Chuck Guzis wrote:
I wasn't the only one thinking this way,
apparently. Here's a great
story about rescuing the Beeb's 1986 Domesday Book project:
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna/
Do any of the cclist-ers in the UK still have any LV-ROMs and
hardware? I'd be willing to wager that Tony does. :)
Yes - see my other post. Hopefully my system will be on the US side of the
pond in a few months, US Customs permitting...
Thankfully I've got all of the important bits of the service manual for the
player too - whilst the players used were extremely innovative, and well
designed electronically, they were really let down by poor build quality. Dry
joints aplenty... (I've fixed quite a few over the years!)
Disc capacity was 324MB of digital data and 54,000 video frames, not too bad
for the time. The discs themselves are pretty robust - better than early CDs -
although I have seen a few where they've started to deteriorate at the edges.
Thankfully a couple of separate projects have the data all archived (but I
don't think anyone's tackled the other LVROM titles, unfortunately)
The whole project was pretty amazing. I'm not sure if anything with that level
of school participation, and pushing the technology of the day that hard, has
ever been done since - at least not in the UK.
Earliest reference to the project I seem to have is an announcement by Philips
from November 1984 - but I don't think things
really went 'live' until the
middle of 1986.
cheers
Jules