30 May
2006
30 May
'06
6:18 p.m.
I have over a thousand 8" disks here from all
kinds of system
The Computer History Museum has roughly 10,000 floppies, mostly 5 1/4" that
I need to deal with as Software Curator, with more coming in every week.
The plan is to preserve them as images, with interpretation and verification
of contents to follow.
Like it or not, I'm using ImageDisk as the
standard to store and access
file content.
That should be fine for most soft-sectored formats. At this point it's
more important to get the bits into some form that preservation through
replication can start. It would be a good thing to start fingerprinting
files with MD5 checksums and building a data base of known good images.
Sadly, it appears through lack of response that Don Maslin's archive is
going to have to be redone.
I have several hundred disc images done as dmks that will have to be
converted at some point.
You'll also need to worry about virus checking, and verifing that the disc
actually contains what you think it does, too.
30 May
30 May
11:17 p.m.
On 5/30/2006 at 6:18 PM Al Kossow wrote:
I would strongly advise against using any sort of "smart" controller
(WD179x, NEC 765 family, etc.) as an archival way to preserve media. Any
program using controller chips will lose everything that occurs outside of
the expected sectors. For example, many WD controllers could and did
format tracks without IAMs, which more often than not means that the first
sector on the track will be missed. And a 765 can't be made to reliably
read the IAM.
Further, there are copy-protection schemes that are sometimes very bizarre.
For example, early editions of Harvard Graphics placed an identifying
string in the inter-sector gap.
Of course, this isn't even going to save you in the case of Apple ][
half-tracked protection, but you'll be closer to retaining an accurate
image in all cases, even if it does occupy 3 or more MB per diskette if you
keep, say, a Catweasel image of what you want to preserve.
...and be sure to select the highest practical clock frequency on the
Catweasel that you can to sample--it makes a difference in the recovery of
the data.
Cheers,
Chuck
Like it or
not, I'm using ImageDisk as the standard to store and access
file content.
That should be fine for most soft-sectored formats. At this point it's
more important to get the bits into some form that preservation through
replication can start. It would be a good thing to start fingerprinting
files with MD5 checksums and building a data base of known good images.
6772
days inactive
6772
days old
1 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
cclist＠sydex.com