Originally Posted by
mixedgas
In any case, with laser show gear, if you have a choice between grabbing the content and the playback devices over the projector, some of us would rather see you grab the content. Much of it, thousands of hours of effort placed in hand animating artwork and composing, has just been flat out tossed into the trash. Including the works by two of the more major companies, some of which was generated by animators trained by Disney.
I've spent hours trying to recover shows on 1/2" 8 track tape, and its not easy, but few have put any effort in preserving it. If the show content is there, we'd love to see it placed in safe keeping. More modern laserists are pretty much interested in beam shows, and graphics-abstracts need to make a comeback.
I can make up whitelight tubes, some of us have found ways to recover FM encoded tape, we have no problem storing recovered materials to modern digital formats, but the material itself is rare, and often encumbered with rights issues.
There are a few pockets of the resistance left, viva la sine-cosine! A few of us just saved the first four scan head laser projector from the dumpster. Then we found getting it into a good museum just to preserve it is a real witch. There is a huge line to get things into the Smithsonian, and like many things government, their reply was "Show us the Money" and "We'll call you, you don't call us". You could find a crated Wright Flyer, serial number 3, flight tested by Wilbur, in a big old brick warehouse, call a string of major museums, and no one would take it.
You might wish to take a few minutes with a lawyer (foul and evil creatures, I know!) to make sure your machines are preserved. I'd hate to see a Zeiss or something end up at Apache Reclamation. Welcome to the forum!
Steve