Herb, Your comments were taken in the spirit in which you intended. And you correctly surmised that my statement was merely my opinion. All aspects of vintage computing are of interest to me, as they enlighten us about how tech arrived to its current state, and so the instinct to support all efforts to preserve what was is strong in me. Gordon’s comment about the interface to older computers being invariable is spot on. There will hopefully always be those who look for new abs better ways to preserve the functionality of mechanical units that degrade with time, transparent to the original computers. I don’t think that’s mutually exclusive to the desire to preserve what was or that it will necessarily cause a mad rush to abandon hardware for emulators. - Dean On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 2:00 PM Herb Johnson <hjohnson@retrotechnology.info> wrote:
The subject of floppy drives and diskettes, is of great interest to me. One can Web search my domain and find many Web pages about them, and about vintage floppy controllers too. Some people find my site useful in that way. So I had something to say.
I think I mis-interpreted Dean's comments, as some kind of established opinion, and not just his expression of his particular interests and preferences. Sorry if I over-responded as if to make a serious argument out of them. I'm sure many would agree with his considerations. But I'm not taking a vote, to establish my interests or to draw my conclusions.
Thanks, Dean, for your responses and your opinions. You need not share my particular interests of course. If you find information that's contrary to facts and propositions I've made, I'd be interested in hearing about them. That applies to anyone else of course.
And I welcome a strong counter argument, I'd be informed, maybe others would be. But I don't insist on consensus or agreement; or pretend my views are established in that way. I hope my facts are correct, the tech I mention is correctly stated. The rest are my considerations and others may have different ones.
Regards, Herb Johnson
On 5/8/2020 12:43 PM, Dean Notarnicola wrote:
I agree that these are two different things; preservation of data and storage formats lives in a separate domain from preserving vintage hardware, but you may argue that one helps the other and keeps these systems usable after mechanical components have failed beyond reasonable repair.
On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 12:38 PM Herb Johnson wrote:
On 5/8/2020 12:04 PM, Dean Notarnicola wrote: > However, consider that, over time, it may matter less and less as a > larger volume of old media gets archived. Maybe it’s ok that these > devices are somewhat ephemeral. Just food for thought.
If I accept that proposition, Dean: vintage computing may matter less and less, as a larger volume of information and actual computers get archived in collections and on Web pages. Maybe it's OK that everything is ephemeral - including you and me. That's called "carrying an argument to its logical conclusions". Or to extreme conclusions, you decide.
The weaker response, is that many people have decided that floppy diskettes are so obsolete, one should simply archive their contents and avoid their use. In that case, the fact that archival mechanisms come and go - these various microcontrollers - doesn't matter either. One finds a means to archive or recover; one does the recovery; one moves on.
I have a few Web pages, about the efforts needed to "archive", and then recover and put to use, various inconvenient floppy disk formats; such as M2FM or MMFM and Intel Multibus system disks. Eventually, the recovery was performed by *actual period hardware and Intel systems*. Your mileage may vary, regarding your favorite vintage systems.
Again, I call out the difference between vintage computing as acts of preservation; and modern computing as an "ephemeral" activity where only the data persists (if that). So let's run emulators and go home, job done. (shrug) It's a matter of choices and consequences.
Regards, Herb Johnson
> > On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 11:45 AM Herb Johnson wrote: > > This reply is long, because I'm arguing in opposition, and that means I > have to make a case about, and explain about. But I'll save some > people, > some time. I"m going to fuss about these microcontrollers becoming > obsolete. If you don't care about that, save time and stop reading here.
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info