Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2022 09:22:54 -0600 From: russhanson <russhanson@grantsburgtelcom.net> Subject: Obsolete Media Laboratory setup Message-ID: <18e64b35aefb7855ecf47873d80a1565@grantsburgtelcom.net>
At the Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society Museum in uptown
Cushing, WI (Polk Co NW Wisconsin) we have decided to create a small
office room as our "Obsolete Media Laboratory."
The question is -- what obsolete media should we be thinking about and
what equipment will we need. We think much of the equipment may be
available by donation from folks attics or buyable on Ebay or the thrift
shop.
Our idea came about when we finally got WIFI to our museum building
and began in earnest to make use of it with our computer equipment. As
the computer person for the group, and an old media conversion
enthusiast, I looked at our equipment -- 2009 computer, printer and
scanner with a couple of more modern laptops and two newer pieces of
equipment, an large format negative scanner and a foot pedal operated
camera on a stand for photographing items rapidly (i.e. old record
books).
Those last two are shared resources funded by the Wisconsin
Historical Society mini-grants and are rarely actually at the museum,
one being at the Burnett Co Historical Society this winter copying their
slides and negatives and the other at the Luck Museum being used by the
Polk Co Genealogical Society for old township record book copying. They
give us photograph and document digitizing decently. Added to that is a
donated stack scanner that does double-sided scans of regular or legal
paper as well as 13x19 flatbed capabilities. It won't print, but scans
fine!
Anyway, the 2009 computer has a 3.5-inch floppy diskette drive in it,
something that will read a type of obsolete media. Another old computer
available will read 5.25-inch floppies. So we realized that we have the
core of an "obsolete media" lab to digitize these old storage media.
We think adding a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a cassette tape
recorder, a mini-cassette tape recorder and maybe a record player deck
will give us audio conversion capabilities. The earphone output can be
connected directly to the microphone input on a computer and free audio
software can clean it up well.
We were given a 16mm projector with the 1970 movies to teach Driver's
Ed from the local high school last year and so can play that kind of
media. We hope to get an 8mm, Super 8mm movie projector too and a
VHS/DVD player for video output. I tested projecting a movie in a
completely dark room with a camera pointed at the movie screen on a
tripod for recording it and conversion to digital and it was as good as
the one we spent $125 for a professional conversion. So projectors are
our inexpensive film movie conversion thought.
We have to think about an old Macintosh computer with their media too.
Our plan is to share it with other groups for processing their old
media at either no cost or a minimal cost for the assistance if we need
to do it for them. We hope to teach folks how to use the equipment we
gather so they can do their own if they want.
We do have a microfilm reader, a nonprinting one that was tossed our way
too! With a new bulb and some adjustment of clutches, it works pretty
well in a darkened room. Readable if not printable. I have tried
photographing the projected images and it sort of works out, but not
wonderfully, so am thinking about some better camera -- maybe a small
phone type that could be velcro-ed into the projection box.
What do you think? What do we need? And if you have some obsolete
media or obsolete media players think of us before tossing it.
A rather fun winter project for a retired computer professional who
worked with just about any type of obsolete media ever invented from
8-inch floppies and paper tape, word processing magnetic strips and so
on.
I know we could hire this done, but my goodness the costs are high.
About $5 for a floppy diskette!
The photo attached is of a pristine loaded 2009 Windows XP computer,
printer and scanner in the Obsolete Media Lab at the Cushing Museum. It
has the 3.5 diskette drive in it, parallel and serial ports modem etc.
State of the art for its time and works wonderfully!
Russ Hanson
Obsolete Media Laboratory
Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society