23 Jun
1998
23 Jun
'98
9:35 p.m.
Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk wrote:
Paper tape, of course!
There is an action on me from this list last year (I think) to
investigate the possibility of Tyvek tapes. I still intend to do it,
but I don't know when!
Yeah, I recall mentioning the near-indestructability of that material,
having dealt with it as the stuff that disk envelopes were made of way
back in the goodle days (All Tanty 8" floppies I ever saw were encased
in it.
.
Since I lost the paper tapes from my (only ever) scholastic experience
with computers (1978-9, HP-2000A, Foothill College, one BASIC course
then tutoring) a long time ago due to cat pee. As far as I know, that
Tyvek stuff can only be destroyed by fire -- well, it _can_ be stretched,
but that doesn't actually destroy the data on a punched tape the way it
does on a magnetic tape.
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
And
anyway, a number of S100 cards included boot ROMs, etc. Those need to
be backed up.
Shure, but where ? Just on a disk ? I already have the problem
that I can't read some fd's of the early 80s. Even APPLE II disks,
althrough I always said that a DISK ][ drive could read and write
anything including Bierdeckl (beer mats/coasters).
So, what to use ? Writable CDs ? They have only a guaranteed
lifetime of less than 15 years. Tapes ? Maybe - I have some
PBS Tapes from 1976 and they are still readable, but they are
900 and 1600 BpI tapes. Any modern optical and magnetical
medium is less reliable. So printing the hex dump and then try
to scan it back (ocr) when a replacement is needed ?
This sould be reliable, since it is human readable
(Like old magnetic tapes).