CHAC[Collecting/Archiving]



What does a computer museum need?
Computers.

Since 1993....

the CHAC has collected about twenty computers. All of them are in serviceable condition and most of them work. All but two are micros. The minis are a PDS 1020 – built in 1964 by Pacific Data Systems in Santa Ana CA, a company later absorbed by Control Data Corporation – and a Hewlett-Packard 3000/42.

Peripherals include an ASR-33 Teletype, a Diablo 630 daisywheel printer, and several dot-matrix printers. We also have a truly glorious HP 9100 calculator with its HP 9125 plotter. (For a good overview of the 9100 and its virtues, read the interview with Barney Oliver in Analytical Engine 2.3.)

Some of our interesting smaller computers include:

If we had more storage space we'd be able to collect numerous micros including an Altos, an Apple Lisa, a couple of Cromemcos, an IMSAI VDP-40, a Kaypro 2000, two Osbornes, an Otrona Attaché....all of which are being held for us by their current owners, we hope!! Which brings us to:

The iron law [Eek!] of old iron

Any computer collector (emphatically including the CHAC) is bound by the following:

Whoever you are – an engineer with a garage, or the curator of a major museum – you will eventually run out of space for old computers. In the South Bay, where hardware collectors are legion, the preferred interim solution seems to be a storage locker.

But lockers have a limit and we've reached it. Since the CHAC opened for business in July 1993, fees for storage have eaten up fifteen per cent of our income; and locker storage is only a holding action, a palliative with no permanent benefit. Yet, because we can't afford more storage, we can't accept more hardware – which, for an organization with the avowed goal of establishing a museum, is flatly ridiculous.

We're looking for help....specifically for secure, dry, long-term indoor storage. A thousand square feet would do nicely (considering the potential requirements of the SDS 930) and five hundred would be distinctly better than nothing. Remember that the CHAC is a 501(c)(3) public charity and can offer you or your entity a tax deduction of fair market rental for the donated space. If you think you can help, mail to us and let's talk. Thanks!!

Docs and software....

The preservation of software and documentation is emerging as a fascinating sub-specialty within computer history. Just as well that it arouses some interest, because there are urgent issues involved.

Software: With the possible exception of punched Mylar tape, there is no currently available medium for digital data recording that will last indefinitely. Information on removable disks begins to fade after ten years; the CHAC, the HCS, and many other legacy-computer users can tell gory stories of trying to read weakly magnetized eight-inch floppies in old tired drives. Hard disks are incredibly reliable up to a point – the point at which they go "chrk!" and become paperweights. The useful life of a CD-ROM is a matter for hot debate, but it may be as short as twenty to thirty years. Mag tape lasts pretty well, except sometimes it doesn't. Paper tape that was fanfolded (which means most of it) has a tendency to break at the creases....

Not to mention that the absolute longevity of the recording medium is sometimes less important than the persistence of the data encoding scheme. Some Vietnam-era seven-track tapes might conceal their secrets forever; the magnetic encoding of the oxide may still be fine, but all the tape drives that are format-compatible have been scrapped. And how exactly will you play back the VHS tape of your winning touchdown, in fifty years when the helical-scan head is only a memory? For more on this read Jeff Rothenberg's excellent article, "Ensuring the Legibility of Digital Documents," in Scientific American for January 1995; but to put it concisely, this is a big problem.

Several leading lights of industry, government, and academia, including Microsoft, the Smithsonian Institution, and Stanford University, are participating in a national initiative to preserve magnetically and optically encoded data. The CHAC, for its part, is interested in making any possible grass-roots contribution to this evolving body of knowledge.

Docs and program listings: Second verse, worse than the first. It's true that the deacidification and stabilization of sulfite paper is a relatively well-understood process, even if some of the salient chemicals are a nuisance. But deacidification of most types needs to be repeated periodically; and anything to do with the history and chronology of computer-related development seems to involve bales of paper, most of it cheap. So often, provisional manuals and data sheets were printed on copier paper.... program listings were socked onto greenbar through faded ribbons.... we may even find ourselves trying to rescue purple dittograph, one of the most light-sensitive printing processes ever invented. And the archival "stability" of canary Teletype paper is best left to a morbid imagination. Put it this way: Not many of computing's seminal documents were printed on acid-free rag bond.

So....

The development of strategies and protocols for conservation are of unusual importance to computer history. We'd really like to talk to experienced people about what's involved here. If you're a

why don't you mail to us with suggestions of knowledge you might contribute? It's an uphill battle, we can use all the help we can get. TIA.

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