[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org>]

> How far back are you talking?
> I think drawing a time box (start, end) around what you collect
> would give you returns.
> ...
> Steve Jenkin

I actually don't consider myself much of a collector of anything besides information.  Even the physical books and such I've accumulated lately, save for select pieces, I eventually want to get into some other library.  I'm not on the hunt for some piece of hardware I want to order and keep around here, rather, seeing if there's avenues I should keep my eye on while searching around for documents and other history that, say, I could then get the CHM or another involved with.  For instance, one "goal" if you will is to somehow run down a (working or not) 3B20S and put the right folks in contact to see about preserving the thing.  Even better if I can travel and help with some of the restore, but honestly at the end of the day I'm just after lost history.

That said, hardware significant to the pre-divestiture UNIX-and-adjacent history takes priority with me, stuff like Interdata 32-bit, various 3B machines, etc. so to put years on it would be 69-84.  I'm actually kicking myself because there was a MacTutor (WE Mac-8 SBC) on eBay this past couple of years and it had been bought by the time I made up my mind on it.  My hope was to document it as much as I could and then see if LCM or CHM were interested in it for their archives.

I do have a AT&T UNIX PC I intend to get rolling eventually but that's about as far as my on-hand hardware ambitions go, and certainly isn't relevant to early history.  I would maybe go for a higher end SGI for myself if I found one at an agreeable price, but even that would be mostly to experiment with IRIS GL and their specific graphics hardware.  I'm trying not to let too many hardware distractions get between me and my SBC experiments though, too much coding for the past will keep me from coding for the present.  After all, one of my chief personal motivations in studying the past is to better understand how we got here and where we're headed.

- Matt G.