Museum of 20th Century IT

Exhibit

Alison and Shawn are preparing to exhibit information technology from 1981-2000 for one week, fall 2011, at Hartell Gallery, Cornell U. (Sept 18-24).

Components

Handspring Visor Deluxe

History

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Handspring-Inc-Company-History.html

Amiga 500

Minimized materials, but still meeting demand for expandability through externalized components pioneered by Apple and Commodore consumer-level predecessors.

Amiga 2500

The largest Amiga, a workhorse, with expansion bays for drives and cards.

Amiga 1200

The portable member of a later generation of Amigas.

Amiga 3000/UX

Runs Unix or Amiga.

Amiga 3000

Compact desktop.

Apple PowerBook G3 Wall Street II

http://lowendmac.com/pb2/wallstreet-powerbook-g3-ii.html

Apple iBook G3

http://lowendmac.com/pb2/original-ibook-g3-300-mhz.html

Apple Mac SE FDHD

This is the introduction of a high density floppy drive and internal hard drive to the portable series. It looks just like all the previous portables, but is much more powerful in that one doesn't need to constantly insert floppies to run programs, but one can use DOS formatted floppies to transfer files to PCs. Also remarkable for a small microcomputer is the expansion slot.

Apple Mac LC

Little pizza box Mac.

Apple Power Mac G4

Advertised as the first supercomputer for consumers, since it crossed the boundary for US limits on exports of powerful computers.

Apple Airport Base Station

Perhaps the pinnacle of expression of the rounded aesthetic, further along the iMac lines.

Description

A multimedia extravaganza featuring the personal collection of two Gen-Xers, this exhibition incorporates functioning computers, slide show viewers, personal computing devices, and visual displays—both print and digital. Information technology devices from 1981-2000 inform this retrospective conversation between design and computing. In this exploration of the physical history of information technology, some objects are classified as cutting edge design or functional innovations; others feature graphic or design software that served as visualization tools. Themes of the exhibition include the history of the Macintosh as a design object, portability, and the Commodore Amiga computers’ tools and software related to visualization, drafting, and music.

Preparation

• Replace batteries in computers. Old batteries prevent storage in parameter RAM, causing difficult hardware problems. See Amiga#Batteries.
• Replace or repair Mac LC power supply. It's not supplying 5 and 12 V, and it's making a 2Hz click.
• Create list of all computers to display and create floor plan, determine placement, # of power supplies needed.
• Opening or closing reception?
• Posters for advertising show and educational posters for show
• LCD Screen application/ movie

References

Big Book of Amiga Hardware

Online encyclopedia with guides to all the Amigas and very many peripherals. http://www.bboah.com/

Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools

http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/art/features/cory-arcangel-2011-5/index1.html

Emulators

MiniVMac allows users of newer Macs to run a Macintosh Plus in a window on their computer. http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/doc/start.html

See our notes on running Mini vMac.

UAE runs Amiga OS on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

http://www.amigaemulator.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAE_(emulator)

Installing RAM in an Apple SE

http://www.ccadams.org/se/ram.html

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

Low End Mac

Expansive source for specs and contexts of each Apple computer model. Used by people trying to get the most out of older computers. http://lowendmac.com/

Old computers archive

Lots of interesting computers from the seventies and 80s, more than the usual suspects. http://oldcomputers.net/

Software

Info-Mac is one of the few traditional, hierarchical archives of shareware and freeware. http://www.info-mac.org/viewforum.php?f=94