As long term storage goes, I'm not hard-over on the OTP EPROM thing, but I
do belive something other than FD's should be considered. Perhaps if the
stuff were carefully catalogged and reduced to compressed format
subsequently recorded on CD, that would be a decent archive. I've got 20+
year-old diskettes I still use without problems, but it's dry here in
Denver. Where it's damp, or, worse, where humidity ranges over a wider
range than here, floppies and mag-tape don't fare as well.
Multisession CD might be the best choice, making it possible to add later
versions to the same CD that holds the earlier ones.
This is already-aged software, etc, though, isn't it?
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul R. Santa-Maria <paulrsm_at_ameritech.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard
> ----------
> > From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
> > To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> > Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard
> > Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 08:28 PM
> >
> > If you put floppy diskettes on the shelf and wait 20 years, you'll see
> > what's left of your archive.
>
> This weekend I backed up a set of factory-original Apple II CP/M disks for
> MicroPro applications (Wordstar, Mailmerge, Spellstar, Datastar,
> Reportstar, Calcstar, etc). The disks were dated 1979-1982 and there were
> no errors reading them. I copied them twice: once to another floppy, and
> once to the Apple II disk archive format (ShrinkIt) on my hard drive.
> Twenty years is not too long if you use single-sided single density
> diskettes that cost $10 each (in 1980 dollars!).
>
> I don't trust today's ten-cent double-sided high-density diskettes for any
> long term storage.
>
> Paul R. Santa-Maria
> Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
> paulrsm_at_ameritech.net
>
Received on Tue May 30 2000 - 20:20:11 BST