28 Jan
2009
28 Jan
'09
11 a.m.
I am looking for volunteers to help reverse-engineer and document Apple
II VisiCalc.
Besides documenting this for future historians
--I plan to give all this work to the Smithsonian--
I'd like to get Apple II VisiCalc running in emulation.
Right now this isn't possible because of the copy protection.
(BTW the PC DOS version is available on the web, and doesn't have copy
protection).
I have three versions of the Apple II software. I know one of them
still boots (1983?)
and have some confidence that the other two versions (1979 and 1981)
work too.
I have been in contact with both Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin.
Of course you ask, well then why do you need volunteers?
The answer is because no one can find the sources.
Bob and I plan to dig around his garage when the weather gets warmer,
but there are no guarantees, and the 30th anniversary is in October 2009.
--Tim McNerney
http://www.4004.com
28 Jan
28 Jan
12:57 p.m.
Tim McNerney wrote:
I'd like to get Apple II VisiCalc running in
emulation.
Right now this isn't possible because of the copy protection.
There are cracked versions of Visicalc on some apple mirrors, ie.
asimov. I have run Visicalc in an emulator a few years ago from a .DSK
image, so I know this to be the case. If I can find the .DSK I used, I
will send it to you, but you can probably find it faster yourself.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
2:07 p.m.
Tim McNerney wrote:
I'd like to get Apple II VisiCalc running in
emulation.
Right now this isn't possible because of the copy protection.
So are you trying to reverse-engineer the entire application, or just the
copy-protection?
What are your goals here?
Remove the protection?
Reverse-engineer the protection to the point where you can modify an
emulator to emulate the protection ("bad" GCR, timing hacks and whatnot)?
Tear the app apart, documenting absolutely everything?
I have three versions of the Apple II software. I
know one of them
still boots (1983?)
and have some confidence that the other two versions (1979 and 1981)
work too.
My first step would be to use some form of disc imaging apparatus (Catweasel?)
to make a magnetic transition level image of the discs, then write some
software to decode that into actual bytes and words.
I'm not sure how Apple discs work so you'll have to bear with me here. (I do
have a decent amount of 6502 knowledge, though...)
I'd start by reverse engineering the boot sector, startup code or whatever. On
a BBC Micro disc I'd look at the boot flags, then start tearing the !Boot
program/CLI script apart. Move on from there as and when necessary.
The theory here is that the disc must be readable in some way -- either it's a
"pure" AppleDOS (or whatever) disc, or it's got an AppleDOS boot track and
the
rest of the disc is some custom format or other.
Much as I hate using PCs as an example for anything.. as long as track 0 on a
PC disc meets one of the standard formats (e.g. 360K, 720K, 1.4MB), and sector
0:0:1 (cyl 0, head 0, sector 1) contains a valid PC/DOS boot sector (defined
as "the checksum is valid and the 0x55AA signature is present") then the BIOS
will boot the disc (by loading CHS 0:0:1 into memory at 0x7C00 and jumping to
0x7C00). The BIOS really doesn't care about the filesystem, that's the
operating system's job...
But like I said above, the amount of work involved is going to depend on what
you want. Just reversing the copy protection to the point where you can
emulate the protected tracks shouldn't be too difficult. Reverse engineering
the entire application to the point where you can specify in great detail how
the application works, and all its internal data structures... that's going to
be difficult.
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
29 Jan
29 Jan
7:07 a.m.
At 01:00 PM 1/28/2009, Tim McNerney wrote:
I am looking for volunteers to help reverse-engineer
and document Apple II VisiCalc.
I have three versions of the Apple II software. I know one of them still boots (1983?)
and have some confidence that the other two versions (1979 and 1981) work too.
I have been in contact with both Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin.
Of course you ask, well then why do you need volunteers?
The answer is because no one can find the sources.
No matter how many times I hear stories like this, or lived through
stories like this, I still shake my head and can't understand how the
source code gets lost. All these corporations, all the lawsuits, all
the programmers, all the marketing money, and so often no one, NO ONE,
preserves arguably the most important bits.
- John
7:23 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
No matter how many times I hear stories like this, or
lived through
stories like this, I still shake my head and can't understand how the
source code gets lost.
I think typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-) If a company's
churning out new products once in a while then it stands to reason that the
older, obsolete stuff gets pushed to the back of a cupboard... then buried...
then moved to a different cupboard...
I bet it still exists in a lot of cases, but everybody's forgotten exactly
where, simply because it's been such a long time since they last needed to know.
The picture's perhaps a bit brighter these days, because the storage is so
cheap now that there's less incentive to dump things from corporate
fileservers every once in a while (storing them in the aforementioned cupboard).
cheers
J.
8:22 a.m.
Jules Richardson schrieb:
John Foust wrote:
I have actually seen it happen that software was discarded, rather than
moved to some later forgotten place. The mechanism usually works in the
following way:
1. The developer and curator of the software leaves the company (job
change, retirement, etc.), of course telling everyone that the work is
an important piece to be kept.
2. The media and the documentation is put into some archive locker, the
hardware - obsolete anyway - is discarded.
3. Long time, three new generations of employees later, someone finds
the locker again, regards it interesting for archival of own stuff, and
sees big old black squares and supposedly worn-out brown adhesive tape
on large reels. He has no knowledge what this has been once, does not
even know what floppies are at all, leave alone 8" ones, and for reel
tapes noone even has a reader anymore in the close environment. Some
binders read 1973, long before he was born. Surely it is not for Wintel
systems.
4. Most importantly, the whole crap occupies space in the place that is
needed.
5. So the stuff goes into the dump.
6. Usually, some months, later some former customer asks for
support...has even still the original system to restore the media.
No matter how many times I hear stories like
this, or lived through
stories like this, I still shake my head and can't understand how the
source code gets lost.
I think typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-) If a company's
churning out new products once in a while then it stands to reason that the
older, obsolete stuff gets pushed to the back of a cupboard... then buried...
then moved to a different cupboard... I bet it still exists in a lot of cases, but
everybody's forgotten exactly
where, simply because it's been such a long time since they last needed to know.
The picture's perhaps a bit brighter these days, because the storage is so
cheap now that there's less incentive to dump things from corporate
fileservers every once in a while (storing them in the aforementioned cupboard).
Storage on corporate file servers isn't cheap. You don't put 10 1TB-USB
drives at $100 each together and then have a serious and reliable
corporate storage system, even if such USB-SANs exist.
The main point though is called 'digital dilemma'. Data on CDs will
survive maybe 10, 20 years, so they need to be copied before, e.g. to
DVDs which give another 5/10 years, or BlueRay (which I give 2 years
until the next technology will be thrown on the customer obsoleting the
format). Data on tapes will survive as long as the corresponding tape
drives are still in use; before EOL data must be copied. Data on RAID
disks will survive as long as the base disk is available which might be
5 or 10 years.
Before retiring an old storage, data must be copied. This requires time
and effort, compared to a simple "remove *" because the #3 effect also
applies ("What is that VISICAL.ASM junk anyway - doesn't even load at
all in Visual Studio 2008 although the name implies. Shred the junk!")
--
Holger
30 Jan
30 Jan
5:40 a.m.
On Thursday 29 January 2009, Holger Veit wrote:
3. Long time, three new generations of employees
later, someone finds
the locker again, regards it interesting for archival of own stuff,
and sees big old black squares and supposedly worn-out brown adhesive
tape on large reels. He has no knowledge what this has been once,
does not even know what floppies are at all, leave alone 8" ones, and
for reel tapes noone even has a reader anymore in the close
environment. Some binders read 1973, long before he was born. Surely
it is not for Wintel systems.
This is why I tend to prefer the people who I work with (in academia).
They don't seem to be as rash and thoughtless about their decisions as
a lot of people in the corporate world, who just seem to be interested
in how big their paycheck is. (I said "some", not "all", so it's
not
necessary to reply to say how this profile doesn't fit $reader.)
Storage on corporate file servers isn't cheap. You
don't put 10
1TB-USB drives at $100 each together and then have a serious and
reliable corporate storage system, even if such USB-SANs exist.
But, you can fit the contents of a huge number of 6250bpi 9-track tapes
onto a "small" 73GB SCSI drive; around 500 full tapes. You can fit
even more 8" floppies in the same space. At what we spend for our
persistent, backed up storage at work, 73GB would be less than $100
worth of storage ($1000/TB is the typical guideline right now).
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
1:34 p.m.
Holger Veit wrote:
I'd agree, but I've also found no end of stuff that doesn't get thrown out, or
it falls into the hands of one of the employees (usually who'll think they'll
use the media for something and then never do, burying the stuff in their
garage or attic).
That's aside from the things that get kept privately by employees with an
interest in a particular bit of code (usually for sentimental reasons more
than anything).
The problem is finding this stuff - and the task is mind-boggling for a museum
with a general interest. It's probably a bit easier if you're a private
collector with a fairly narrow interest, but even then there's a need to be in
the right place at the right time.
No, but *typical* software projects don't take up that much space. Sure, there
are still plenty of big ones out there, but for most it's not like they're
using a vast amount of available storage - and it's probably far easier to
just migrate the data as/when the storage gets upgraded than it is to actively
figure out what can be dumped and what can't.
I think
typically it just gets misplaced, not lost :-) If a company's
churning out new products once in a while then it stands to reason
that the older, obsolete stuff gets pushed to the back of a
cupboard... then buried... then moved to a different cupboard...
I have actually seen it happen that software was discarded, rather than
moved to some later forgotten place. The mechanism usually works in the
following way: The
picture's perhaps a bit brighter these days, because the storage
is so cheap now that there's less incentive to dump things from
corporate fileservers every once in a while (storing them in the
aforementioned cupboard).
Storage on corporate file servers isn't cheap. You don't put 10 1TB-USB
drives at $100 each together and then have a serious and reliable
corporate storage system, even if such USB-SANs exist. ("What is that VISICAL.ASM junk anyway -
doesn't even load at
all in Visual Studio 2008 although the name implies. Shred the junk!")
That's precisely why it survives, because nobody wants to stick their neck out
and claim it to be junk, only to find 6 months or a year later that it was of
vital importance (it's also why home computer users seem to need hundreds of
GB of space these days, but that's another discussion :-)
cheers
Jules
2:04 p.m.
Thinking about the private collections of works source code, how
should we deal with it as we under some contractual obligation to the
ex employer.
Dave Caroline
2:53 p.m.
Sure that's all good and true, but surely more software and sources *should* survive
these days as most people will probably search the internet to see if it's worth any
value.
Items that aren't labelled are much more likely to be junked than items that are
clearly labelled.
Regarding harddrives full of junk, I have a work colleague who's partner sticks all
her photo's straight onto their home computer filling up the harddrive.
My harddrive would be pretty empty if I hadn't discovered sites like YouTube etc.
Plenty of cool and educational clips can be downloaded these days.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
--- On Fri, 30/1/09, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc
To: "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, 30 January, 2009, 9:34 PM
That's precisely why it survives, because nobody wants to stick their neck
out and claim it to be junk, only to find 6 months or a year later that it was
of vital importance (it's also why home computer users seem to need hundreds
of GB of space these days, but that's another discussion :-)
cheers
Jules
31 Jan
31 Jan
3:05 a.m.
On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 22:53 +0000, Andrew Burton wrote:
Regarding harddrives full of junk, I have a work
colleague who's
partner sticks all her photo's straight onto their home computer
filling up the harddrive.
I have a stack of 80-quid drives. You may not be familiar with this
unit of measurement, but basically it's the amount of space you can buy
for about 80 quid including VAT. They range from 30GB up to 320GB (got
a couple of the latter, actually). About once every couple of years
when a drive gets full, I pull it and buy another...
Gordon
3 p.m.
Yeah, I know you can get large drives (I think I saw a 1TB drive on Amazon for ?100-?200
($150~$300) a few weeks back) cheaply now, but his computer was around ~10 years old (so I
wasn't sure about compatibilty issues etc.) and he has higher priorities (mortgage,
kids etc.)
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
--- On Sat, 31/1/09, Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> wrote:
From: Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ <gordonjcp at gjcp.net>
Subject: Re: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Date: Saturday, 31 January, 2009, 11:05 AM
On Fri, 2009-01-30 at 22:53 +0000, Andrew Burton wrote:
Regarding harddrives full of junk, I have a work
colleague who's
partner sticks all her photo's straight onto their home computer
filling up the harddrive.
I have a stack of 80-quid drives. You may not be familiar with this
unit of measurement, but basically it's the amount of space you can buy
for about 80 quid including VAT. They range from 30GB up to 320GB (got
a couple of the latter, actually). About once every couple of years
when a drive gets full, I pull it and buy another...
Gordon
30 Jan
30 Jan
4:57 p.m.
The problem is finding this stuff - and the task is
mind-boggling for a
museum with a general interest. It's probably a bit easier if you're a
private collector with a fairly narrow interest, but even then there's a
need to be in the right place at the right time.
Doing the legwork (gasp!) also helps. My van is currently crammed with
Data General docs and paper due to the legwork of one of us.
--
Will
31 Jan
31 Jan
6:18 p.m.
Holger Veit wrote:
BlueRay (which I give 2 years
until the next technology will be thrown on the customer obsoleting the
format).
Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last consumer-deliverable physical
media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving.
I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years and
SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage (flash/ssd/hard
disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
6:50 p.m.
On 31 Jan 2009 at 20:18, Jim Leonard wrote:
Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last
consumer-deliverable physical
media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving.
I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years and
SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage (flash/ssd/hard
disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology.
Why do I get this feeling that we're writing our history in
quicksand?
Letters the young Mozart exchanged with his sister are still extant
to give us a unique peek into the composer's mind. Will we have the
emails of a modern Mozart to similarly peruse in the future?
We already have the phenomeon of mainstream media "correcting" their
online content leaving no trace of error behind. No more "Dewey
beats Truman" headlines...
Sigh,
Chuck
1 Feb
1 Feb
8:43 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Why do I get this feeling that we're writing our
history in
quicksand?
Letters the young Mozart exchanged with his sister are still extant
to give us a unique peek into the composer's mind. Will we have the
emails of a modern Mozart to similarly peruse in the future?
Well, lots of ancient paper documents are unearthed damaged or even outright
"erased and reused". The following's a good read if you're into that
kind of
thing:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/8974/title/A_Prayer_for_Archimed…
I suspect that techniques to recover data from modern media will evolve over
the years just as they have for paper. Sure, lots of data will be lost - but
I'm not sure that's really so much different to paper archives; the amount of
data from the "old days" which has outright gone must be staggering in
relation to what has survived and is known about.
We already have the phenomeon of mainstream media
"correcting" their
online content leaving no trace of error behind. No more "Dewey
beats Truman" headlines...
That's the real issue, I think - not the storage mechanism that's used, but
our desire to constantly rewrite history. A few hundred years from now it'll
be hard to know "the truth" because there'll be so many conflicting
opinions
and different versions of events recorded.
cheers
Jules
1:14 p.m.
> In the future, we won't be burning to pieces
of plastic for archiving.
> I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years and
And I'll probably still be making little holes in 1" wide strips of paper
....
> SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage
(flash/ssd/hard
> disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology.
Why do I get this feeling that we're writing our history in
quicksand?
Letters the young Mozart exchanged with his sister are still extant
to give us a unique peek into the composer's mind. Will we have the
emails of a modern Mozart to similarly peruse in the future?
Or as I'm fonf of pointing out, if you hand me a glass plate photographic
negaticve, I can still make a print from it, even though said negative
could be 100 years old. Will anybody be ale to read digital camera memory
cards in 100 years time?
-tony
31 Jan
31 Jan
8:40 p.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
Jim is right ( write ? );
IBM is working on a Lithium Niobate ( LiNbO3 ) Holographic memory that could
store tens of Terabytes in a chunk the size of a sugar cube. Because of
optics issues this would have to be a non-removable media for now. Kiss your
DVDs goodbye. ( reference: LASER Focus World ).
Best regards, Steven
Holger Veit wrote:
BlueRay (which I give 2 years
until the next technology will be thrown on the customer obsoleting the
format).
Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last consumer-deliverable physical
media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving.
I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years and
SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage (flash/ssd/hard
disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology.
--
Jim Leonard 
11:11 p.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
Holographic memory has been right around the corner for *HOW* long?
I first heard of working prototypes sometime between '88-90.
Zane
At 8:40 PM -0800 1/31/09, Scanning wrote:
Jim is right ( write ? );
IBM is working on a Lithium Niobate ( LiNbO3 ) Holographic memory that could
store tens of Terabytes in a chunk the size of a sugar cube. Because of
optics issues this would have to be a non-removable media for now. Kiss your
DVDs goodbye. ( reference: LASER Focus World ).
Best regards, Steven
> Holger Veit wrote:
> > BlueRay (which I give 2 years
> > until the next technology will be thrown on the customer obsoleting the
> > format).
>
> Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last consumer-deliverable physical
> media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
> entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
> toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
>
> In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving.
> I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years and
> SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage (flash/ssd/hard
> disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology.
> --
> Jim Leonard
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
1 Feb
1 Feb
12:38 a.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009, Zane H. Healy wrote:
Holographic memory has been right around the corner
for *HOW* long? I first
heard of working prototypes sometime between '88-90.
I vaguely recall some TV drama from the 1980s that took place sometime in
"the future" that had a scene showing something like this. The main
characters were walking through a TV department. Someone put a
thumb-sized faceted crystal into a gizmo that resembled a VCR which took
it in and shone a laser on it.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
2 Feb
2 Feb
10:54 a.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
On Sunday 01 February 2009 02:11:16 am Zane H. Healy wrote:
Holographic memory has been right around the corner
for *HOW* long?
I first heard of working prototypes sometime between '88-90.
Zane
Since the fifties, if you read a lot of SF as I do. :-)
At 8:40 PM -0800 1/31/09, Scanning wrote:
>Jim is right ( write ? );
>
>IBM is working on a Lithium Niobate ( LiNbO3 ) Holographic memory that
> could store tens of Terabytes in a chunk the size of a sugar cube.
> Because of optics issues this would have to be a non-removable media for
> now. Kiss your DVDs goodbye. ( reference: LASER Focus World ).
>
>Best regards, Steven
>
>> Holger Veit wrote:
>> > BlueRay (which I give 2 years
>> > until the next technology will be thrown on the customer obsoleting
>> > the format).
>>
>> Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last consumer-deliverable physical
>> media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
>> entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
>> toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
>>
>> In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving.
>> I fully expect to be archiving exclusively to hard disks in 10 years
>> and SSDs in 15. Eventually in 25 years all storage (flash/ssd/hard
>> disks/tape/BD-R/DVD-R/etc.) will converge into a single technology. --
>> Jim Leonard
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
11:14 a.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
On Sunday 01 February 2009 02:11:16 am Zane H. Healy
wrote:
I don't think the laser was around back then... Now computers that take over
your brain ... I am sure mid 50's. :)
Holographic memory has been right around the
corner for *HOW* long?
I first heard of working prototypes sometime between '88-90.
Zane
Since the fifties, if you read a lot of SF as I do. :-)
12:19 p.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
>>>> "bfranchuk" == bfranchuk
<bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> writes:
bfranchuk> Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> On Sunday 01 February 2009 02:11:16 am Zane H.
Healy wrote:
>> Holographic memory has been right around the corner for *HOW*
>> long? I first heard of working prototypes sometime between
>> '88-90.
>>
>> Zane
> Since the fifties, if you read a lot of SF as I do. :-)
>
bfranchuk> I don't think the laser was around back then...
Wikipedia traces the history of lasers back to 1957.
paul
1:18 p.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
On Monday 02 February 2009 03:19:41 pm Paul Koning wrote:
First I remember reading about them was in a library book that was copyright
1960...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
>>>> "bfranchuk" == bfranchuk <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca>
writes:
bfranchuk> Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> On Sunday 01 February 2009 02:11:16 am Zane
H. Healy wrote:
>> Holographic memory has been right around the corner for *HOW*
>> long? I first heard of working prototypes sometime between
>> '88-90.
>>
>> Zane
>
> Since the fifties, if you read a lot of SF as I do. :-)
bfranchuk> I don't think the laser was around back then...
Wikipedia traces the history of lasers back to 1957.
paul
4:35 p.m.
New subject: Storage Media ( was: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc )
Photon Torpedoes - January 19, 1967
Best regards, Steven
On Monday 02 February 2009 03:19:41 pm Paul Koning
wrote:
Wikipedia traces the history of lasers back to
1957.
...and the first MASER back to 1953.
Cheers,
Chuck
1 Feb
1 Feb
8:36 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Holger Veit wrote:
Personally I reckon we'll be dumping it across a network to some remote site;
in an interconnected society there's no need for the backup to be on local
media at all. Of course that raises *huge* security issues, but by and large
people don't seem to care about those if the end result achieves what they
want. Governments will love us for it, of course :-)
Lots of us already back up across a LAN to a machine (regardless of the
storage technology behind the scenes), so it's not a big leap to do that to
some off-site server; it's just that the upstream data rates from the home
aren't really *quite* there yet.
Yes, the back-end will likely be hard disks - but the end-user's experience
will just be one of throwing data across a network link.
cheers
Jules
BlueRay (which I give 2 years until the next
technology will be thrown
on the customer obsoleting the format).
Don't bet on it. Blu-Ray is the last consumer-deliverable physical
media, which means it is the last consumer archival media. The entire
entertainment industry has seen the writing on the wall and is moving
toward digital distribution. There will not be a successor to Blu-Ray.
In the future, we won't be burning to pieces of plastic for archiving. 
8:55 p.m.
Lots of us already back up across a LAN to a machine
(regardless of
the storage technology behind the scenes), so it's not a big leap to
do that to some off-site server; it's just that the upstream data
rates from the home aren't really *quite* there yet.
I doubt that, actually; I back up live to a big backup disk at home,
and I have that disk backed up live over my DSL line. And mine is
about as slow as consumer DSL gets; we switched me from RADSL to MVL
because it performs better on almost-too-long copper, and even that
tops out at about 0.4Mbps (RADSL was dropping out entirely at times and
not syncing above about 512kbps at all).
Yet I back up live over that, and I find that it keeps up. Perhaps my
write rate is lower than many, but my DSL is slower than many, too; I
suspect that what's actually lacking is the software for it in a form
easy enough to drop in that the masses can use it.
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2 Feb
2 Feb
7:42 a.m.
der Mouse wrote:
Are you just sending modified data each time? I suspect that isn't actually
too bad - my "too slow" comment was more a reflection on how awful sending the
initial xGB of data would be, and that'd put a lot of people off. (hmm,
service where you could mail in a hard disk with the initial data set on,
maybe? :-)
Lots of us
already back up across a LAN to a machine (regardless of
the storage technology behind the scenes), so it's not a big leap to
do that to some off-site server; it's just that the upstream data
rates from the home aren't really *quite* there yet.
I doubt that, actually; I back up live to a big backup disk at home,
and I have that disk backed up live over my DSL line. And mine is
about as slow as consumer DSL gets; we switched me from RADSL to MVL
because it performs better on almost-too-long copper, and even that
tops out at about 0.4Mbps (RADSL was dropping out entirely at times and
not syncing above about 512kbps at all). I
suspect that what's actually lacking is the software for it in a form
easy enough to drop in that the masses can use it.
It'd be kind of fun to cook something up. The majority of home users probably
just have multiple GB of music and images which don't ever really change
anyway (and any protocol could even include stuff like "this file was moved"
just to speed that particular case up a bit).
But yeah, "drop in" is a bit difficult, at least if you want to support
Windows/OSX/Linux/*BSD...
cheers
J.
10:15 a.m.
I back up live
to a big backup disk at home, and I have that disk
backed up live over my DSL line.
Are you just sending modified data each time?
I suspect that isn't actually too bad - my
"too slow" comment was
more a reflection on how awful sending the initial xGB of data would
be, and that'd put a lot of people off.
Yes. I got stubborn and did the initial sync-up over the net instead
of carrying a disk between locations; it took more than a month.
(Would've been less except that I throttled it to avoid rendering my
link useless for everything else for the duration.)
I suspect that
what's actually lacking is the software for it in a
form easy enough to drop in that the masses can use it.
It'd be kind of fun to
cook something up. The majority of home users probably just have multiple
GB of music
and images which don't ever really change anyway (and any protocol
could even include stuff like "this file was moved" just to speed
that particular case up a bit).
My design works at the disk-block level, not the file level, so moving
files is cheap to exactly the extent that it invovles only small
amounts of writing to disk instead of copying all the data. It
certainly could be done at the file level; it just means hooking in at
a different layer and redesigning the wire protocol correspondingly.
But yeah, "drop in" is a bit difficult, at
least if you want to
support Windows/OSX/Linux/*BSD...
I personally have no interest in supporting Windows, though if someone
else does and wants to be wire-compatible with my code I'll be happy to
collaborate to the extent that a non-Windows person can.
It's fairly easy to use my techniques in anything sufficiently
open-source to add hooks into the disk drivers. (I've had someone
suggest doing it as a stacked disk driver, a la cgd or ccd, but didn't
think of that originally and haven't looked at doing it myself.)
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31 comments
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alexandre-listas＠e-secure.com.br -
aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
cclist＠sydex.com -
classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
holger.veit＠iais.fraunhofer.de -
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mc＠media.mit.edu -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
Paul_Koning＠Dell.com -
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