[HN Gopher] Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auctio...
___________________________________________________________________
Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items
Author : dboreham
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-06-25 14:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.geekwire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.geekwire.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I thought it was so sad that they shut down the computer museum
| in Boston years ago. It makes me think of how much more
| geographically diverse the computer industry was in the US back
| in the 1980s and how Boston has just given up on its history. It
| used to be associated with the Boston Children's Museum which had
| a DEC-10 way back in the early 1980s. They were pretty lucky
| because DEC would usually donate PDP-8s or PDP-11s to places like
| that.
| caphector wrote:
| It's still around but it was moved to the old SGI building in
| the SF/Bay Area. I went to the old one growing up; my dad
| worked at DEC and it was great fun to see all the hardware at
| the CHM.
| kragen wrote:
| the computer museum history center existed as a separate
| entity before being transferred the assets of the boston
| computer museum; it's not simply a relocated boston computer
| museum
| 13of40 wrote:
| > A highlight of the sale is a computer which Allen helped
| restore and on which he worked, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10. Built in
| 1971, it's the first computer that both Allen and Microsoft co-
| founder Bill Gates ever used prior to founding Microsoft. It's
| estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000.
|
| What? I know lots of people who would save them the trouble and
| buy it now for $50K. How bad of an investment could that be?
|
| Edit: I'm picturing something large refrigerator sized like the
| PDP-8 at RePC down the street. If it's cheap because it's a
| 20-ton white elephant that's a different story.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's about destruction, not making sense in my opinion.
| mikestew wrote:
| There's a picture in TFA, with a desk for scale. It would be
| several refrigerators, but might still fit in your garage.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Putting an item up for sale to the highest bidder insulates a
| seller from future claims that the item was sold for a low-ball
| price in some kind of sweetheart/kickback deal.
| dboreham wrote:
| A dec-10 is pretty big (at the LCM it is in a room that's
| something like 40' by 20'), needs air conditioning, and needs a
| beefy electrical supply.
|
| Nobody really knows the market price for such a thing because
| very few are left in running order and there are very few
| people with the resources to provide it with water and hay.
| ghaff wrote:
| > How bad of an investment could that be?
|
| Probably pretty bad.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the museum -
| 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need the cash?
| Jody Allen is simply bent on destroying her brother's legacy.
|
| It was extremely cool and educational to visit the museum as an
| EE undergraduate, to visually see and use parts of the history of
| computing. It's a massive loss to loose this collection. Some of
| the items we will never get back or see again.
| glompers wrote:
| Could perhaps UW (for instance) EE or CS alumni arrange to bid
| and give the collection to the department at UW across town?
| kragen wrote:
| as i said in another comment, that's possibly the only dec-10
| in working condition in the world
|
| selling it off piece by piece probably improves the chances
| that the most important pieces will be preserved rather than
| the whole thing going to a scrap metal dealer
| vanchor3 wrote:
| > _It's so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the
| museum - 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need
| the cash?_
|
| Supposedly the proceeds are going to "charitable causes",
| though the article doesn't go into any more detail.
| armadsen wrote:
| I adored the Living Computers Museum. Being able to just sit down
| and use an Apple 1, Xerox Alto, Altair 8800, and so many more in
| the same place was incredible. And then, a friendly museum
| employee being there to show you how to use it, tell you about
| what made it unique, etc. was even better. It was so much better
| than most look-but-don't-touch museums.
|
| It's really a travesty that Paul Allen's sister seems bent on
| dismantling everything he left behind.
| sterlind wrote:
| why is she doing this? for the money, or out of some form of
| spite?
| eschaton wrote:
| Money and an absolute disinterest in anything Paul cared
| about.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is not just disinterest. It feels like active
| contempt.
| eschaton wrote:
| I think she doesn't care about it enough to hold it in
| contempt except insofar as it represents an asset of
| Paul's that hasn't been converted into money.
| longdustytrail wrote:
| The same thing happened to another one of Paul's wacky
| passion projects, the Cinerama theater. That ended up being
| taken over by the Seattle Film Festival after being shut down
| for a few years.
|
| My impression is that Paul died somewhat suddenly and simply
| didn't make arrangements to keep these things going. His
| sister is not interested in them so she's winding them down.
|
| It's too bad he didn't set up some kind of endowment before
| he passed. Maybe he didn't want to or maybe he just didn't
| get around to it.
|
| I wonder what will happen to MoPop/EMP. AFAIK that's always
| been a financial black hole.
| zimm wrote:
| https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Bodyguards-Vulcan-
| CE...
|
| It doesn't seem like she was the nicest person.
| vintermann wrote:
| That's geoblocked.
| indrora wrote:
| It's assassination at one fundamental level.
|
| Spite is one way to put it. She has no love for anything
| computers, technology, or otherwise.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I doubt she hates her late brother, any more than any widow
| who sells off or throws away her late husband's computer
| collection after his death (which occurs so, so often that it
| is probably the normal outcome after the collector's death,
| as opposed to an exception) hates him. It's disinterest.
| ghaff wrote:
| People get rid of most of the stuff that they inherit, even
| if it's a "collection" that the relative cared a lot about
| --especially if it's worth a significant amount of money.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I asked my dad to keep a collection of books for me,
| about 1.4m x 60cm of bookshelf. They were booked from my
| mum's family some dating from late 1800s. "They weren't
| worth anything, I gave them away" ... of course I'm
| probably the only person to whom they were really worth
| much. My mum and I shared a love of poetry at one time
| ...
| qludes wrote:
| The sad thing about book collections is that they're not
| worth buying for book antiquities because chances are
| that most won't sell at all and the few games might just
| be worth a few $ so most just end up in the recycling bin
| once the owner dies. On the other hand that means if
| you're willing to buy whole shelves filled with books
| that haven't been preaccessed they can be incredibly
| cheap.
| vundercind wrote:
| This, not buying armfuls of books off individual sellers,
| is how used book stores get much of their stock. Running
| a good one (not just full of shitloads of Stephen King
| and Nora Roberts) means going to lots of estate sales.
|
| Also, a lot there for a while but less now that they're
| almost all gone, being there with cash in hand to buy the
| remaining stock in bulk when a competitor/colleague goes
| out of business.
|
| Sometimes in a good used book store you can spot
| substantial remnants of some particular enthusiast's
| collection, like a whole bunch of German-language
| original 19th century scholarship on the history of the
| conquest of South America or whatever. Some improbable
| number of books on some niche topic, nearly all of which
| probably belonged to one person (or, sometimes,
| institution) before landing there.
| themadturk wrote:
| The official story, at least, is that his will dictates his
| former holdings be sold off and the proceeds donated to
| charity. So it sounds like she's doing her duty as executor
| of his estate. Similar questions have lingered for years over
| what will become of the Seahawks and the Trailblazers.
| magnawave wrote:
| The best I can tell from talking with insiders at a couple of
| his properties, is that he did a beyond bad job at
| "succession planning". The light exception being MoPOP of
| course but that's a different beast. So without setting up
| foundations/entities to fund/run your projects and getting
| people aligned before you pass, odds are your estate won't.
|
| So want to blame the family. But really Paul Allen's fault
| here.
|
| It's a shame, was such a great museum.
| tivert wrote:
| Some embarrassingly rich person needs to give the Computer
| History Museum enough money to buy all of it.
|
| It's puzzling why all his stuff was organized in such a way that
| it could get wound down like this. Seems like it would have been
| way better to create a nonprofit then endow it with enough money
| to keep operating independently.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Bill Gates seems like a prime option.
| zimm wrote:
| info@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Email and ask
| dboreham wrote:
| Presumably billg is reading this thread already.
| tivert wrote:
| > Presumably billg is reading this thread already.
|
| I would assume he's not wasting his time with HN. He's
| rich enough and well-known enough that I'd think he'd be
| able to get superior versions of everything HN can
| provide.
| fragmede wrote:
| I mean, if you have billg money, I guess you could have a
| couple ex-FAAMG software developers on payroll just so
| you could call them up at any hour of the day and have
| them give you uninformed hot-takes about an article you
| found online and just forwarded them, and need them to
| tell you something based on the headline without actually
| reading the article, but that seems a bit weird. I don't
| even have Snoop Dogg money to pay someone to roll joints
| for me though, so what do I know about having billg-
| levels of money.
| vundercind wrote:
| "Hello, Phil? Yeah, doing fine, look, I need 200 takes on
| React, 50 of them actually having nothing to do with it,
| 100 that are just flames, 40 that are deeply stupid, and
| 10 that are at least informed and a bit insighthful, but
| not really _that_ interesting or valuable. Please just
| jumble them up rather than sorting them by quality or
| usefulness, I want to have to waste a bunch of time and
| emotional energy finding the good ones. Great, thanks."
| kragen wrote:
| the hn experience wouldn't be complete with only
| uninformed hot takes; it also requires that they argue
| with everything you say and then accuse you of being
| disingenuous
| dasl wrote:
| The email address responded with an automated message
| saying they are no longer checking the inbox. It directed
| me to submit my query at their contact for instead:
| https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/contact/write-to-us
|
| I submitted this message, feel free to copy the same text
| and submit yourself also:
|
| -----------------------------
|
| I recently became aware that the Living Computers Museum,
| which was created by Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder), is
| shutting down. As someone in the technology industry, I
| find that very sad! The museum was really magical. I'm
| wondering if the Gates Foundation can step up and save the
| museum from closing?
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-
| muse...
|
| Thank you for your consideration
| shrubble wrote:
| If it was donated by someone, shouldn't they give it back to the
| person who donated it? How does it get sold for cash?
| taw28 wrote:
| In short, because it was donated and not loaned. Once it leaves
| your hands, the museum can do as it wishes (within the
| restrictions of its bylaws).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| "Philanthropic trust" is probably the concept you missed
| here. Don't worry, it looks like Allen missed it too.
| ghaff wrote:
| And with fairly unusual exceptions, museums don't tend to
| like a lot of restrictions on what they can do with
| donations.
| erickhill wrote:
| They have a basement filled with hundreds if not thousands of
| computer donations stockpiled like the warehouse scene from
| Indiana Jones.
|
| Also, it's "LCM" not "LHM".
| rbanffy wrote:
| I would demand the donations back - closing it and selling off
| the collection is NOT what the donors wanted.
| evereverever wrote:
| I am saddened that I never was able to visit this museum.
|
| With all of that money it could have easily been fully funded for
| 100 years.
| mrpippy wrote:
| What a damn shame, I went in 2019 and had an amazing time. Played
| with a NeXT cube, Sun/3, Lisa, Alto, and so many more machines.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It sickens me something like this is happening to this unique
| museum. I knew it was a matter of time, but, still, it's a
| tragedy that's hard to comprehend.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Deleted all the social accounts and website offline too? Harsh
| :-(
| smsm42 wrote:
| We still don't have proper digital preservation mechanisms. If
| you are an executor of an estate, and you have a website and a
| twitter account, what you do with them? You are surely not
| interested in running them by yourself. You can't just leave
| them alone - website support costs money, and also if left
| alone, it will inevitably be broken into and cause all kinds of
| trouble. You can't just sell it to somebody (at least not to
| somebody you'd want to sell) or donate it. There's no
| organizations dedicated to preserving such properties, as far
| as I know. So, what do you do? You shut them down, you have not
| other alternative.
| ghaff wrote:
| Exactly. Unless you've setup a sufficient endowment and a
| legal entity of some sort, it's not reasonable to expect a
| relative to keep your passion project going. And even if they
| do for sentimental reasons for a while, that's just kicking
| the can a bit down the road.
| qludes wrote:
| If it's something like a blog archive.org works. And if it's
| a website people care about it's as simple as giving the
| archiver/internet historian/data hoarder hobbyist niche to
| back it all up on ipfs.
|
| If they wrote things you can digitize them and turn them into
| an epub that might last a few hundred years. And you can
| absolutely donate a website, that's just a matter of picking
| the right license and hosting the actual data somewhere, not
| the actual website.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| A HUGE cultural loss and I'm grateful that I got to visit it a
| few years ago.
| da-bacon wrote:
| There was a world before the dot com explosion when tinkering
| with computers was odd, a passion that gripped few, and was
| looked upon as extremely odd by most. This museum was the closest
| thing to being able to travel back to that era. You could plop
| yourself down at a Xerox Alto and hack away to your heart's
| content. Being able to share this experience with my son is
| something I will always remember about this museum.
|
| A sad day for computing, and a sad day for Seattle.
| thriftwy wrote:
| One thing I _didn 't_ notice when travelling to Bay Area is
| thriving small museum ecosystem.
|
| Apparently in the US they prefer to run museums like commercial
| venues, so either it's a large theme park of a museum, or not at
| all. I see the news where houses of very notable people like Ray
| Bradbury[1] sold and scrapped - elsewhere they'd be made a local
| prodigy of a "house-museum".
|
| 1. https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-ray-
| bradbu...
| linguae wrote:
| (Disclaimer: I am a member of the Computer History Museum.)
|
| We have the Computer History Museum in Mountain View
| (https://computerhistory.org/). While unfortunately visitors
| are not allowed to touch the equipment unlike the Living
| Computers Museum in Seattle, this is still a wonderful place
| for people to learn about the history of computing.
|
| In addition, the Computer History Museum has many events, often
| free, where pioneers of computing are invited to give talks
| about their work. I've been to events that celebrated the Xerox
| Alto, Smalltalk, the Apple Lisa, and the original Apple
| Macintosh. I've met Dan Ingalls (Smalltalk), Charles Simonyi
| (Bravo and Microsoft Word), Marshall Kirk McKusick (BSD), and
| Donald Knuth at the Computer History Museum, and I've seen
| Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk), Jean Louis Gassee (Apple, Be), and
| even Steve Wozniak in attendance. It's an amazing privilege
| being able to have casual conversations with people who have
| profoundly shaped society.
|
| It's truly a blessing that we have this important resource in
| Silicon Valley and that there is a stream of donors who help
| keep this museum alive. I wish the Living Computers Museum in
| Seattle had the same type of leadership the Computer History
| Museum has, but barring any last-minute interventions it may be
| too late to save that museum.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Exactly the one I meant under the theme park comment -
| another one is Monterey Bay Aquarium.
|
| Don't get me wrong, both are awesome museums. One thing that
| caught my attention in CHM is that as you approach the end of
| century, it becomes an exposition of bright boxes of computer
| software - quite a change from mechanical marvels of early
| last century or metal and plastic boxes of mid-century. But
| overall it's pretty great and totally worth a visit.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's definitely too late for LCM -- the heirs don't care
| about the societal value and are parting it out. It's gone.
|
| It'd be super cool if CHM added a living computers wing.
| They've done a few nice restorations of some large machines,
| but it's not really the same as something like making a few
| terminals connected to a PDP-10 directly available to the
| public. Or some of the early, weird PCs, Unix boxes, Lisp
| machines.
| VonGuard wrote:
| The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland has
| all-playable exhibitions of home computer and console games
| on original hardware. You can play something on the C64,
| Atari 800 or Sega Genesis, for example.
| dsand wrote:
| There are no heirs for LCM. Allen's will specified what do
| to in particular with a few of his many assets. But for all
| the rest, he wrote to sell it all, and donate the raised
| money to charities. So the will's executor (his sister)
| does not have the latitude to divert some assets to other
| outcomes.
|
| LCM was never self-sustaining via tickets. It always needed
| yearly infusions of cash from Allen. Re-opening it as it
| was would require similar levels of cash to burn. I wish
| that Allen had loved the LCM enough to design an endowment
| to keep it going, and had specified in the will how to
| treat LCM specially. But he did not. What he wanted instead
| for his legacy, was large cash donations to various
| charities.
| ghaff wrote:
| The people railing here are ignoring the fact that for
| whatever reason (he didn't actually care that much, he
| was sick and didn't have the time) didn't explicitly
| provide for this museum to be maintained into the
| foreseeable future. That may or may not be a bad outcome
| but it's what happens when someone passes and they
| haven't made an explicit provision with funding for
| something they owned.
|
| By and large, museums need to cover their operating costs
| and apparently this one didn't.
| bap wrote:
| I think you might find that the larger metropolitan areas are
| as you say. As one gets away from the coasts and into more
| rural areas you'll find smaller museums. Museums that are very
| bespoke and/or focused on a narrower curation target, etc.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| In the US, these museums can be brilliant, terrifyingly
| creepy, and everything in between.
|
| I went to one in a tiny town in southern Arkansas a few years
| ago, dedicated to a river boat disaster shortly after the
| civil war. It was tiny, weird, and brilliant.
|
| https://www.sultanadisastermuseum.com/
| JohnFen wrote:
| Even in large metro areas, there tend to be small specialty
| museums. The problem is that if you don't know they're there
| already, you're not likely to find them.
| msisk6 wrote:
| Yes, very much so. Some of the interesting small rural
| museums across the western US I've been to include:
|
| * Museum of the Fur Trade near Chadron, Nebraska * The Santa
| Fe Trail Center near Larned, Kansas * Ash Fork Route 66
| Museum in Ash Fork, Arizona * National Mining Hall of Fame
| and Museum in Leadville, Colorado * American Windmill Museum
| in Lubbock, Texas * Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum
| near Ashland, Nebraska
|
| The rural US has many local museums and most are surprisingly
| well done and very informative.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Don't think it's city/rural thing or a big city/little city
| thing. Los Angeles has dozens of tiny museums, often
| dedicated to obscure subjects (printing, neon art, Jurassic
| technology), and also some huge and rather well known ones
| (LACMA, the Getty).
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Some of this relates to being able to pay staff; there are some
| house-museums about, but they tend to collapse all too readily
| as it turns out it's mostly someone's passion project -- just
| like this, but at a smaller scale.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I imagine they could be donated to local Department of
| Culture (is it Arts Council in case of Bay Area?) and then
| staffed by some retiree grannies. Then they will outlive the
| initial passion. Bureaucratic systems have their
| disadvantaged but they're good at keeping things going on.
| slashdave wrote:
| Are you calling the exploratorium a "large theme park of a
| museum"? Haven't been to the new venue, but it is anything
| besides commercial.
|
| https://www.exploratorium.edu/
| cpcallen wrote:
| I would. The new building is huge and tickets are $30 for
| kids and $40 for adults (though I suspect that many of the
| visitors get discounted or free admission because their
| employers are corporate sponsors). It's still one of the most
| wonderful places in the world but it's a world away from the
| hundreds of small local museums in the UK which might charge
| as little as PS2 to visit a handful of rooms displaying e.g.
| artifacts telling the history of the local area.
| VonGuard wrote:
| You missed the museums you're talking about. There are a ton of
| small museums in the Bay Area, from themade.org to the American
| Bookbinders Museum in SF. Non-profits are also expected to
| donate all their assets to other non-profits if they fold, here
| in CA. It's mandated in your articles of incorporation.
| Themade.org, which I can speak to, has always promised its
| stuff to Stanford or the CHM if it went under, though
| thankfully, we've survived COVID and are thriving.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| Paul Allen sure didn't have great foresight for post death. First
| Cinerama and now the computer museum. The current sentiment with
| seattle lifers is that he used Seattle as a playground and didn't
| actually care about the longevity.
|
| EMP now MoPop just keeps hanging on by a thread as well and has
| gone through lots of turmoil.
| walterbell wrote:
| Not just billionaires. Gov-funded Ontario Science Centre, which
| helped to motivate thousands of science museums globally since
| 1969, hosting 50 million visitors, is being shut down,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752904
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm guessing covid lockdowns crashed their visitor numbers?
| foldor wrote:
| Unfortunately not in this case. It's a kind of political
| issue right now with the current provincial government, and
| it's looking a lot like greed got in the way since it is in
| a prime location.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> it is in a prime location_
|
| Justifying the adjacent "Science Center" subway station,
| increasing real estate value of the science museum land.
| If the land was going to be auctioned to the highest
| bidder, a tech company consortium could have bid for the
| opportunity to protect this science student feeder of
| US/Canada university and industry tech talent.
|
| Instead of Ontario Science Center, why not
| Apple/Bell/Google/Rogers/Samsung/Shopify or even Toronto
| Science Center, if that would forestall destruction of a
| priceless historical landmark? Same principle for the
| Living Computer Museum, why not Amazon/Microsoft/Valve
| Living Computer Museum?
| rvba wrote:
| Because companies are there to make money, especially
| those owned mostly by nameless shareholders and run by
| committee.
|
| And this "brand building" that you describe here has
| basically zero return on investment.
|
| Of course some company - proablably a private one (not
| public), could invest into it, but if you want to burn
| money on something your CEO likes or the owners like, you
| can use other ideas like paying millions to put your logo
| on soccer tshirts for hundreds of millions. Or hosting a
| forum ;)
|
| On a side note, I worked in a company that paid a lot of
| money for golf sponsorships and couldnt figure out why
| this "marketing" does not work in countries where nobody
| plays golf. I think they still havent figured out that
| there are countries outside of USA.
| walterbell wrote:
| 250,000 students a year benefit from Ontario Science
| Center, the best of whom go onto the engineering and
| computer science programs of Canadian universities like U
| of Waterloo and U of Toronto, from where they are
| recruited by North American tech companies.
|
| _> zero return on investment_
|
| Any junior i-banker can produce a spreadsheet showing the
| lifetime labor value of high-quality technical talent
| educated at Canadian universities, many of whom are
| recruited to work for US technology companies.
|
| https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-deep-learning-pioneer-
| geoff... When you translate a sentence
| using Google, or ask Siri to send a text, or play a song
| recommended by Spotify, you are using a technology that
| owes much to the innovative research of Geoffrey Hinton..
| "deep learning" - a form of artificial intelligence (AI)
| based on neural networks.. Hinton's revolutionary
| contributions to the field have earned him the nickname
| "the godfather of deep learning," and have made Canada a
| hotbed for high tech.. for his excellence as a global
| pioneer in deep learning, Hinton received a Doctor of
| Science, honoris causa from the University of Toronto,
| where he is a University Professor Emeritus.
|
| _> companies are there to make money_
|
| Nvidia agrees and invested in the future long before
| others. Thanks Geoff Hinton for planting seeds of science
| and money!
|
| Nvidia Science Centre?
| rvba wrote:
| Any junior banker can produce a spreadsheet for you that
| will claim anything you want - it is called Management
| Consulting.
|
| Anyway, since you know better how those big companies can
| invest, you can use your own money to reap the benefits.
| Money is literally lying on the street for you.
| walterbell wrote:
| There is a difference between investment banking and
| management consulting.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I think that's too harsh. A lot of people have a blind spot to
| their own mortality. He died at 65, far before most people have
| their affairs in order.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| But he was given a diagnosis of cancer. It's not like he was
| hit by a bus. He had several months.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even for someone like Allen a few minutes with Quicken
| Willmaker would have been able to setup a trust to keep any
| of these things going in perpetuity.
|
| He likely didn't like thinking about it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Not really. Anyone that rich has financial advisors who will
| certainly bug them about that.
| dbish wrote:
| Sounds like he was onboard with shutting things down. It wasn't
| a foresight thing, more that he wasn't interested in it going
| on
| romwell wrote:
| Oh no! What a crying shame.
|
| This was one of my favorite museums _in the world_ , probably
| with no analogues.
|
| When I interned in Microsoft in 2014, I got to experience Seattle
| -- and the Living Computer Museum was one of the highlights of
| that experience.
|
| Simply being able to walk in and close-up something simple (say,
| Fibonacci sequence) on a typewriter terminal of the PDP-10 -- and
| then see _the typewriter type the output back to you on the same
| piece of paper_ was absolute magic (and a part of computing I
| wish we still had).
| kragen wrote:
| you know, you can plug a dot-matrix printer into a parallel
| port on a linux box and redirect stdout and stderr to that
| port. last time i did this was 27 years ago (my monitor had
| been broken in shipping, but i had an inkjet printer that
| printed text line by line), but it probably still works. i
| recall i had to telnet to localhost to get it to not be line-
| buffered, and you might have to hack that a different way
| nowadays
|
| around here office supply stores still sell fanfold paper and
| printer ribbons
|
| of course your linux box isn't a pdp-10, but that doesn't seem
| to be what you're missing
| craniumslows wrote:
| If you liked the Living Computer Museum then you may be
| interested in the https://icm.museum/ Interim Computer Museum.
| sva_ wrote:
| If you're ever close to Bonn, Germany, check Out the
| Artihmeum[0]. It starts at the top floor with the oldest
| "computers" and gets more modern as you walk down. They even
| have an original Enigma encryption machine.
|
| You can interact with some of them, but not all.
|
| 0. https://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/
| endgame wrote:
| You're underselling it. The bottom floor has vintage hand-
| cranked calculators that you're allowed to compute with!
| esafak wrote:
| Why is it shutting down? I scanned the article but failed to find
| the reason.
| cdchn wrote:
| Estate liquidation.
| esafak wrote:
| I can't imagine they ran out of money, so I speculate that
| the executors simply did not want to maintain it.
| astrodust wrote:
| It's not their job to maintain it unless that was specified
| somehow in advance.
| kragen wrote:
| usually when someone's estate includes a business with
| employees, shutting it down and selling off its assets is
| not what the executors do. usually they keep the company
| running so they can get a reasonable sale price for the
| whole company
| mapmeld wrote:
| I don't think anyone has a solid public answer about why they
| didn't reopen with other museums after 2020. It might be too
| costly, people leaving the organization, etc. to the point that
| the board didn't think it could reopen.
| algebra-pretext wrote:
| Around two months ago I stopped by the building and saw through a
| window that the interior seemed mostly untouched. So, out of
| concern for the condition of any items that may still be inside,
| I snooped around the perimeter looking for a way in until a very
| loud intercom told me to get off the property. Probably not the
| reason for this announcement but I can't help but feel partially
| responsible.
|
| The RE-PC vintage computing warehouse nearby also has a small
| museum with equipment going back to the 60s, you can't touch
| anything but other sections of the warehouse have plenty of 90s
| and 2000s desktops set up that you can play with. It's a good
| place to look for ancient cables, obscure controllers (I saw two
| SideWinders there last time), and older displays, I'm planning to
| go back to pick up the Apple Studio CRT
| https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/studio_cinema/specs/appl...
| lilyball wrote:
| > _So, out of concern for the condition of any items that may
| still be inside, I snooped around the perimeter looking for a
| way in_
|
| How does concern for the items inside lead you to looking for a
| way to break in?
| kragen wrote:
| if the building is unguarded and full of valuable items,
| someone will loot it. if you're the one that loots it, you
| get to decide what happens to them. if you don't, someone
| else will
| spullara wrote:
| How about donating them to the Computer History Museum in SV?
| dang wrote:
| Related: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-living-computers-
| muse...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802686 but we merged
| those comments hither)
| devwastaken wrote:
| I've wanted to get my hands on an IBM or other with an orange
| plasma display for a while. Or really any old terminal. It's
| funny because buying them is very expensive, but places
| showcasing them are few now.
| shrubble wrote:
| The Toshiba luggables T3100 / T5x00 with gas plasma display are
| still around; as are the Compaq luggables as well.
| TobinCavanaugh wrote:
| Bummer, this place was a bunch of fun
| araes wrote:
| Surprising. Visited right before Covid, and it seemed rather
| popular. Children wandering around playing with exhibits. Would
| have not expected a place like that to go under. Think every
| floor had maybe 10? folks while I was there.
|
| Really one of the better hands-on museums with the "lab"
| component. Had lots of neat digital wall displays to play with,
| and programmable science toys.
|
| Only downside was location. Tried walking cause I had no idea
| where it really was, and super-quick realized it was _way_ past
| the coliseum and almost down to the badlands warehouse district
| by the freight harbor. Right between the railyards. Bad mental
| model of Seattle distances. Signage was also really difficult to
| spot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/SPCCJhT7B9aBfANNA Can you even tell
| there's a museum there?
|
| Weird part from my own perspective, is Gate's runs a non-profit
| in his spare time as a hobby(?). Even if they weren't best-bros
| afterward, it would still take something like finger wagging to a
| functionary to not have this be a PR dumpster fire.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| The sad reality is that you can spend a lifetime collecting
| something, the but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is
| also interested in it, is pretty close to zero. That's true of
| multi-million dollar vintage computers, or your childhood stamp
| collection that's mostly worthless. Paul's mistake was not
| properly establishing a foundation & endowment to maintain this
| musuem, which almost certainly leaks lots of money.
|
| I personally have a decent art collection that I've amassed over
| the past couple decades. I have a few pieces earmarked in my will
| to specific friends & family that have really liked certain
| pieces (they don't know), but the reality is that my estate
| executor is going to sell the vast majority of it, and at 50C/ on
| the dollar of what I paid.
| bombcar wrote:
| You're not going to get 50 cents if I know anything about it.
|
| Maybe if you started selling today you could get that, an
| estate auction will get a few pennies.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| A few of my pieces are quite desirable and valuable, most of
| them not. I looked at the numbers, and all together 40-50% of
| what I paid is the ballpark of today's value, not including
| any consignment fees.
| ikiris wrote:
| Few is if they're lucky. More like 1.
| 9659 wrote:
| Personal collections are for enjoyment, not investment.
|
| I liquidated some of my fathers things for effectively nothing.
| That he spent decades acquiring.
| dbish wrote:
| In this case he didn't have heirs and seems to have asked in
| his will to auction it off instead of endowing it.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| There is a computer museum in Roswell, GA. Just north of Atlanta
| that is pretty neat. https://www.computermuseumofamerica.org/
| kragen wrote:
| this is pretty unfortunate. iirc they had the only digital pdp-10
| in the world that's currently in working order -- the line of
| computers on which emacs, microsoft basic, simtel-20, and
| compuserve all originated. most of the arpanet was pdp-10s at one
| time. nasa's gsfc spacelink ftp site, where you could download
| space photos, was the only one i ever encountered running
|
| hopefully that machine will find a good home in the auction and
| not be destroyed in the process
|
| the fact that it's shut down is, as bobaliceinatree said, a
| terrible indictment of paul allen's estate planning. unless he
| just didn't care about the people who survived him
| anthk wrote:
| At least you can run ITS under simh, there a github repo to set
| everything up almost automagically.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I took the photos for the cover of my first book on an Alto that
| was rescued from the museum. This was when it was "closed for the
| pandemic."
|
| Anyhow, this guy had two working Altos in his basement in
| Bothell.
| picometer wrote:
| The museum was also a generous community space; I remember
| attending a Seattle Indies game jam and other events before the
| pandemic. It was very special to be surrounded by reminders of
| early-computing exploratory spirit.
| kelsey98765431 wrote:
| rest in peace, thank you for giving me the memory of what root on
| an '11 felt like for dms, and a little of that all asm love for
| the single cve. Someday i will write it a sister and publish in
| TLCHM memory. farewell friend and thank you for the fish
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| When is the auction? Anyone have the details available?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-26 23:00 UTC)