The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

[Jon Elson]

On 11/23/21 12:21 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> On 11/23/21 9:51 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
>   doubt that a single line of that survives.
>> You would probably be wrong, it likely was archived before
>> it stopped being used.  But that won't do you any good as
>> even if you could submit a FOIA request for it the cost of
>> recovering it would be prohibitive and they would not have
>> to honor it.  :-)
> I don't think so--the project I had in mind was a military project that
> sunset some time in the late 1970s.

Yup, A guy I know was in the aerospace fabrication business 
(now retired).  A few years back, he showed us some horribly 
degraded mylar plots of some military aircraft drawings that 
were all the manufacturer could come up with.  The Air Force 
was doing a major rebuild of those airframes, and needed 
some skins shaped to replace the tailplane airfoils.  He 
knew where possibly the only airfoil bender was, and quickly 
bought it from a scrap dealer. They then had to scrutinize 
the plots and try to extract the original dimensions so they 
could bend the skin to the required shape.  Lucky the 
original manufacturer at least had some form of document 
still available, or they would have had to do some 3D 
scanning of an existing part that was not too far gone.

Jon