Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gene Roddenberry's Floppy Disks Recovered (pcworld.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-data,-jim,-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

Press2ToContinue writes: When Gene Roddenberry's computer died, it took with it the only method of accessing some 200 floppy disks of his unpublished work. To make matters worse, about 30 of the disks were damaged, with deep gouges in the magnetic surface. "Cobb said a few of the disks were formatted in DOS, but most of them were from an older operating system called CP/M. CP/M, or Control Program for Microcomputers, was a popular operating system of the 1970s and early 1980s that ultimately lost out to Microsoft's DOS. In the 1970s and 1980s it was the wild west of disk formats and track layouts, Cobb said. The DOS recoveries were easy once a drive was located, but the CP/M disks were far more work. " So what was actually on the disks? Lost episodes of Star Trek? The secret script for a new show? Or as Popular Science once speculated, a patent for a transporter?

Unfortunately, we still don't know. The Roddenberry estate hasn't commented yet, and the data recovery agency is bound by a confidentiality agreement.

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Really? IT's not that hard to read CP/M disks by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    CP/M machines are readily available on ebay.

    http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...

    Click buy it now, whip out the credit card, wait for delivery.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Floppies never got more reliable, either by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had floppies in the 90s and beyond that were terrible for longevity. More than once I had a carefully handled 3.5" DSHD floppy eat shit while being carried from one computer to another in the same room.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. Re:Given a choice in the 70's by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Programming involved a lot more thinking and planning, instead of bashing it until it compiled.

    Try translating an old BASIC game into a modern programming language. All those GOTO and GOSUB statements can get tedious. I spend a fair amount of my time mapping what goes where in the program before I can even start coding. For fun, of course.

    http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/