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I had couple of articles written between 1984 - 1987, all restored without any problems. Reason? They were written on paper, which shows that that's probably one of the longest-lasting and most transferable/restorable data storage media. http://www.caps-project.org/cache/DigitalMediaLifeExpectancyAndCare.html Then again, the access time, especially the random access time, is not really good. Anyway, I could restore them to harddisc easily and without any mistakes - I could actually fix some mistakes in the original file. Joking aside, I have an original NeXTcube OD and would like to restore some data from that, but I can't find a NeXTcube OD drive anymore... Any help?

I wonder if CAPS will support it... They do preservation of original Amiga games...
http://www.caps-project.org/

FTL Games is dead, but the Classic Amiga Preservation Society is working to preserve old Atari ST and Amiga games.

However, I haven't had my ST out of the box since I moved to California. Now I play the PC version of Dungeon Master which you can get from dmweb.free.fr, and is playable in VMware (albiet without sound). You can also get Chaos Strikes Back for Windows or Linux, thanks to some very dedicated fans. These versions don't have copy protection, so you can enjoy them as long as old PC's are emulated and you remember to keep your hard drive backed up regularly!

It's not like you'll have to worry about stores instituting such a policy anyway... simple economics says that if there is a market for those bare games (there is), they will support that market. As much as I hate seeing the games without their original packaging (except perhaps the SNES, with possibly the worst game packaging of any system) there's not much you can do about it. Perhaps the stores could offer an additional credit or two for games with their box and/or manual.

Having gotten my own house not too long ago, I've realized how much space that stuff takes up. I've actually gotten rid of quite a bit of boxes, or at least broken them down and put them in storage. I'm glad there are places online like MobyGames and The Video Game Museum to document the packaging of these games. And if you're an Amiga fan, don't forget to check out the CAPS project, which is not only providing *exact* replicas of original disks, but also high quality scans of the packaging.

The CAPS project is starting with the Amiga, preserving everything it can. Not just the games, but archiving scans of the boxes and manuals as well. They are also storing the disks in a format which retains the copy protection of the original.

Many of the biggest games companies today started on the Amiga, so this history needs to be preserved. The CAPS project will be moving onto other formats later.

I used to work for one of those companies and I know that these days its heritage has largely been forgotten. It's obvious that the companies who created the games in the first place don't really care very much about anything other than the latest sale. Any attempt to preserve these games should be lauded.

Just look at the situation with the BBC who lost some early Dr.Who episodes and loads of Beatles footage because they didn't see the value in it at the time.

The CAPS project is starting with the Amiga, preserving everything it can. Not just the games, but archiving scans of the boxes and manuals as well. They are also storing the disks in a format which retains the copy protection of the original.

Many of the biggest games companies today started on the Amiga, so this history needs to be preserved. The CAPS project will be moving onto other formats later.

I used to work for one of those companies and I know that these days its heritage has largely been forgotten. It's obvious that the companies who created the games in the first place don't really care very much about anything other than the latest sale. Any attempt to preserve these games should be lauded.

Just look at the situation with the BBC who lost some early Dr.Who episodes and loads of Beatles footage because they didn't see the value in it at the time.

Here is the link for the Amiga people at the show.

I love old computers too, but I lean more in the direction of the home/hobbyist computers (old Macs, Atari 8/16 bit computers, Amigas and other Commodores, etc) I found something called "The Catweasle" a while back. It plugs into an ISA slot (remember those? of course you do :) and has floppy controller ports for two drives. This thing reads *everything*. Check out the link for the full specs. Think there's a market for getting data off an Amiga 1200 disk?

The other cool "recovery" project I've seen is CAPS, which is a project to preserve exact copies of Amiga games. It's a typical abandonware project, except they are going out of their way to keep all copy protection intact. They are even going so far as to reverse engineer the copy-protection so they can make an exact copy of the original disk!