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

[Don Hammond]

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. [...]
>
> 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 [...]
>

It's not quite the same as your piano rolls, but my Dad has an old  
wire recorder he got from his Dad. He's had it working from time to  
time, but it's an effort.

I have a similar appreciation for historical collections, and a lot of  
"tomorrow's antiques" of my own to prove it. I have my first computer,  
an XT, and my first cell phone, which looks a lot like Maxwell Smart's  
shoe phone.  I also have some things that belonged to my grandparents,  
the prize possession being a pump organ that was my grandmother's  
confirmation gift from her parents some time around 1920, and was  
built sometime in the 1890's.

I'll do some searching for the computer museum you mentioned, or  
another.  It was a good idea (that I should have thought of myself).   
Thanks for the thoughtful response.