archiving as opposed to backing up

Rumor has it that Tom Jennings may have mentioned these words: Well, yes! Sometimes I think: "If I lost my wife..." life could be more interesting! :-O Think of it as "parity." We *try* to save everything available, but some will invariably get lost. Hopefully, we've saved enough so it's not super-difficult to figure out what didn't survive. (oh, and for only 20 years, I don't see the importance. *200* years, however...[1] How many people are happy that the plans for Babbage's analytical engine hadn't gone *poof*?) Sure. Put a couple of crossword / cryptogram books & whatnot in a time capsule. However, WRT the classic machines, I agree that we should attempt to leave as little to chance as possible. There is some redundancy that can help here, too. If a fair portion of info about OS-9/68K is lost, but a large portion of info about OS-9/6809 survives, "computer archeologists" could use the existing knowledge to (possibly) rebuild a large portion of what was lost. Sure, it's not perfect, but at least they'd have access to *some* of the basics, instead of starting from scratch. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger [1] And of course, to reach 200 years, we must first pass 20... So I guess 20 years isn't important historically, unless too much is already lost by then. Then we're already screwed for the next 180... -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch(a)30below.com |