Re: OT: Apple II archives and disk media

[chris@CosmicWolf.com (Chris Morse)]

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 07:31:11 GMT, "M. Pender" <mpender@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>It occurred to me the other day that if all the files on the major Apple II
>archive sites (Asimov, Fairway, etc.) were combined, all of the Apple II
>software would probably fit within 10 GB of disk space.

Probably correct.. Asimov + Ground + Caltech + UMich + Duke + Gno

>In any event, a person could easily download all of the available Apple II
>software to a local hard drive.  IMHO it would be very cool to have all of
>the Apple II software available on demand from a local drive.

That's what I have done.  And in my opinion it's a good thing.  Look
what happened to Tarnover.  I never got a chance to raid that archive
and now it's probably mostly lost.  As I understand, there was a lot
of stuff over there that's not on any of the other servers.

>If all of the duplicate titles were eliminated that could probably be
>brought within the storage capacity of a single DVD-RAM.  That's the reason
>I asked previously about whether any SCSI DVD-ROM drives are currently
>compatible with the Apple II.

It would take a while to go through everything and organize it!  Also
you have to be careful not to throw something away just because it
doesn't run in an emulator.  I grabbed a copy of Z-Link from Asimov
and my emulator (AppleWin) wouldn't boot or run it.  I thought it was
a dead disk image, but I decided to transfer it to my real //e and
then it worked.

>I realize that the rate at which new Apple II software appears has
>diminished to a trickle, but I wonder if the same is true of other
>platforms.  Admittedly, the disk space consumed by new Windows applications
>apparently expands at an exponential rate, but I suspect that is mostly
>bloatage.

New Apple II software appearing on Asimov's incoming directory is
probably pretty minimal, yeah.  I try to upload what I can.  With
people throwing away Apple II disks by the crate, it would be nice to
try and grab images of them before they end up in the local landfill.

I was browsing yesterday on the Ground site and a file called
"MECCOPY" caught my eye.  Quite a nice utility, it removes the
protection from MECC educational titles so that you can copy them
(like to a .DSK emulator file.)  About 6 months ago I got about 300
MECC floppy disks from an eBay auction and soon found out that I
couldn't copy the disks or transfer them to my PC with Apple Disk
Tranfer (ADT).  I tried the MECCOPY program and it worked like a
charm!  Now I can make .DSK copies of all those floppies I got.

>This led me to the observation that the capacity of disk storage technology
>may be increasing at a rate higher than the rate at which people actually
>produce any new content.  If so, then a day is coming in which, for example,
>all of the music ever recorded could be stored on a single disk (or other
>media).  Similarly, all of the movies recorded up until a point in time
>could be recorded on a single piece of media.

That's a lot of space!  What's the big push for computers, speed and
storage space?  I would probably say, now, it's video.  Besides video,
there's really no need for, say, a 5GHz machine.   Modern games will
probably keep pushing the upper limits of machines, too.

But I think there's a basic law, which I have personally been bound
by, too.  And that is:  No matter how much space you have, you'll have
no trouble filling that space.  

When I got a new 120 gig HD, I had it filled in about 3 days.  Mostly
divx video's, VCD's and SVCD's, but it didn't take long.  I have a
friend here at work that sometimes tells me "Damn you!  Because of you
I have to buy another hard drive!".. because I wrote Power-Grab (a
usenet binary downloader) and he uses it so much that he always fills
his hard drives with stuff.. then had to buy more HD space.. hahah..
But then, not everyone does that.  My parents have a 60 gig HD and
they probably use about 5 gigs worth.. Web browsing and email is
mostly all they do, so there's just no need for much space.

>The C-One would be pretty appealing if it shipped with a copy of every
>Commodore-64 title ever released.
>
>Any thoughts?

That would be cool.

// CHRIS