It is a terrible pity that so much of our former computing infrastructure has been dumped in landfill, and still will be. A recent initiative here in Sydney to set up a computer museum (of sorts), ran out of money, and many antique computers that had been stored in a warehouse have been sent to landfill.
As for extracting data, given enough resources, the early stuff (coded in ASCII) should be possible. Several times I have recovered data from floppy disks whose filesystems were correupted, by essentially getting a dump of all sectors, then playing the jigsaw puzzle game to put the files together. It was even possible in some earlier versions of Word (losing formatting), though current Word formats are not so possible, as these use compression algorithms, that are sensitive to frame reading errors. These days, we could even apply some of the technology used for assembling gene fragments together to do this in an automated machine-learned fashion. It should even be possible to read data off the floppy disks, even if no floppy disk drive is available (although it will be easier if one is present). However, my original CP/M machine (a Superbrain), used to write its bits to disk in the opposite sense to how PCs did it, so one of the first steps to do upon receiving the bit image onto a PC was to invert the bits. Unfortunately, this had the downside that certain sector control signals would be misinterpreted by the PC's floppy disk controller, which meant that I couldn't read the superbrain disks unless the disks had been initially formatted on a PC! The Superbrain is long dead - the hardware lasted approximately 11 years, and it died in active service. Fortunately I had extracted anything of value from that media format, prior to its demise, in preparation for moving to Germany in the early '90s. Cheers On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 10:26:54AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > Steve, > > > > I think the Rainbow is still in my attic in Massachusetts! > > So, when you are getting together your Museum of Computer Arcania, you can > have it. > > > > There's pretty much a decade of correspondence up there on disks that > nobody can read, any more. Good thing none of my students ever became a > president . or was seduced by one. I lost another five years when I got mad > at Outlook and switched to Earthlink's Total Abcess. They announced one day > that they weren't supporting it any more and . that was that! Believe it or > not, there was no way to bring those files over into another mail program. > Even Dot Foil couldn't do it. > > > > What will be the computer equivalent of the Box of Lincoln's letters > uncovered in an old lady's attic in Peioria? Will an industry develop some > time in the future of recovering old cp/m disks at vast expense? Bill's > love emails to Paula Jones? > > > > Nick > > > > > > > > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith > Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2013 9:10 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Arcane Points > > > > Nick - > > There have to be *some* APs in there for you... certainly your reference to > the old Dec RAINBOW kicked a few neurons loose. Samna rings a bell, didn't > they get bought up by Lotus? This kicks loose a cascade of neurons around > the whole spreadsheet legacy of visicalc/123/improv! > > Thanks, I'll be up all night dreaming pivot tables and projections of OLAP > hypercubes! > > - Steve > > How about A.P.'s for a word processor called Samna running on cpm on a > computer called a Rainbow? Had some features that Word has yet to > introduce. > > > > N > > > > > > > > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith > Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2013 1:40 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: [FRIAM] Arcane Points > > > > Robert - > > Can I get some Arcane Points for writing my first program in ISO coded Atlas > Autocode on an EELM KDF9? > Robert C > > I'm not sure what is required for granting Arcane Points... certainly, > without help from Dr. Internet, I don't have a clue about these referencesI > > I suppose there is a "sweet spot" where *at least* one other member of the > group recognizes the reference... but obviously not too many. And I suppose > that only makes them Obscure, not Arcane. > > Merriam Webster seems to distinguish Arcane from Obscure by invoking an > element of the Mysterious or the Occult. I think there is an overtone of > being therefore only known to "the Initiate". I suppose all of our > references to Obscure (or Arcane) details is motivated by rememberances of > our time as "Initiates", sort of offering a "secret handshake" from an old > fraternity or childhood treehouse-club? > > Let's see who has an EELM KDF9 in their cupboard or a reference manual to > Atlas Autocode in their bookshelf! > > - Steve > > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
