17 Nov
2012
17 Nov
'12
4:29 p.m.
Thanks for that elaboration on Don's service to the community. I didn't
realise the collection was an "offline" one. From the snippets of
information I picked up when I started to explore CP/M I'd always assumed
it was an on-line collection that had been lost when the site disappeared.
Obviously that was not the case (except for the lost bit).
Terry (Tez)
On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 barythrin at gmail.com wrote:
As you heard I believe he had one of the
largest/complete collections of cp/m out there. He seemed like the go to
guy if there was an image needed.
Not "image". If you needed a boot
disk for a machine, he would snail mail
one to you.
From what I understand there wasn't an
online archive of it so he just had the collection in some form offline
(probably due to copyrights and liability)
TECHNICAL issues. (in addition to copyright and liability)
He started collecting [and sharing as needed] boot disks before there WAS
an "online".
Although most people right now aren't aware that there was such a time
period, the internet was a newer development for him. But, he made and
put out lists of the most commonly requested boot disks. Think Usenet,
etc.
Starting such a project NOW would call for a website, with images to
download, along with image writing tools and lots of discussion on how to
make disks of non-MFM formats using other machines.
When he started, NONE of his boot disk collection was "imagable".
Quite recently (in the last ~20 years), image programs have become
available that can image many, maybe even more than half, but definitely
NOT all of his collection.
I'm sure that towards the end, in his last decade, that he made use of
imaging programs in order to facilitate the distribution when people
needed one.
These are just my passer by views though. I'm
sure others here knew him
better than my speculations.
But, like the proverbial elephant, each of us only knew parts of what he
was all about. Even his own wife had no idea what he was up to, and that
lack of knowledge may well be responsible for the unavailability of the
real collection.
I sent him a few disk now and then, and had him listed with the
executioner of my estate as the recipient for my entire collection
of sample disks. I haven't done paperwork yet, but I notified her
that Al is to be the new recipient. His best known interest was
collecting boot disks - my collection is sample disks for analyzing
the disk and file formats with only a small portion of them being
bootable.
Numerous times, we answered questions for each other.
One time, about 10 or 15 years ago, he and Sellam contacted me for help
figuring out a bizarre NEC disk. I suggested sectors to look at, and they
sent me dumps of those sectors. It turned out to be a "Stand-alone BASIC"
disk format on an 8" disk, like their "NEC-DOS" on some of their 8000
series 5.25 (also Russian Oki, and very loosely similar to Coco). Once we
found the DIRectory near the middle of the disk, I deciphered the
directory entries and told them which blocks/tracks/sectors of the disk to
copy to get the individual files. It was less than a full day of work, and
as far as I know, no money changed hands.
That was the kind of guy that he was. Money might be necessary for
expenses (think of the snail mail costs of mailing a diskette thousands of
times, starting when a diskette was as expensive as lunch!), but that was
not his motivation. He seemed to enjoy the challenge of anything new, and
liked to help people.
The world is a sadder, more frustrating place without him.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com