okay, I feel like you were pressuring me to bid, so I have
I was inspired by the idea for another display called "The Osbornes". It's lacking substance at the moment though other than displaying a few Osborne computers. If there were enough different models to equal the number of people in the noted family, all the better. I'm not sure who'd get to be the Vixen.
tezza wrote:On the other hand, as a COLLECTOR myself the kind of computers I'D like to see ARE INDEED the oddball rare-types like the Vixen. If I was going to a show, I wouldn't want to see the common ones. I would want to see the weird and wonderful. To the general public though, there is zero nostalgia value, they probably had zero impact and so they are unlikely to be interested. Not unless you could spin a wider story. That's why these also-ran machines usually go for a song.
Yes, a whole generation is growing up now with a PC just looking like a PC and are missing out on the wonders of the variegated designs. These old computers were designed with a differentiating aesthetic in mind and for myself growing up in the 80s personal computing era this definitely had an effect on how I identified with the computers.
Old computers with the gnarly designs are now sufficiently old enough not to be seen or known by younger people and in a kind of reverse anachronistic way, look futuristic and at home in any tacky sci-fi comedy (I have some script ideas for this).
These computers also lend themselves to many ideas for artistic displays and arrangements which I think could provide a raison d'etre for a museum in itself. But yes, money can be short in extent in this space-time-money continuum.