NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
A Message from Don Two
September 98
dontwo@juno.com
(click to email author)


It was certainly a pleasure to be back with you again for the CreataCard Presentation. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did.

And, say, aren't the new facilities great? That digital projector is wonderful, and it took only three engineers to get it to work!

It had been so long since I had been with you that my membership had lapsed. I took care of that then and there.

I want to share with you, and enlist your aid in, my newest project. Over the past six months, I have started a Computer History Museum. I now have about 40 computers, manufactured between 1975 and 1986. They are all landmark items - demonstrating advances over that timeframe in Technology, Architecture, and Marketing.

I know that you know some of the old names like Apple, Commodore, and TRS 80. But have you ever seen a Kaypro, a Coleco Adam, an Osborne, or an Eagle?

Then there are landmark Monitors, Printers, DOSes, GUIes, and a few milestone user Applications.

Some of these items came from my own early years in the hobby. Users wanting to share some of their own earlier experience have donated other items. One day, I came home to find one on my front porch! Still other items have been purchased. There are still many items on my wish list.

There are other museums around the computer world. There is even an annual Vintage Computer Exposition each September in California.

However, the whole idea is a tremendous challenge. To be of any real benefit, there must be ways, times, and places to exhibit all or part of the items to the computing public. I am working on some potential contacts in these respects.

I need help from PCUG members and others with an interest in these areas. I'd like volunteers to help set up a project to work on the equipment, to install representative operating systems and software, to prepare visuals to best present each item, and to prepare timeline exhibits depicting the evolution of technology, computers, operating systems, software, communications, and on and on.

Then there would be the task of actually preparing and presenting mini-exhibits, and hopefully, the entire collection.

If you think that you would enjoy this as much as I already am, please yell at me at dontwo@juno.com, or 824-4197, and offer your time and personal experience. I can use them both.

I've already had help from our own MR DOS, Bill Shook. He rummaged around in his past and found a special version of IBM's DOS V.2.1, without which my recently acquired 1983 IBM PC Jr. will not run.

And, I hope that every one of you who has, or knows someone who has, a piece of computing's history languishing on the top shelf in a closet, or in the attic or the basement, will call and let me know. We've only scratched the surface.

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