Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: Jason McBrien <jbmcb_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Wed Aug 11 14:22:39 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: "McFadden, Mike" <mmcfadden_at_cmh.edu>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: Let's develop an open-source media archive standard


<SNIP>
> Think of the following;
> Stone once was expensive so clay tablets were used.
> Papyrus was expensive so wax tablets were used
...</SNIP>

Time to start making a list of media types!

Paper Media (Paper-tape, bar-code, etc...)
Punch-Card (Hollerinth, etc...)
Magnetic Tape (9-Track, DAT, DDS, Audio Cassette, DEC TK, DLT, HP Magstrips,
1/4", 1/2", etc...)
Disk packs
Exotic permanent memories (Core, Bubble, etc...)
Magnetic hard drives (Drum, Winchester, DEC, DASD, HP, MFM, RLL, IDE, SCSI,
SATA, etc...)
Removable hard drives (Bernoulli, ZIP, Jaz, Syquest, Magneto-optical,
etc...)
Cartridge/ROM memories (ROMs, PROMs, EPROMS, EEPROMs, BIOS chips, game
carts, computer carts, etc...)
Floppy disks (2", 3.5", 5.25", 8", Apple Twiggy, Commodore, Soft/hard
sectored, multiple densities, Copy protected/bad sectored)
Flash-RAM devices (USB/Firewire/PCMCIA, disk-on-chip, CompactFlash, SD, MMC,
Memory stick etc...)
Optical media (WORM, Laserdisc, CDROM, CD-RW, CDi, CDA, DVD, DVD-RAM,
DVD+RW, DVD-RW, etc...)

What shall we do with analog audio? Sample at 44.1KHz / 16-bit PCM and call
it done? What about Laserdisc video? It's straight composite analog video,
which could be digitized at a standard rate for reproduction. Yes these
corner cases matter, if we are doing a truly multiformat media archive
storage architecture. (Dragon's Lair anyone? Voyager space mission disc?)
Received on Wed Aug 11 2004 - 14:22:39 BST