[rescue] 8 bit computer software

Tim H. lists at pellucidar.net
Mon Oct 7 21:15:39 CDT 2002


Since we seem to have discussed various old 8 bit machines lately, I was
wondering, is anybody out there archiving software for these machines? 
(The old CP/M TRSDOS, LDOS stuff)  I know I am concerned about disks I
have, and I shudder to think of the audio cassettes of software.  

Of course there are always copyright issues, but generally speaking I
don't think any company (who happens to still exist) is going to
complain about a preservation archive of stuff that old.  Reading some
of those early disk formats might prove a challenge, some of them would
probably have to be dumped from the original hardware through a serial
link, but in another decade even the C64 stuff will be mostly lost.

Some of the really old stuff might even be impossible to find hardware
to read, I understand the census dept ran into that, and there was some
talk of modifying some hardware in the smithsonian to get the data
before it became unreadable.

hmmm, this may be a project in the making....

Tim



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