Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #150210

Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new)

From	Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>
Newsgroups	alt.folklore.computers
Subject	Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new)
Date	2015-08-23 09:45 -0400
Organization	National Capital Freenet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Message-ID	<alpine.LNX.2.02.1508230943500.14860@darkstar.example.org> (permalink)
References	<alpine.LNX.2.02.1508222325500.14078@darkstar.example.org> <1547394328462019448.274528peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org>

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On Sun, 23 Aug 2015, Peter Flass wrote:

> Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> On Sat, 22 Aug 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>
>>> On Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 8:14:47 AM UTC-4, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Think about photos.  Hard drives crash, CDs and DVDs degrade and become
>>>> unreadable.  A paper photo stored properly will last hundreds of years.
>>>
>>> Color photos may not necessarily have good storage, and one won't find >
>>> out until it's too late.  Some of my very old Agfa slides are still >
>>> good, but a later version of Agfa all faded away.
>>>
>>> Usually, slides and prints processed by Kodak have good stability, but >
>>> stuff processed by others may not last that long.
>>>
>>> As to DVDs and CDs, what scares me is obsolescence of the medium as >
>>> opposed to decay.  If you have a 5" floppy with important historical >
>>> data on it, where can you go and _easily_ get it read?  Even a 3.5" >
>>> floppy?  If you have data created by an old version of Lotus, can a >
>>> modern program still read it?  (People are telling me after a point old
>>>> files can't be read.)
>>>
>>>
>> The real problem is the software.
>>
>> I still have 5.25" drives around, kept just in case.  This computer sitll has a 3.5" drive.
>>
>> But I have floppies going back to 1984, and those are on a non-mainstream
>> format.  I either have to resurrect the computer they were made on, or
>> write or get software that will read the sectors in in the proper format.
>
> I seem to recall a program which was advertised to read many or most 5-1/4"
> disk formats on a PC.
>
I remember something in the MSDOS days, and I do have a copy of it, on 
floppy.

>>
>> I should have done it a long time ago, but I didn't really have any
>> independent means of archiving until relatively recently.  ANd those
>> oldest floppies are relatively small, it wsa only once I got a hard
>> drive, in 1994, that I could save really large files, and only after I
>> got oinline access, in late 1994, that I had much in the way of "large"
>> files.  The closer I get to now, the larger things get, though ironically
>> the less important it is.  If I lost a hard drive, it would nag me about
>> what I lost, but chances are good much of it could be recovered, so long
>> as I knew what was there.  But most of the file space in more recent
>> times is from things from the internet, rather than things I created myself.
>>
>
> At one point I created image copies of a large number of 3-1/2" disks and
> copied them to a CD so I could trash the floppies.
>
I did consolidate my Macintosh floppies, it's on an SCSI hard drive, but 
also on an image on my last computer's IDE drive.  The plan was to work on 
that image, retrieve what was useful (probably not that much), but it 
mostly just sits there.

   Michael

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Thread

Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-21 13:44 -0700
  Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-08-22 00:40 +0000
    Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-21 20:16 -0700
      Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) "Santo Brown" <sb8743@gmail.com> - 2015-08-22 13:27 +1000
      Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2015-08-21 22:40 -0500
        Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-08-22 06:58 +0000
          Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-22 13:18 -0700
        Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2015-08-27 20:21 -0700
      Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> - 2015-08-21 23:40 -0500
      Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-08-22 08:28 +0000
        Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-08-22 09:24 +0000
        Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Joe Makowiec <makowiec@invalid.invalid> - 2015-08-22 11:39 +0000
          Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-08-22 17:14 +0000
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) "Santo Brown" <sb8743@gmail.com> - 2015-08-23 04:53 +1000
          Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-22 13:23 -0700
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-08-22 21:13 -0400
        Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-08-22 12:13 +0000
          Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-08-22 10:24 -0400
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Morten Reistad <first@last.name> - 2015-08-22 16:54 +0200
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-22 13:28 -0700
          Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-08-22 13:27 -0700
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-08-22 22:24 +0000
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-08-22 21:12 -0400
            Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-08-22 23:30 -0400
              Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-08-23 10:47 +0000
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-08-23 09:45 -0400
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-08-23 14:55 +0000
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-08-23 14:24 +0000
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-08-23 18:21 -0400
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-08-24 06:56 +0000
                Re: Business data processing on the System/3 (the old and the new) Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> - 2015-08-23 10:04 -0500

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