Re: Toy Shop

[vladitx <vladitx@nucleusys.com>]

Hello Toto et al.

I don't post often since using Google Groups is quite troublesome to
me. I have subscribed for daily digests to email, so that's how I lurk
on Usenet.

On the topic of disk preservation - I hope to offer external devices
to do it with a PC host. Few selected individuals with huge archives
who would like to participate in the process will receive them free of
charge. The funny thing is that archiving most titles is pretty easy,
but the rest raises the difficulty quite much. And since I don't
really know what's out there, I'll have to be pessimistic and prepare
for additional (perceived?) surprises. This means that while for maybe
most of the disks the job could be automated and devoted collectors
could image their disks, the rest will require human intervention and
input in the analysis stage. Add the trouble of verifying images from
different sources (and only if they could be compared ... it's
complex) and assigning them "grade" of correctness or originality ...
I hope you see where this leads. A tedious and time consuming process,
totally out of the ability of a single person.

My point is, that we don't need just another half-baked attempt at
preservation. I have worked on this for couple of years now, on and
off, and I want to give it a proper execution, resulting in a disk
format, imaging devices, and a community working in cooperation for
preserving the Apple II history. The incorrect preservation in various
variants, while still better than nothing, is a source of noise and
kind of a bad favour.

I think I have the bits and pieces to do my work, except that last few
years my life was overtaken by things that pretty much slowed my
hobbies to a grind. When I get to the point where I have prototypes
and specs, I will contact the community and then any help will be
appreciated.

Until then, my personal appeal to the Apple II community is to try and
keep the disks (and related documentation) safe from physical damage.

  -- Vlad