Retro Machines Key to Rescuing Old Data

SimilarityEngine writes "New Scientist report on the virtues of old kit. From the article: 'Today's stylish PCs may perform billions of calculations a second and store tens of billions of bytes of data, but for many, they have got nothing on the 32, 48 or 64-kilobyte machines that were the giants of the early 1980s. This renewed interest in old-school computing is more than just a trip down memory-chip lane. Early computers are a part of our technological heritage, and also offer a unique perspective on how today's machines work. And within growing collections of original computers and home-made replicas, and the anecdote-filled web pages and blogs devoted to them, lies the equipment and expertise that will one day help unlock our past by reading countless computer files stored in outmoded formats.'"

Comments

Data?

[lachlan76]

Which storage media would last this long? What's the point of using old computers to get your data if the media is dead?

Re:Data?

[Andrewkov]

Modern day floppy disks (both 5.25" and 3.5") are greatly inferior to the disks from the 80's and 90's, in my experience.

old cruft

[spectrokid]

Funny that archeology in the future will be totally different. Instead of trying to maximise information out of a 2500 BC chicken bone, the art will be how to distill meaning out of gazillions of backup tapes... But true, I already spent half a day once trying to load my own thesis....

BS.

[tomstdenis]

You don't need a Vic-20 to read an audio cassette tape... you just need something that can capture the audio stream, some sort of analogue signal converter capable of producing a binary digit stream. Something like an "analogue-to-digital" converter if such said device exists all our problems are saved! ... /sarcasm

Yes, retro computing is cool. No, it's not required to read ancient recording formats.

Tom

Re:BS.

[mabinogi]

The point is that the interest in reto computing is keeping the _knowledge_ required to convert the stream of data to something useful.
Things like old manuals and spec sheets that might tell you exactly what encoding is used in the data. (Since manuals actually contained real information in those days, rather than being purely a vehicle for "Screw you, don't blame us" EULAs and disclaimers)

Re:BS.

[Knx]

I tend to disagree for several reasons.

1) It's probably going to be actually hard to find any tape recorder in the next coming years, just like it's not quite easy to find a Vic-20 today.

2) Many programs were (are) protected, using very specific properties of the original hardware used at the time. That's mostly true for floppies, for instance. (Just try to read a protected 3"1/2 Atari ST or Amiga floppy on today's PC floppy drives -- if your PC still has one -- and you'll see what I mean). But even some audio tapes are not that easy to decode correctly without the original tape recorder.

3) Audio cassette tapes is just a special case, anyway. How do you read, say, a 5"1/4 floppy? How do you read cartridges without the original hardware? You may try to build a homebrew cart dumper, but you'll need detailed specifications, which may simply not be available. And if you decide to do some reverse engineering, then ... having the original hardware handy might help.

Absolutely true.

[TransEurope]

If you really want to programm in assembler and want to learn how computers work, buy an old C64 and the the Data Becker C64 Bible, or an old Amiga at Ebay. If you want to to the same on a modern iP4-machine, you'll give up faster than a SETI@home-package is analyzied ;)

Rubbish

[onion2k]

There's certainly good reason to keep old data readers about the place.. I once spent a very dull weekend with a cassette->parallel interface loading some old ZX Spectrum code onto a pc and encoding the files into .z80 format. But there's no good reason at all to keep the rest of the hardware around. Every system before about 1995 has been emulated on faster, more stable modern system that afford us things like memory save points, video output recording, and other pleasentries.

Old hardware is dead.

Re:Rubbish

[mccalli]

Nope.

I have a few bits of old hardware around - a Spectrum, a C64, a Mac Plus, an Astro Blaster handheld, an STe with mono monitor...a few bits. Nothing that uncommon, except perhaps the Astro Blaster.

There is something about using the old hardware which is not present when running an emulator. Take the C64 as the best example of this. Emulated you don't get the true sound of the SID (each one was different...), you get pixellated graphics if trying to play at a decent size on a monitor (versus just plugging in to a TV), you get a different keyboard layout...nope. Emulation is good, and I'm a great fan of it. But it isn't the same as using the real thing.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Rubbish

[AltairMan]

The need to keep around the old hardware depends on your goals. If you're into historical preservation, then you of course would keep, restore, and maintain an old machine. If you just want to move the data and programs and exit the platform, then donate the hardware to someone who wants to use it.

I've written an emulator program that emulates an Altair 8800. Functional? Yes. Does it run old programs? Yes. Fun to use? I think so, if you like ASCII character-based games. Is it the same to operate as the real one? No, not exactly.

Once you've moved your data and programs from the old machine to the emulated machine, you don't really need the old machine. Yes, some formats are easier to move than others and don't require the original hardware, but others can't be read by modern PCs without rediculous amounts of effort. So, you use the old machine to continue to move programs to another media so that the bits can be preserved.

But, there are reasons to keep the old machine. First, it's the overall feel of operating the machine in person. Second, some programs and games just plain feel better on the original hardware. Thrid, it's preservation of computing history. Fourth, there's no better way to understand how a system works than to physically work on it. I want my kids to sit at my first computer, a VIC-20, and play the same games I played as a kid.

Along these lines, I set up an Atari 2600 along side of the Nintendo. Believe it or not, they play the 2600 as much or more than the Nintendo. Although the graphics are nothing in comparison, the games are engaging so they keep coming back.

I didn't appreciate the difference between an emulation and the real thing until I got my own Altair. There's no substitute for clicking the switches yourself, for swapping around boards, or for running tape through a paper tape reader.

Testify

[PakProtector]

When I was working at the local Humane Society, I saved a Apple Mac II/ci from the dumpster. It had been donated to the thrift store and was thrown away because it was 'too old' to interest anyone.

I like playing certain old games, mainly because if a game is done right, it doesn't matter how outdated the graphics get -- Classics never change.

There's just something you get out of playing the Zork Trilogy on the old hardware that you don't get on the new stuff.

"Retro-Machines": Good learning tools

[ndogg]

Old machines are good learning tools, even if only on paper, although they were easier to work upon in my electronics class.

Hardware concepts haven't significantly changed over the years. What has changed, significantly, is that everything has become smaller. Once the basics are understood through learning of these old machines, the more complex concepts of more modern machines can be more easily understood. Good Computer Architecture classes will start off on the hardware of these old machines first, and build off those concepts as the class moves into understanding newer machines.

definition

[kc0re]

What is the definition of a "retro" machine? My blog here is running on, what i consider to be, a retro machine. It's a 233 recently reformatted with Fedora Core 3. (Yes I know 4 is out)

While many many not think this is very old, I guess it's basically because I can't find a way to hook up my Tandy 1000 to the internet, (or i'd have my blog on it.. that'd be funny)

Re:definition

[imsabbel]

A machine able to run OS still widely in use and running the same cpu architecture may be OLD, but certainly not "retro"...

Buy a Model-T to learn about combustion

[gelfling]

Better yet buy a DC-3 to learn about flight dynamics. Truth is, old is old. There are practical limits to what you can learn from it because what THEY knew about when they built it was limited or in some ways flawed outright.

Re:Buy a Model-T to learn about combustion

[VAXcat]

Heh? You could learn far more about internal combustion engines using a Model-T rather than a modern car...in like wise, you would also learn far more about aviation with a DC-3 than a modern jet...In both cases, the engineering is much more accessable and the devices are much closer to the physics involved than their modern counterparts. On the DC-3, for example, you would learn a great deal more about adverse yaw and use of the rudder to deal with it than you would on a modern plane with sophisticated flight controls. Navigating using a sectional chart, dead reckoning, piotage amd VORs on the DC-3 will teach you much more about navigation than just punching a destination in on a GPS. The Model-T, with its simple carburetor and Kettering cycle ignition, all very exposed, will teach you far more about physics than attempting to work under the hood of a new car, with its fuel injection and computer controlled spark. In general, the first few generations of something are much more useful for learning than the products produced after many decades of engineering have overlaid the first principles.

1000 years huh.

[ciroknight]

Your problem is not one alone; it's a very common problem. How do you read anything without the direct knowledge of the language?

The answer is a common translator table, which you hinted to in your own post. If not for the Rosetta stone, we would have no translation for heiroglyphs, and that written language would be entirely lost to us.

It really wouldn't matter if you left something written in english emblazed on a wall, in stone, or on an old floppy disk inside of an old floppy drive. A person in 1000 years couldn't read it, regardless, because (hopefully) in a thousand years, nobody will speak our version of English.

What matters is our persistance in open standards. The more people who know how to read it, the more people will pass the knowledge on. That's all that matters in this case.

By the way, G.E.B's an awesome book. Make sure you keep a copy on your shelf.

Re:Media Degradation Is The Issue

[pla]

The problem, once you've got the data off, is how you store it on a media that won't degrade over time.

Simple - Redundant serial copies. Unlike analog, digital copies don't lose anything from generation to generation.

I use DVDs for backups, but don't actually "trust" them to work, only as a last-resort fallback. I keep my old files by keeping them on live systems.

My first HDD held 10MB. My second held 40MB - So I just copied the entire contents of the first over. My next drive held 340MB, again, just copied the entire 40 to it, complete with the final state of the 10MB drive. Then a 1.2GB, same process again.

Now my home file server holds over half a TB (though I'll soon need to add a bit more space to it). I had started to worry about not having a good complete backup of that (I have 90% of it backed to DVD, but like I said, I'd rather not need to actually depend on that)... Until I recently upgraded my SO's desktop machine. Poof, threw in a 400GB drive, she needs about 20GB, and has a complete mirror of all my files up to March of this year.

I see no reason for that trend not to continue... The original media (the floppies from which I loaded files onto the 10MB drive) have long since vanished, and even the fifth generation of the above sequence (the 1.2GB drive) has vanished into the landfill. Yet I still have all the files I would need to run a vintage XT clone with MS-DOS 3.3, neatly filed away with no fewer than three redundant copies still in existance.


So I see the problem of how to store something "forever" as a bit of a red herring - We don't need any particular medium that lasts forever, only to last a few years and then we can make another new copy of it.