[TriLUG] Any value in decades old mainframe manuals and printouts?

[Scott Lambdin]

I'm envisioning a Kindle with a punch card sticking out of the middle of it.

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:24 PM, William Sutton <william at trilug.org> wrote:

> used punch cards, as long as they're still somewhat rigid, are never
> useless.  they make very nice bookmarks.
>
> William Sutton
>
>
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Peter Neilson wrote:
>
> Don Hammond wrote:
>>
>>> I'm cleaning up and going through boxes and boxes of manuals and
>>> printouts that my late brother saved, and trying to figure out if there's
>>> any value to them. By value, I mean research, historical collection,
>>> curiosity, reminiscing, etc., not monetary.
>>>
>>
>> Today's trash is tomorrow's antiques.
>>
>> The computer museum, once in Boston but now somewhere on the left coast,
>> would know what's valuable. Generally stuff like that gets tossed, and
>> finally there's only a tiny bit of interest by a few people. Then much later
>> the historians come along, and say, "You tossed out THAT? How could
>> you?!!???"
>>
>> The mechanical musical instrument folks (player pianos and such) now
>> devote substantial effort to finding and restoring some of the rarer
>> equipment for reading data from what's essentially 65-channel and 88-channel
>> paper tape. Purists want to hear the original instruments play. Electronics
>> junkies try to make MIDI files instead, often with less than astounding
>> results. I've got about 6000 piano rolls myself, and I'm not about to chuck
>> any out, /especially/ not the ones that are nearly shredded from being
>> "played to death," because the music was so good. Conversely, rolls with
>> dreary hymns are usually in pristine shape. Fortunately the information is
>> digital, and thus copying (hand-punching holes in new paper) is feasible.
>> I've done it.
>>
>> Long ago I threw out a couple dozen boxes of IBM cards that I had used on
>> the 1620. Now /those/ were useless!
>>
>> Moral: There is someone out there who desperately wants your brother's
>> stuff. Especially the "worthless" parts.
>>
>> PS: There was, so I heard, an antiques shoppe on Cape Cod named, "Grandma
>> Had One Of Those And She Threw It Away."
>> --
>> TriLUG mailing list        :
>> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
>> TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
>>
>> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG FAQ  : http://www.trilug.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
>



-- 
There's a box?