For Geeks: Remembering Machines That Were Too Cool
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It does not seem that long ago. I remember the day well. After months of research and endless reading, my father went and bought the top of the line laptop. It was a machine that he needed when he traveled. It was expensive - the best laptop that was available. The machine had top reviews and it had an enormous three (3) GB hard drive.
Later that year, my father gave me that laptop to go overseas for school. It was unbelievably generous. I wrapped that laptop in bubble wrap and then wrapped the bubble wrap in another layer of soft foam. In addition, I had soft towels in my backpack to protect that machine. Needless to say, that machine was pampered. It was the state of the art and so expensive.
I have fond memories for that machine.
I am sure other people have similar feelings about some piece of computer equipment. For the people at DigiBarn, it is a passion:
“…The DigiBarn, which is the pride and joy of NASA contractor Bruce Damer and his partner in curation, Alan Lundell, is what might be termed a temporary museum in transition. That’s because, on the one hand, it is always growing as the aging lions of Silicon Valley donate their old playthings, and on the other, very wet winters force Damer and Co. to put everything in boxes every year to avoid losing it all to rust.”
link: A trip down computer memory lane
link: DigiBarn Online
Look around at your fancy machine. Some day - soon - that cool, expensive, pampered machine will find a historical place on the DigiBarn inventory.
Catherine
[tags]computers, digibarn, history, museum, memories[/tags]
2 Comments
Laptop Reviews » For Geeks: Remembering Machines That Were Too Cool
November 11th, 2007
at 9:13pm
[...] DogReader wrote an interesting post today on For Geeks: Remembering Machines That Were Too CoolHere’s a quick excerpt It does not seem that long ago. I remember the day well. After months of research and endless reading, my father went and bought the top of the line laptop. It was a machine that he needed when he traveled. It was expensive - the best laptop that was available. The machine had top reviews and it had an enormous three (3) GB hard drive. Later that year, my father gave me that laptop to go overseas for school. It was unbelievably generous. I wrapped that laptop in bubble wrap and then wrapped t [...]
TK_M
November 15th, 2007
at 8:47am
I collect calculators for much the same reason - Replacing ones that broke when I was a kid, and getting ones that were so expensive, that I could only drool over the thought of owning one when I was younger.
I still have my early “home” computers (the ones that plugged into the TV) as they do not take up much room. However, PCs are a bit big for that. I didn’t get too attached to most PCs, but my last one I had for 7 years and I’d built it myself, every single board loving picked out after many, many hours of study of every magazine I could find. It used twin Pentium Pro P200s and had a whole 1GB of RAM, incredible for the time and took virtually every penny I had for 18 months to build it. I felt so auful breaking it up, that I mounted both Processors (surrounded by the 4 x 256MB SIMMs) in a picture frame. Absolutely stupid I know, but it assuaged the surprisingly strong feelings of guilt I had after having spent so many hours with it working faultlessly from first switch on…