On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 08:27:59AM -1000, Tim Newsham wrote: I thought about it a while back, but the potential for OCR errors is high, and so too the frustration level. I'd say, only if someone was to fund the work :-) the s2 tape in the PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff area contains userland binaries and libraries from 1972, so there's a strong possibility that the kernel in the PDF document would be able to execute the binaries. Cheers, Warren

Here's a start. http://www.thenewsh.com/%7Enewsham/unix_jun72/ I did the 10 pages of section E00. It took me about 3-4 hours. The files should probably be reviewed, so I'm estimating about 5 hours of work for 10 pages. If other people are interested in committing their time, I'll commit to another 10 pages plus reviewing 10 pages of someone elses work if someone will review my work. Tim Newsham http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/

That would be great and would make the effort much easier! I'm much more interested in reconstructing a running system, myself. The documentation is great to have, but its already readable (although not searchable) in the current pdf. At least in most places (there are some really faded sections). Tim Newsham http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/

Tim Bradshaw wrote: Only the kernel. Sounds like Warren has the rest in machine-readable form. This is exactly what they had to do to get DTSS running again. The code was retyped from a listing that a field service engineer had saved in his garage. I see this a LOT at the Computer History Museum. The oldest code has only survived on paper (tape, cards, listings). Almost no magnetic media has survived from the 60's. I was recently talking to someone about OS/360, and it appears almost none of it from the 60's has survived, which is staggering considering how pervasive those systems were.

And not necessarily in human readable form -- how about some format that is very easy to ocr with minimal errors and error correcting codes? ps: how many pages to archive a gigabyte of src code? ;-) Tim Newsham http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/

What about magneto-optical disks? They are supposed to last 50 years. Problem is that one would have to not only hold on to the disks, but also the drives, as well as a system with a SCSI I/F. -Cornelius On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Tim Newsham wrote: -- Cornelius Keck -----------------------------------------> ckeck(a)texoma.net

In message: <4810D417.8040005(a)bitsavers.org> Al Kossow <aek(a)bitsavers.org> writes: : The critical point to add to this is that the data integrity needs to be : constantly verified, even on presumed stable storage, and it is migrated : to what at that time is easily to deal with storage, so you CAN easily : verify it. I keep my archives on a series of disks. There's always at least 2 copies, often times more, and the underlying disks get swapped out on a round-robin basis. Helps limit my exposure to one or two failures... I've had horrible luck with all other methods... Warner

I'd vote against. The MO disks and drive in my NeXT no longer work. (of course if anyone has advice for resuscitating MO devices, I'm all ears.) - Milo On Apr 24, 2008, at 1:15 PM, ckeck(a)texoma.net wrote: -- Milo Velimirović, Unix Computer Network Administrator 608-785-6618 Office - 608-386-2817 Cell University of Wisconsin - La Crosse La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601 USA 43 48 48 N 91 13 53 W -- Unix: Where /etc/init is job #1.

Quoting Peter Jeremy, who wrote on Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 07:39:17AM +1000 .. Yeah... can you say "Microsoft Office" files? -- Wilko Bulte wilko(a)FreeBSD.org

bar codes printed on archival paper -- what was the name of the format that was published in BYTE? On Apr 24, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Wilko Bulte wrote: -- Milo Velimirović, Unix Computer Network Administrator 608-785-6618 Office - 608-386-2817 Cell University of Wisconsin - La Crosse La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601 USA 43 48 48 N 91 13 53 W -- There's a reason Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson have been awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology (1998) and are fellows of the Computer History Museum Online. Dave Cutler hasn't and isn't. "You are not expected to understand this."

Michael Kerpan wrote: The reason it didn't survive was no one cared about saving it. Companies actively destroyed it so they didn't have to support it, or have it available for legal descovery. The paper copies survive because someone tossed a listing in a box and threw it in their garage. So it wasn't really the archival medium that is the problem, but the fact that there was no monetary reason to save it. What has been saved from the past 20-30 years has demonstrated that people are taking some interest in software preservation now, and mirrored archives reflect the fact is pretty easy to implement basic digital preservation through replication. One of the issues I run into is what to save. The early stuff is easy, you save anything from before 1975 that can still be found. PC era and forward is MUCH more difficult because of the volume.