Re: Is ProDOS supported in OSX?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <uqSdnQHkHbt3cGWjXTWJig@comcast.com>,
Bill Garber <willy46pa@comcast.net> wrote:
 
>>>Actually, NASA had a project some 6-8 years ago of moving all these
>>>magnetic tape data to CD's.  They encountered two difficulties:
> 
> < snipet >
> 
>> The appropriate course of action in such a situation is to construct
>> one or more special tape transports designed to handle the tape
>> much more delicately than the original equipment did.  Slow-speed
>> transport that maintains most of the curvature of the tape on the
>> reel and non-contact sensing come immediately to mind.
>>
>> Special needs call for special means.
> 
> I can see that possibly there is data on those tapes they could need,
> but I would think that with all the new ideas and innovations made
> in the past 10 years, most of that data would be obsolete. Wouldn't
> you agree?
 
Scientific data never gets obsolete, since you cannot know beforehand
what data future scientists will request.
 
BTW since scientific data more and more are recorded on digital
media, this poses a long-term problem: will these media still be
readable in 30 years?  In 80 years?  In 200 years?  And this isn't
merely a matter about the physical medium being readable, it's
also a matter about support for logical storage formats: will today's
file systems be readable in 200 years?  And what about TIFF or
JPEG image files?
 
The older media (glass plates, used for photography) at least have
one advantage: we can still examine them.  And sometimes there are
demands to examine glass plates 100+ years old, for scientific
purposes.
 
 
> I mean, I still have my install disks from my first Sound
> Blaster card. Why you may say? Memorabilia. That's all. Just some
> way of remembering back to when computers were simpler and did
> not require so many files so do something. Like now when I get an
> error, it's not just an EXE file, but 3 DLLs, 4 of these, 6 of those.
> And you never find out for sure which file actually caused the error.
> We simply reinstall and all is well again. Anyway, my point was made.
> Off I go again. Bye for Now.
 
...but you don't produce any scientific data with that equipment, do you?
 
-- 
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