30 May
2000
30 May
'00
1:20 p.m.
As long term storage goes, I'm not hard-over on the OTP EPROM thing, but I
do belive something other than FD's should be considered. Perhaps if the
stuff were carefully catalogged and reduced to compressed format
subsequently recorded on CD, that would be a decent archive. I've got 20+
year-old diskettes I still use without problems, but it's dry here in
Denver. Where it's damp, or, worse, where humidity ranges over a wider
range than here, floppies and mag-tape don't fare as well.
Multisession CD might be the best choice, making it possible to add later
versions to the same CD that holds the earlier ones.
This is already-aged software, etc, though, isn't it?
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul R. Santa-Maria <paulrsm(a)ameritech.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard
----------
From: Richard Erlacher
<richard(a)idcomm.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard
Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 08:28 PM
If you put floppy diskettes on the shelf and wait 20 years, you'll see
what's left of your archive.
This weekend I backed up a set of factory-original Apple II CP/M disks for
MicroPro applications (Wordstar, Mailmerge, Spellstar, Datastar,
Reportstar, Calcstar, etc). The disks were dated 1979-1982 and there were
no errors reading them. I copied them twice: once to another floppy, and
once to the Apple II disk archive format (ShrinkIt) on my hard drive.
Twenty years is not too long if you use single-sided single density
diskettes that cost $10 each (in 1980 dollars!).
I don't trust today's ten-cent double-sided high-density diskettes for any
long term storage.
Paul R. Santa-Maria
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
paulrsm(a)ameritech.net