Houston Computer Museum liquidation July 24th

[VERAULT]

I think thyrayrons are visually nice to look at. alot of tubes are. i have a thyratron on my shelf of nik naks. circuit boards like computers are subjective. I think 90s macs are just the worst in software, build quality, etc.. but you see how many people and youtube channels focus exclusively on them.. its all subjective.

But I do know the vast majority of the general public.. the facebook users, the iphone owners, the reality tv watchers.... (the followers not the free thinkers who make ul the vast majority) they dont care about this stuff the way we do...

Just as i dont care about lots of things many people obssess over...

if it doesnt appeal to the broad masses its just mundane nonsense..

And whats so bad about that? if most people were into vintage computing.. I wouldnt be.

 

[nstxelectronics]

Yeah, I might be in a minority there - I don't know how many other people there are that would frame a Trash-80 board .

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The Vic-20 board is fairly utilitarian; the Apple 2 motherboard seems really polished by comparison. The copper colored motherboard from the IBM 5155 always looks cool. HP produced some iconic beautiful circuit boards back in the day, and I always loved Sun Microsystems - the Sun Ultra 64 was the first vintage computer I collected and they have some really epic CPUs - not to mention the CPU dies themselves. There are a million better examples out there probably. Here are a few quick pictures of items around the shop:


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It might be better to start a new thread, but I would be interested to see what boards are out there that are just aesthetically epic - or if know of 'sleepers' - computers or equipment that look kind of plain on the outside, but the electronics inside are are pretty epic! One that comes immediately to mind is the Thyratron power supply in the old teletype: Thyratron - Ken Shirriff's Blog

I'm absolutely in the minority with you. I'm working on framing a disassembled 5.25" hdd for the funsies

 

[cjs]

Yeah, I might be in a minority there - I don't know how many other people there are that would frame a Trash-80 board.

That's an interesting and very elegant case, but it looks as if it makes it very hard to type.

 

[maxfli]

I don’t see starting a museum as “recruiting” the public, but rather teaching the history of computers to the public. Teaching history helps us not to re-create the pasts mistakes.

 

[VERAULT]

I don’t see starting a museum as “recruiting” the public, but rather teaching the history of computers to the public. Teaching history helps us not to re-create the pasts mistakes.

Thats not at all what I was saying. My comment wasnt directed at ACTUAL professional museums which are organizations. Were talking about one persons "collection" they want to pass off as a museum by themselves because it interests them so they assume everyone would find it interesting.

 

[syzygy]

Yeah, I might be in a minority there - I don't know how many other people there are that would frame a Trash-80 board .
View attachment 1280894

It might be better to start a new thread, but I would be interested to see what boards are out there that are just aesthetically epic - or if know of 'sleepers' - computers or equipment that look kind of plain on the outside, but the electronics inside are are pretty epic! One that comes immediately to mind is the Thyratron power supply in the old teletype: Thyratron - Ken Shirriff's Blog

 

[cjs]

Were talking about one persons "collection" they want to pass off as a museum by themselves because it interests them so they assume everyone would find it interesting.

I think it's probably not correct to assume that, just because someone wants to start a museum, that means that they're assuming any significant number of other people would find it interesting. I'd start one myself if I had the money (and time), but I have no illusions about how interesting most people might find it. In the same vein, I write software that apparently almost nobody but me finds interesting, yet I still do it.

 

[pkhoury]

Man, I missed out on this one altogether. I was just getting started on my vintage journey around this time. Are you selling any of this stuff through the website, or just ebay?

Primarily ebay, though if there's anything you're interested in, I can do paypal or etc. I choose ebay because it reaches a global marketplace, but like other sellers, hate ebay customer service and ebay fees. I don't know when I'll finish going through everything, but I'm guessing another two years or so.

 

[VERAULT]

I think it's probably not correct to assume that, just because someone wants to start a museum, that means that they're assuming any significant number of other people would find it interesting. I'd start one myself if I had the money (and time), but I have no illusions about how interesting most people might find it. In the same vein, I write software that apparently almost nobody but me finds interesting, yet I still do it.

Everyone is allowed to do what they want with thier time and money. The underlying topic of conversation is what happened to the collections of those who tried and failed and closed permanently...

 

[cjs]

The underlying topic of conversation is what happened to the collections of those who tried and failed and closed permanently...

Oh! I thought it had changed to:

I dont see the appeal of everyone wanting to start thier own "museum".... I just think its dillusional to assume the general public would be interested in a rinky-dink collection of mostly obvious common older systems.

For the kind of collection you describe there, it's a) not a huge deal since the systems are common, and b) if there were anything rare there, is it any better off just sitting in a private collection?

As far as you not seeing the appeal, I interpreted that (or perhaps misinterpreted it) as you looking for an explanation of the appeal, which I tried to provide. If you were really saying you don't feel this should appeal to anyone, well, I'm not sure how that really contributes to the conversation. And after all, you do, if you're here, probably see the appeal of owning very old computers, which most people don't see.

 

[pkhoury]

Oh! I thought it had changed to:

For the kind of collection you describe there, it's a) not a huge deal since the systems are common, and b) if there were anything rare there, is it any better off just sitting in a private collection?

I think I might've picked up something that really does need to be in a museum. SPARCstation UPN - based on a 170MHz TurboSPARC SS5, but half the size of a Sun IPX. Has PCMCIA built-in as well, along with a max of 64MB and still squeezes an SCA drive inside. Thanks to the Sun Microsystems group on facebook, I was able to chat with the guy who primarily designed it in the late 1990s. He's got two, and thinks maybe 20 were made at best? I know he said that when the time comes, his go to a museum.

I'm sure there are other examples out there - people with other prototypes not released to the public, but of which there are very sparse documentation.

 

[Al Kossow]

I'm sure there are other examples out there - people with other prototypes not released to the public, but of which there are very sparse documentation.

Not every prototype ends up in a museum. Documentation/software WITH the prototype increases its usefulness as an artifact.
Completist collectors end up with far more protoypes than museums since they are willing to pay serious money for them.

 

[VERAULT]

everyone on the forum enjoys them.. Again not my point. Assuming most people will have the same interest as you is silly.

Have you never had someone emphatically gone on and on on a topic they know very well yet you glazed over at thier mid sentance?

for instance.. stamp collecting or coin collecting. Those folks will cream at the notion of a version "D" of some rare coin. But to nost of us its a coin. Stamp collecting, baseball cards you name it.. the only difference is there are way more people into those aformentioned hobbies than our own.

I lovem.. But I can grasp how niche this all is. I love sharing with all of you here.. Buy I know better than to open up about it to regular folk. Why would I want to bore them. Its not for them. Its for us.

 

[pkhoury]

Not every prototype ends up in a museum. Documentation/software WITH the prototype increases its usefulness as an artifact.
Completist collectors end up with far more protoypes than museums since they are willing to pay serious money for them.

I got this for a bargain, but I had to do some work to get it working. I also don't have any plans on selling it (or my 2/120). Also, that Caymon Systems GatorBox only had the two disks shown in the pictures.

 

[pkhoury]

everyone on the forum enjoys them.. Again not my point. Assuming most people will have the same interest as you is silly.

Not sure who this is being directed to, but I agree with this post. I think there are a lot of overlapping interests, collectors-wise, VCF events, and in the local club I'm in, but there are still a lot of niche areas. Like, I don't expect most people to be into the stuff I'm into, and I'm hoping they don't expect the same of me or others. A lot of it is interesting for sure, but sadly, there are some things that I couldn't give a crap about (I'm probably not going to mention them to keep from getting flamed).

Have you never had someone emphatically gone on and on on a topic they know very well yet you glazed over at thier mid sentance?

Haha, that's almost all of us in our club, me included. I think a lot of us in this hobby sometimes lose sight of the fact that not everyone is as interested in specific machines or genres of machines as the person passionate about/explaining it.

for instance.. stamp collecting or coin collecting. Those folks will cream at the notion of a version "D" of some rare coin. But to nost of us its a coin. Stamp collecting, baseball cards you name it.. the only difference is there are way more people into those aformentioned hobbies than our own.

I lovem.. But I can grasp how niche this all is. I love sharing with all of you here.. Buy I know better than to open up about it to regular folk. Why would I want to bore them. Its not for them. Its for us.

Touche and agreed.

 

[cjs]

everyone on the forum enjoys them.. Again not my point. Assuming most people will have the same interest as you is silly.

Not my point. I agree that the vast majority of people would have no interest in my "computer museum" should I ever have the money to set one up. But surely you can understand why someone might want to set one up anyway. Pretty much every museum is full of stuff not of interest to the majority of people.

Perhaps I should have been clearer in my quote: what I was responding to was:

I dont see the appeal of everyone wanting to start thier own "museum".

 

[VERAULT]

Not sure who this is being directed to, but I agree with this post. I think there are a lot of overlapping interests, collectors-wise, VCF events, and in the local club I'm in, but there are still a lot of niche areas. Like, I don't expect most people to be into the stuff I'm into, and I'm hoping they don't expect the same of me or others. A lot of it is interesting for sure, but sadly, there are some things that I couldn't give a crap about (I'm probably not going to mention them to keep from getting flamed).


Haha, that's almost all of us in our club, me included. I think a lot of us in this hobby sometimes lose sight of the fact that not everyone is as interested in specific machines or genres of machines as the person passionate about/explaining it.


Touche and agreed.

Yeah, thats pretty much my point. You get it. Its our nerdy passion but we know better to assume anyone else would even care..

 

[pkhoury]

Sadly - I went to the Computer History Museum in San Jose. It was cool, but honestly... I didn't find most of the permanent exhibits super exciting (though I did like the mainframe setups). For me, my go-to time period is probably the early 80s through late 90s. Though showing UNIX workstations and servers from the 1970s would've been good (I think there was a Xero Altos and some other similar things there).

That said - even for museums that cater to people with a specific interest (trains, art, computers, clocks, etc) - it's almost impossible to have your collection cater to 100% of those who visit. I guess that's really what makes this group and our local clubs so great - the overlap of interests, and stuff that falls outside the venn diagram.

 

[harry69]

Sadly - I went to the Computer History Museum in San Jose. It was cool, but honestly... I didn't find most of the permanent exhibits super exciting (though I did like the mainframe setups). For me, my go-to time period is probably the early 80s through late 90s. Though showing UNIX workstations and servers from the 1970s would've been good (I think there was a Xero Altos and some other similar things there).

That said - even for museums that cater to people with a specific interest (trains, art, computers, clocks, etc) - it's almost impossible to have your collection cater to 100% of those who visit. I guess that's really what makes this group and our local clubs so great - the overlap of interests, and stuff that falls outside the venn diagram.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the Computer History Museum in SJ. I used to live very close to them and used to visit regularly.

In the late 90s/early 2000's they got a lot of stuff from the Computer Museum in Boston, MA when it closed. I'm Not sure how much got scrapped versus shipped to SJ.