Disasters and Recovery

I wrote: Doug <doug(a)blinkenlights.com> wrote: Most everything inside the HDA. Remember the Quantum and Seagate drives that wouldn't work after only a few months of storage, because of problems with the lubricant? Not to mention that hard drives almost all have firmware in flash or OTP EPROM, and some have calibration information in EEPROM. IMNSHO, it would be much easier to preserve a state-of-the-art 1970 minicomputer (e.g., a PDP-8 or PDP-11) in operable condition for the next hundred years than a current PC. If the 1970 minicomputer breaks, there might still be some suitable parts in 2100 to fix it. And if there aren't exact replacements, it should be possible to fabricate replacements. All of the parts are simple and well-documented. When a chip in your 1999 PC goes bad, the odds of being able to find a suitable replacement in 2025 are pretty slim. By 2100 it's unlikely that you'll be able to get any parts. For instance, what if the 82371AB PIIX4 chip fails? Right now it is easy to get those. But if there weren't any available, could you program an FPGA to replace it? Certainly it is theoretically possible, but it's not bloody likely. Do you have the logic diagrams or equations for the PIIX4? And mechanical things like disk drives are similar. It would be much easier to fabricate a replacement part for an RK05 drive than for a Quantum Fireball 12G IDE drive.