At 11:46 AM 3/11/98 -0500, you wrote: Other than storing them in a cool, dark place I don't thing there's a whole lot you can do to curb the aging effects. We're starting to see problems with 9 Track and QIC tapes (5-10 yrs. old or >), not so much with 8" diskettes--yet. The diskettes that have been stored properly seem to be almost perfect at this point. I've been wondering if vacuum-packing with one of those kitchen countertop units would help preserve the old diskettes and tapes? If you want to move the files/images to a modern format like CD for preservation, the method probably depends on how you expect to go about restoring the data to 8" when you need to. We have an 8" unit attached to a PC that can read CP/M and IBM 3740-compatible (Series/1, S/23, S/36, Displaywriter, etc.) and dump either images or files to PC disk, from there to CD-ROM. This is how we're preserving the IBM 8" diskettes in our collection. When we need a new copy of one of the 8" diskettes, we just reverse the process. The only problem we've found so far is with Displaywriter Textpack diskettes--for some reason we have to format the diskette on the Displaywriter first, then write the image, otherwise the diskette won't boot the machine. I'm sure this is a controller issue. For your purposes, you'll probably have to figure out how to move files or images (difficulty depends on the machine and OS, I suppose) between the 8"-equipped machine and a PC/Mac/etc. so you can store them on modern media for later use. Even if you don't know how to move the files/images back to the original machine at first, you've still preserved the files, you can always buy the return ticket later. The easiest approach for moving files usually seems to be ftp, Kermit or another comm package over null modem cable to a host PC. It might be a good idea to do a backup/init disk/restore every few years to refresh the disk, provided your tape drive is in good working order and you can get fresh tapes. Thank you, David Wollmann dwollmann(a)ibmhelp.com DST ibmhelp.com Technical Support http://www.ibmhelp.com/ -- Support for legacy IBM products. Data, document and file conversion for legacy IBM file and media formats.

On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Les Berry wrote: The classiccmp FAQ has some information about this. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!