After writing a restore utility and restoring about 200M from QIC, I've identified the backup utility used. It's Anacom Backup Elite, circa 1994. (Yeah, I've never heard of it either). This one was pretty easy--but it does raise the question "What do you do when the only source of the backup software is on the backup tape?" :) Cheers, Chuck --------------------- Original post: I received a couple of DC6250 backup tapes this morning. While writing a program to unravel the backup format looks to be pretty simple, I'd like to know what created these beasts. They're from a Windoze box circa 1995. The "GENERATION" right at the start might be a hint. Here's a dump of the first few bytes of a tape, hex on the left, ASCII on the right: 000000 47 45 4E 45 52 41 54 49-4F 4E 20 EC E9 C6 F3 F4 GENERATION 8T?=( 000010 F4 E5 C2 20 20 70 6F 73-5F 62 61 63 6B 75 70 5F (s- pos_backup_

On 8/30/2006 at 8:45 AM Zane H. Healy wrote: Those are good guidelines, but the pattern for us is that we get something that was stashed in storage and only turned up after a search through dusty boxes. Most often, these things don't even have meaningful labels, so the owner is just guessing that s/he has what's needed on them. It's not unusual for us to get a bunch of 5.25" floppies that the owner swears was created on his PC and find a few Apple diskettes in the lot. Most often, the owner has no idea of what software was run that far back. I wonder how well the results of this particular job are going to sit with the owner, though--most of the stuff on the tape deals with communicating with a VAX while running WFWG 3.11--i.e., there's no source code, correspondence, spreadsheets, etc. that would seem to make this worthwhile. Just commodity software. Cheers, Chuck

I've got a big box (1571 drive box) full of floppies, some originals, some not. They've been stored for ~8 years in a storage unit that gets *hot* in the summer, and who knows where prior to that. How safe are these going to be to use? Still can't find a Joystick (found Joysticks for literally every other system today, and I know I have 4+ 2600 joysticks), however, I've found two more good serial cables, and have both 1541's connected (might also connect the 1571). Also found my Epyx Fastload cart (now to google up some doc's). Next step will probably be getting my 386sx working with Star Commander to make Lunix and Contiki floppies to play with. Zane PS I blame Jay for pushing me over the edge :^) -- | 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/ |

For your joysticks you can use Atari Joysticks for it. They should work fine for you. Greg -----Original Message----- From: Zane H. Healy [mailto:healyzh at aracnet.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 2:57 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Advice on old C64 floppies? I've got a big box (1571 drive box) full of floppies, some originals, some not. They've been stored for ~8 years in a storage unit that gets *hot* in the summer, and who knows where prior to that. How safe are these going to be to use? Still can't find a Joystick (found Joysticks for literally every other system today, and I know I have 4+ 2600 joysticks), however, I've found two more good serial cables, and have both 1541's connected (might also connect the 1571). Also found my Epyx Fastload cart (now to google up some doc's). Next step will probably be getting my 386sx working with Star Commander to make Lunix and Contiki floppies to play with. Zane PS I blame Jay for pushing me over the edge :^) -- | 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/ | ---------------------------------------- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 5051 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Roy J. Tellason wrote: I know that Commodore made their own joysticks, but everyone I knew during the C64's heyday simply used Atari 2600 sticks. -- 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?

Amiga Corp. made C-64 joysticks and the "joy board". I remember in 1984 knowing the Amiga name from their joysticks, thinking it was odd that a joystick company would make a new computer... http://pages.total.net/~hrothgar/museum/Joyboard/index.html - John

I realize they're the same, that's why I'm so frustrated that I can't find the 4+ 2600 Joysticks that I have! An interesting note, almost all the nice 3rd party ones on eBay look like they're in the UK. Zane

On Tuesday 05 September 2006 06:27 pm, Zane H. Healy wrote: Oh. Guess I mis-read that... -- 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