feel that the older machines 
      are still working well and need to be preserved. Nostalgia, a need 
      to retain a sense of the past, and a wish to preserve older 
      technology for future generations were cited as motivations for 
      people to become computer collectors.

      The article goes on to describe some of the people that the author 
      has met who have taken up computer collecting as a hobby. There 
      are even those who have solicited corporate funding to establish 
      computer museums, and who write extensively about sources of 
      information and software available for the older machines.

      Part way through the article, there is a quote that won't surprise 
      ADAM owners: 

      "Not only are the people and the computers disappearing over time, 
      but another big problem is that the programs are slowly 
      deteriorating as the media they are contained on begin to decay. 
      Many of the designers of thee old computers never expected their 
      machines to still be working decades after they after they were 
      originally manufactured.

      "One emerging problem is that some EPROM (Electrically 
      Programmable Read-Only Memory) chips are beginning to degrade. 
      Many of the early EPROMS had their microcode burned into them by a 
      process of controlled electric melting. As a result, the bits that 
      were fixed in place by this process aren't completely stable and 
      tend to degrade within 10 to 20 years."

      Of course, Cleveland ADAMite Rich Drushel has already warned us 
      about the problems on the horizon for us in this regard.

      As I peruse the various pictures of old computers that accompany 
      this article, it's not hard to realize that some of those beasts 
      are with me right here in this room. I even have the book that 
      Schengili-Roberts recommends: A Collector's Guide to Personal 
      Computers and Pocket Calculators by Dr. Thomas F. Haddock (Books 
      Americana, 1993 - ISBN 0-89689-098-8). Guess that makes me one of 
      the new breed, although I hardly see these machines as old 
      collectibles. They're all still very much in harness and producing 
      useful work.

      More interesting however was the author's description of some of 
      the problems that a wouldbe collector can encounter. There's the 
      difficulty finding storage room (in Ottawa my whole apartment was 
      a museum), and critical comments from the collector's family or 
      friends.

      "Parents, girlfriends and wives are not happy about so many 
      computers. If you are interested in collecting old computers, make 
      sure you either have plenty of storage space, or start with 
      relatively small machines."

      Tell me about it!

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