Art. -- Will

On 2/23/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Do those mass manufactured cds last longer then cd-rs? How long do those last? Why can't we create cds like those? (How do they do it?)

On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 12:19 -0800, Hex Star wrote: Yes, they last MUCH longer. If they started with gold foil, a lifetime of many centuries would not be out of the question. The problem is the massive expense of setting up the press to make them. Once it is set up, pressing a million is not much money. But, if the setup is for ONE of them.... Hoo, boy. I don't have a price -- I just know *I* can't afford it. Now, it might well be possible to set up a DVD (written on a home-type machine) that had *ALL* the known software of a class, or several classes, of machinery on it... Such as a CP/M DVD, a VMS DVD, etc. LOTS of software fits in 8 gigabytes... Probably, there could be a mix -- One DVD that is all known TRS-DOS and CP/M software, or whatever. But, it would take quite a few buyers to bring the price down to reasonable levels. It's the same situation as the one that annoyed a friend of mine. We were discussing personal computing, and the subject of when it started came up. Finally, he said, "Hey, there was personal computing in the 1950s, as long as your family name was Rockefeller." Back when itsy-bitsy personal computers cost as much as a new car, not many people could be that personal with them... Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Warren Wolfe wrote: As a related aside, I happened to have a scan of a Laserdisc cutting service flyer from the 1980's. They quote ?395 for a acrylic RLV recordable Laserdisc, ?595 for glass, and mention that a master disc using conventional cutting would normally average more than ?2500. RLV is apparently single-sided, unlike conventional discs. This particular cutter was made by the "Optical Disc Corporation of America". Presumably CDs were in a similar sort of price bracket a few years after they became popular, as were DVDs? cheers Jules

On 23 Feb 2007 at 15:23, der Mouse wrote: Heck, we've "manufactured" artifacts that will last for a hundred thousand years or more. Just google "Yucca Mountain". Cheers, Chuck

Only because we hadn't lost one of its other languages. See the Rosetta Stone in the Codex Seraphinianus. But see also The Decipherment Of Linear B; we don't _always_ need a Rosetta Stone to suss out a lost language - while admittedly that case was a known language in an unfamiliar writing system, it was mostly deciphered before this was realized. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

The Teac drive I'm trying to get working is a teac 55BR. I'm also trying to get a shugart 455 AA5 and 455 3AA working with a California Computer systems shugart incapable FDC. The CP/M computer with format but fails to read or write to the floppy afterward. My goal is to get a floppy exchange between my PC and CP/M machine. I'm formatting Single side Double Denisty and 512k sectors. I'm using 22disk on the dos side and do have a somewhat working solultion with a shugart 400 and a old 3 /1/2 and 5 /14 combo drive. I do now have the settings in 22 disk correct as it reads and write sometimes with errors between the two machines. I get sector not found errors when it does fail. Thanks

On 23 Feb 2007 at 18:53, info wrote: What everyone said--the letters and numbers after the FD55 mean a whole bunch. Old FORMAT programs on CP/M machines often wrote the format, then verified in a separate pass. Since all writing a format involves is waiting for the index hole then spraying a data stream until the index is once again seen, it's no guarantee that your drive is capable of writing or reading anything. There are also a bunch of variables that hinge on what your CP/M machine needs, such as requiring a READY/ line, use of the HEAD LOAD feature, etc. Knowing what your CP/M system is, in other words, is also part of the puzzle. Cheers, Chuck