BTW what are you doing to preserve your VHS
tapes? Remember VHS
equipment are disappearing fast from the retail market
What's really sad is I know many people who had their Super-8 movie
film transferred to VHS in the 90's and threw away the originals.
It botheres me when people scan their photos/negatives _and don't keep
the originals_. Photographic film is more likely to be 'readable' in the
future than a CD-ROM or DVD.
Before some idiot starts a flamewar, note that I am not saying there's
anything wrong with scanning photographs to make it easier to view them
now (some people prefer to look at a computer screen than set up a
projector, apparently), or to send them round the world, or to digitally
manipulate them, or... Just that if you do this, you should keep the
originals too.
Now most Super-8 film was not stored in exactly "archival" condition
but I'm 100% sure that it would've outlived the VHS tape. And
Super-8 projectors, while not the simplest devices in the world,
are certainly maintainable.
I have a pretty simple amateur 8mm projector (I think it's a Eumig), and
I suspect any of the parts likely to wear or fail could be made in a home
workshop. Well, OK, the bulb couldn't but then bulbs are not that hard to
obtain...
Yeah, I know, I'm OT in the "computer hardware sense" but I think
the same principles may in some cases be applicable to computer media.
The obvious on-topic example is that if you transfer your MainDEC tapes
or Altair paper tape BASIC, or... to PC disk to make them easier to load
into the classic machine, or to put on bitsavers, or... then you should
still keep the original papepr tape. Paper tape readers are a lot easier
to maintain than PCs...
-tony