[TUHS] Panic! - Unix System Crash Dump Analysis companion CD-ROM

[Warner Losh via TUHS]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2026 at 9:42 PM r.stricklin via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Apr 6, 2026, at 3:17 PM, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > Weird disk that isn't a straightforward single track ISO9660?  I used to
> run into that all the time with preserving optical media for game
> consoles.  Our goto in that scene was bin/cue for funky optical media.
>
> More likely just that CD-ROM isn’t an archival medium. I’ve encountered
> any number of e.g. early ‘90s Sun CDs with optical rot of one kind or
> another. Oxidation of the aluminum layer, clouding in the polycarbonate
> layer… It doesn’t surprise me to hear that, having encountered one bad CD,
> several other copies had similar problems.
>

The Solaris 2.0 Alpha binary CD that I have has been unreadable for at
least 15 years.

Warner