Bruce Walker wrote: > But even relatively modern formats are effectively dead these days. > How many of us could read an 8 inch MDS-80 floppy? A 5.25" CP/M or MS- > DOS floppy? Even finding a PC or Mac with a 3.5" 1.44M floppy on it is > non-trivial lately. In a pinch I can read 3.5" floppies, but I'd have > to spend a couple of hours jury-rigging something together: an old PC > from the basement, running FreeBSD and networked.
I have tried to back up any files I've had stored on - for want of a better description - dead media formats, to the latest method of storage. At one point I had loads of 5.25" floppy discs and thousands of 3.5" discs. I still have some of those from Kodak, where there was an option of providing a disc with your processed film. I have no way of opening those discs now, yet because I have the film, it's not important. I wonder how many images will get tossed into the bin, as over the years so many people will come across old storage media that they have no way of opening, and memories or records of the past will disappear forever? There is a certain irony to the fact in this time of continual technological advancement, that files/images stored twenty years ago on the hot media of the time is unreadable to most, yet you can use negatives that were taken many decades ago and recreate (and in many cases improve) the original with equipment bought in 2015. Malcolm -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
