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Corporate IT Museum

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by thejendra1 1 view

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Once in a while it is necessary for every tech department to clean up all old IT mess accumulated over the years to make room for new mess. Cleaning the data center and other areas is almost similar to an archeological survey or expeditions conducted by archeologists in seek of ancient priceless artifacts. In fact, during one of our cleaning expeditions in the office, we techies discovered several priceless IT artifacts, documents, mails, etc., used by our ancestors. We have neatly arranged them in a corporate IT museum to display the lives of our ancient IT staff and employees in less automated times, and how the entire organization survived with just ten computers and one dot matrix printer. Entry to our museum is free. Please visit with family and friends.

Exhibit-1: A routine technical services memo on the notice board stating all servers and computers will be down for an indefinite period of time.

Exhibit-2: A skeleton of an unknown end user sitting on a chair still waiting anxiously for a technical rep to come over and repair his PC. A second skeleton discovered inside the data center buried under three hundred ancient spool backup tapes.

Exhibit-3: A two page priceless manuscript created using EDLIN, the ultimate text editor.

Exhibit-4: One PC-XT desktop with a 10 megabyte hard disk still in perfect working condition and one original floppy set of MS-DOS 3.3

Exhibit-5: A stern mail from the IT department warning employees about the dire consequences of sending attachments more than 20 kilobytes in size though email.

Exhibit-6: A broken ceramic pot with some inscriptions on it, which was probably given as a gift for some ancestral IT achievement.

Exhibit-7: A business card of an ancestral CTO who had an uninspiring designation of ?Supervisor - Computer Maintenance Department? (Uggg!!!). Several other name boards & organizational charts of the IT department renamed over and over again to show progress. Carbon dating of the boards revealed they are only a few months older than each other.

Exhibit-8: A tomb containing fossilized remains of several business systems proposals, long term IT strategies, etc.

Exhibit-9: Finally a black & white photograph of various techies in a jubilant mood after successfully installing the first Novell Netware server on the seventh attempt.

14 replies

by charliespencer

A working Zenith Z-note 486/25 laptop with 20 megabyte hard drive, monochrome LCD, secondary battery, original Zenith-branded shoulder bag, and the owner's manual. There also two flat plastic squares about 3.5 inches on each side, labeled "DOS 3.2" and "Driver diskette". They appear to fit in a slot on the side of the unit, similar to modern flash memory cards. When booted, it starts a type of primitive graphical user interface called "Windows 3.1". We have contacted archaeological research centers at major universities to see if their staff members may know how to use it.

by diwadm

The web site of ItMuseum.org looks like an exhibit piece from the early days of the web.

by peter.byfordcommerce

Hi,
You really ought to have something from LEO , the World's first Business Computer built in 1952, it was decommissioned in 1964, it was an 8 kilobyte machine and amongst other things produced inland revenue tax tables and did the bakery invoicing for J Lyons (its owner and creator).
Regards,
Peter Byford
Chairman, Leo Computers Society

by glgruver

Still have the original disks, but no box or manual. Needs a 5" floppy drive though, and I still have a few of them kicking around upstairs.

I did manage to toss a dual drive unit a couple of years ago. Another Division turned in a Burroughs drive unit that took 8" floppy disks. I took a chance that nobody was using it, or even remembered having it and chucked it in the dumpster. The other chance I took was in not destroying it with a hammer first. Of course this was after our ex-military, destroy everything before throwing it out, property disposal nutcase retired.

by authemis

I was going through my attic the other day and found my old 8088. I almost couldn't beleive it when it booted to the disk in the 5" floppy. Problem is i don't have the second disk it asks for, nor any it may ask for after.

by charliespencer

When I Googled it, I only got two results! One is the site itself, the other a Whois listing. No cross references, mentions on other sites, etc. Unless this is a very new organization, the lack of search results doesn't give me a warm fuzzy.

The site itself made frequent reference to the future museum building, location, etc. There was a map page, but it was blank. This was also not encouraging.

by glgruver

Ya gotta use a Bell 103 modem with a dial up connection to find it! I run into this sort of thing all the time at work. Even my P-II laptop is too fast for some of these applications.

No kidding, I have to keep an x-486 machine alive to service and program some of the old equipment we still use around here. But we are a government agency that cannot get rid of obsolete equipment because it still functions and has an "asset number" on the books. Takes an act of Congress and a special dispensation of the Pope to get rid of the stuff, and even then we have to wait for the 5th Monday of December every other leap year to do it. It's absolutely ridiculous!

glgruver

by nighthawk808

"Well, boss, I was taking a sip of my coffee and I had the screwdriver in my hand because I was taking the chain off the chainsaw. The coffee burnt my tongue and caused me to jerk back and drop them both. Unfortunately the start cord for the chainsaw got caught on my belt buckle on the way down. And that's how the screwdriver got jammed in the power supply, why there's liquid all over the motherboard, and why it looks like the equipment was cut to pieces by a lunatic. Now, about that budget request..."

by mooshi

Pretty sure this place should be reported for fraud. If someone wanted to send their money or "tv's of any era" to them to test it out, I'd be interested to see what happens! Or perhaps I should apply for Chief Financial Officer (volunteer).

by peterktech

If you read through that site you must have seen the "Site Under Construction" sign or elseyou are just plain ignorant and full of envy I checked through Texas state business registers for the museum and it does exist and its in its early phase of formation stop being so negative and either contribute positively or bug out.

by charliespencer

Welcome aboard.

1) Thanks for doing the research on the authenticity of the museum.

2) If some of us are cynical, it's because we've seen too many "Under Construction" sites than never get "Constructed". I'm asking you as a new member to check things out around here for a couple of weeks. If you do, you'll see that Mooshi's post isn't out of line by the standards of this site.

by peterktech

Hey I was just venting just like Mooshi was but only that I took my time out to investigate before I posted any adverse comments on someones effort. I know there is a lot of fraudulent stuff out there but never about a museum that has the Dean of Faculty of Technology at the University of Houston recruited to its Board maybe Mooshi might wanna check with the professor at the University of Houston to rest his concerns. I am proud that its gonna be in Texas!!!!

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