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Testing Old Tapes To Save Them
JMarshall writes: Recordings on old audio tapes won't be worth much in another 20 years, and some are already too degraded to play. A team including members from the Library of Congress report that infrared spectroscopy can noninvasively separate magnetic tapes that can still be played from those that can't, without risking the tapes by sticking them in a player. Unplayable tapes can sometimes be rescued by heating, which can make them playable for long enough to digitize. This method could help archivists identify which tapes need special handling before they get any worse.
We can read back the hippie mix tape Richard Nixon prepared for Howard Hunt.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Memory chips.
The ROM's on early-80's consoles are still, on the whole, perfectly readable (as evidenced by MAME), and they don't even TRY to use error correcting codes to ensure resiliency.
I have CompactFlash of some vintage and it's all still perfectly readable. Even hard drives are quite readable if stored properly and not live for a long time.
I imagine if you really wanted to make something last 20 years and still be readable, a basic EEPROM with I2C-like serial interface will be readable, and you could probably describe a circuit/timing to read from it on the casing of the chip itself with one diagram.
What digital medium is presumed to be readable 20 years hence?
The cloud of course. It is the end-all-be-all. Haven't you heard?
The abstract actually says "Minimally Invasive," not Non-Invasive (the goal) Aparently the technique analyses small sections of tape to see if the physical media has degraded. Not sure how that tells us *anything* about the magnetic state of the media.
Not really.
ROMs are readable because the data is literally part of the circuit - either it's mask-programmed (generally the case) in which case the actual circuit connections are physically embedded in the silicon, or it's OTP, which uses fuses that are blown to set the state of the memory.
Flash memory though is typically only guaranteed for 10 years power off retention. Your CF card works because you probably plug it in and access it, If you have a chip you programmed, 10 years from now when you rediscover it, its contents may or may not be readable. In this case, what happens is the data is stored by trapped electrons, and over time, those electrons escape the floating gate (remember, there's an excess of them on the gate, and quantum mechanics was used to tunnel them onto the gate, and on NAND, quantum mechanics is also used to tunnel them off. Well, it's possible over time for the charge to "leak out" by more quantum mechanical tunnelling.
Recordings on old audio tapes won't be worth much in another 20 years, and some are already too degraded to play.
Looks like the RIAA was right all along -- THAT's why you should rebuy all of your music, because soon your original license to listen will have vanished.
"The palest ink is better than the best memory" -- but not when the ink seperates from the paper!
Wait -- does that mean my 8-track RAID array is in danger!?!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
As a MAME developer, I have the sad duty to inform you that this, sadly, is not the case. ROMs for early video games are gradually succumbing to bitrot. EPROMs used in arcade games eventually leak their trapped charges, and mask layers oxidise in mask ROMs. Flash ROMs from newer arcade games can degrade in as little as 15 years. If you're lucky you can get a good read by heating the chip up or cooling it down. But in many cases the data is permanently lost.
This one could be read, if we had a working tape deck. ...
Next
This one can't be read anymore. In the trash bin.
Next.
This one could be read, if we had a working tape deck.
Next
This one can't be read anymore. In the trash bin.
repeat, cycling through all the tapes over and over, until none are left.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!