ASCII by Jason Scott
13 hours ago
- #Community Projects
- #Archiving
- #Digital Preservation
- The author saved 13,000 manuals from being discarded over ten years ago and recently completed digitizing them, now available on the Internet Archive.
- Some manuals from HP (now Agilent Technologies and Keysight) and Tektronix were not scanned, as these companies maintain their own better scans.
- Funding for scanning came from individual contributions and notably the Digital Library of Amateur Radio Communications (DLARC), which covered scanning costs for radio-related manuals.
- The author moved from a small office to a larger industrial space, consolidating all archiving materials and enabling more efficient digitization work.
- Rent for the new space increased to $1,000/month, and while manageable, the author welcomes ongoing support via Patreon, PayPal, Venmo, or livestream sponsorship.
- The author attended INIT HELLO, an Apple II event, and discussed the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF), expressing support for exhibitors despite organizational issues.
- A detailed account of donating IEEE publications to VCF, only to learn they were discarded (though containers were kept), leading the author to stop attending VCF events.
- The author promotes a fundraising campaign for friend Chris Orcutt's nine-volume novel series, highlighting the decade-long effort and seeking support for its promotion.
- Critique of Google's AI-generated summaries in search results, arguing it harms the web and represents a shift away from traditional search engine ethics.
- The author explains a policy of frequently blocking people online to maintain mental health and avoid negativity, emphasizing it as a personal wellness strategy.
- Reflections on the Living Computer Museum's closure and sale of its collection, noting it was never a formal museum but Paul Allen's private collection, with efforts to preserve software and documentation via SDF and the Internet Archive.
- The author recounts personal experiences with AI and technology hype cycles, expressing cynicism but acknowledging experimentation with AI tools for archival work.