[sdiy] a provoking question about time

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

Dave,

When I got out of college (OSU) there wasn't a lot of software jobs in 
Oregon other than business/bank stuff. So I worked in field service for 
3 years for DEC, Harris CSD and Tektronix terminals in Wilsonville. Tape 
drives were the worse, then disk drives and the old drum line printers.

Saw a documentary on the Library of Congress where they were just doing 
the initial archival going from analog to digital. That was going to 
take a long time to get the initial pass done. Once done with that they 
figured they would start moving from the old media to the newest media 
and that would keep them busy forever.

At one time there was a lot of information from the early space missions 
that was archived and never looked at. When they wanted to look at it 
the hardware to do it was long gone. Someone bought a bunch of the tape 
drives they used (which were some odd format, not 8 or 9 track) and 
refurbished them to get the data off.

When I worked at Tek as a contractor I had to be petty anal about 
archival because when I was gone someone else would have to do 
maintenance on the code. Also if I came back I would of forgotten the 
details of what I had done.

Stay cool this weekend.
Jay S.

On 6/26/2022 3:14 PM, Dave Brown wrote:
>
> I remember one day looking at my DEC 9 track tape thinking that 
> archive wasn’t going to be useful any more. OF course, by then it 
> didn’t matter …
>
> Dave
>
> *From:* Synth-diy <synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org> *On Behalf Of 
> *Matthew Skala via Synth-diy
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 26, 2022 2:29 PM
> *To:* Jay Schwichtenberg <jschwich53 at comcast.net>
> *Cc:* *Subject:* Re: [sdiy] a provoking question about time
>
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2022, Jay Schwichtenberg via Synth-diy wrote:
>
> > If you do this in real life you archive all the software used, 
> including the
>
> > OS. You're a fucking idiot if you don't. That was one of the first 
> things I
>
> > was programmed to do when I started doing this type of work. Some 
> places I've
>
> > worked you pull the hard drive and archive it too. Even so you still 
> might not
>
> This is another good reason to be wary of development tools that want
>
> network access to phone home; limited-time license keys mediated by
>
> license servers; and automatic updates.
>
> -- 
>
> Matthew Skala
>
> North Coast Synthesis Ltd.
>
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