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Newsletter #3 NADCOMM Staff, Family, Friends, Associates, and Greenkeyers: Personal challanges have prevented me from spending as much time as I would like putting our museum in more working order. I lost my job and my father, plus made some bad decisions all in the same two week period. My loving wife gives me tremendous support for which I am eternally grateful. They say that "a sailor's luck is never the same", so I am due for some good things! I am now doing some consulting based on my 33 years in telecommunications. I also have revised the arrangements regarding my individual retirement accounts (Uncle Sam will make out on this deal). I am working also (without pay) with four others to startup a new telecommunications manufacturing company. Please have some good thoughts for us will you?! It has been a long time since I gave you a report on our data communications museum. Things are definitely progressing. Frinds from all over the country are contributing items and supplies so that we can preserve the history and development of data communications from Morse through ASCII, and Facsimile through Video. Analog through Digital. Telegraph to Lightwave. Unless it talks, it is data! The list of items continues to grow. Thankfully many folks have also found the appropriate documentation for these rare items so that we can display them in proper working order. We now have a supplier for all the paper tape, roll paper, and teletype ribbons that we need. Even paper tape splicing patches: http://www.westnc.com The need of grease and oil keeps me looking for the best sources. So far the best found is "One Lube" for oil. But we have not found a source for "One Grease" unless we purchase several gallons! My former garage now has one of the four walls insulated and covered with 5/8" drywall (fire code). I need to do the same to the other three, only the drywall will be only 1/2" thick. I have 90% of the power wiring finished. I brought 240vac into a branch panel and have 6 breakers feeding the museum equipment. The most interesting(?) is the 240vac feed to the AT&T Lineage (Lucent) -48vdc 25 amp power supply that will power up the DDS Hub and End Office equipment. I have installed 1700 pound shelving that is storing the 100+ telegraph and transmission test sets recovered from the Chicago dump. The portable Western ELectric D4 Carrier System is up and running with 24 channels of Dataport DDS provisioned. We even have an analog off-net extension set up with a 209A Dataset and a 9600 integrated DSU. All we need is a second 209 for the other end. The collection of Teletypes® and teletypewriters is growing monthly. The good news is that the machines are being preserved, the bad news is that I have not been able to either pick up or afford to ship all of the heavy items from their present locations. I am in debt to my fellow NADCOMM directors for helping to hold on to these old and rare beasties. Special praise goes to Tom Kleinschmidt, the great grandson of E. E. Klienschmidt (one of the inventors of the teletypewriter). Tom has gone out of his way to help preserve this equipment and support our overall efforts. I am also grateful for all of the others who have supported the museum. At the top of the list of contributors is Bob Cnota, my old teletype repair buddy and fellow ex-test center foreman. Thanks to Bob's efforts, many items have been saved that would have wound up in the smelter or buried in aland-fill. Our website is steadily improving due to the tireless efforts of my long time friend, Roger Bindl of Hadron Electronic Media. Roger is a genious when it comes to websites, internet computing and especially the transfer of documentation to CD-ROM. Should you have a need in these areas contact Roger through our website or at http://www.hem.com Don House
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