Guten Abend,

you can also go really old school:

  https://www.memory-of-mankind.com/subwebsite/

This screams for some two-fisted adventuring.

Bye
Ingo

Am 09.11.21 um 20:49 schrieb Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com
(via tml list):
> Good ideas!
>
> I recall an editorial in the local 'paper where the writer stated that
> he was surprised that at /blank/ University (can't remember exactly but
> it was IvyLeague), researchers could access a much more complete set of
> records going back centuries cuz' it was originally stored on hi-grade
> paper but since, in recent decades, magnetic medium had become the
> 'go-to' method, the records were becoming increasingly fragmentary & it
> was getting steadily worse over time.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Monday, November 8, 2021, 07:30:14 PM MST, Zane Healy - healyzh at
> avanthar. com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
>
> This ties nicely into what I was thinking about with the data
> reclassification.  Here is another interesting issue.  MS Office on the
> PC can read MS Word 6 documents, but MS Office on the Mac can’t.  I
> think the same might be true for reading WordPerfect documents (though I
> finally decided to simply use WordPerfect).
>
> Part of the design of any Archival system should be a plan to refresh
> the media onto newer media, before the lifespan of the media, or the
> hardware becomes an issue.  As previously pointed out, it should ideally
> write to at least two types of media.  Storage of said media is critical
> to it’s survival.
>
> And you’d best pray that the old media you found isn't some obscure
> media that no one has ever heard of, where the only thing that can read
> is an ancient computer with an ancient I/O bus.  Even the FE that we
> knew, that used to work for the manufacturer during that time, had never
> heard of the drives, I’m talking that obscure.  The computer hardware
> was easy, but as near as I can tell, we found the last two optical
> drives for this media in existence (pre-CD, and something like 12”).
>   Today we’d be unable to get licenses for the OS needed to read the
> material.
>
> So there is real potential for a Traveller adventure when you start
> going down this road.  Especially if dealing with a planet that’s been
> cut off for some reason, or even worse, a generation ship.
>
> Zane
>
>
>
>
>> On Nov 8, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com
>> <http://yahoo.com> (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com
>> <mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I've already posted before wrt the circumstances where certain  data
>> from the 1960 US census became 'inaccessible'  sometime around 1990
>> due to its' storage on mag tapes and the demise of the last,
>> irreplaceable reader. 1960 was the first census that was NOT
>> completely stored on hardcopy.
>>
>> Where I worked for 30 years in IT, we used a cardreader until FEB'90.
>> (the last time it broke down, overnight batch processing literally
>> came to a screeching halt, until. luckily, the folks that we had a
>> service contract with managed to scrounge one up from somewhere)
>> The last guy we hired before it was 'retired' had never ever used a
>> cardreader!
>>
>> A lot of data stored 'forever'  on mag tapes was eventually lost due
>> the inability to read the old tape formats.
>> The bosses shrugged their shoulders & we all moved on.
>>
>> One time the fiscal 'poobahs' wanted some  7 year-old old reports
>> stored on mag tape that was two generations of equipment back.
>> Not sure how they finally got it but they did.
>> My part was to locate the archived tapes which wasn't easy at all
>> since we had completely relocated the IT center to an off-campus location.
>> Someone else was tasked w/  finding a way to actually read those tapes.
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Monday, November 8, 2021, 04:23:46 PM MST, Graham Donald -
>> gndonald2001 at yahoo. com. au <xxxxxx@simplelists.com
>> <mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I can throw in something else. Back in the 1990s I had reason to visit
>> a mining company and they had a punch card reader on display in their
>> office. The story behind it being that in the late 60s they'd surveyed
>> a region and the data had been backed up to magnetic tape and punch
>> card. It's was not until the late 80s that they needed to look at the
>> data. It was found that the tapes had not been properly stored and
>> were unreadable. Thankfully the data backed up to punch card was still
>> available and the reader was located at the storage location used for
>> the punch card data.
>>
>> That bought up two new problems, the card reader didn't work and even
>> if it had, it was not software/hardware compatible with the computers
>> they were using.
>>
>> A phone call to IBM resulted in the visit of someone who was described
>> as 'senior in years and position' who bought along a lot of spare
>> parts. The 'repairman' managed to get the reader working and put
>> together a 'black box' that allowed a modern (late 80s) PC running MS
>> Windows to talk with the punch card reader. He also left instructions
>> on how to translate the data format used on punch cards (ebccdic) to
>> ascii. After a test run the data was backed up to 3.5inch floppy disk
>> and made available to the people who needed it.
>>
>> The punch card machine was given a 'place of honor' in the office as
>> it saved them from having to go out an resurvey the area again.
>>
>> The key lessons that the person telling me that story emphasised was
>> 1) Keep your data backed up in multiple formats. 2) Ensure the various
>> storage media are well protected/maintained. 3) Make sure you have a
>> means of reading the backup data once you need it.
>>
>>
>>
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