Build a Cheap Media-Reading PC? 255
tsm_sf writes "A recent Slashdot article got me thinking about dead and dying media. I'd like to build a cheap PC with the goal of being able to read as many old formats as possible. Size and power consumption would be design considerations; priority of media formats would be primary. How would you approach such a project?"
Consider Macs... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that you probably don't want to build around a Macintosh heart since it's probably easiest to get interesting older devices for the PC architecture. However, there's a whole set of interesting media related to the apple 3.5" floppies which used variable angular density of bits to achieve more even linear density (in other words, more bits on the outer tracks, less on the inner tracks). This needs special hardware and I think only some PC drives could possibly support reading this. This is, of course, a bit sick but not as bad as Apple II gaming media where you actually have to be able to load bits of the device driver from the disk as you go along. In a primitive form of Digital Restrictions Management, they used to stop the drive motor and continue to reaad as they went along.
Later apple media 3.5" Floppy was mostly 1.44Mb standard.
Don't forget an old soundblaster card or similar. (Score:5, Interesting)
Something with basic I/O sampling so you can read all those old Audio Cassettes... Amstrad, C64, Sinclair, MSX, Oric, Ti99-4A, JR-100, Vic-20, BBC etc.
I sometimes wonder what I would make of the old things I used to write and do on those old systems...
GrpA
The question nobody's asked yet... . (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Why do you think you need such a thing? What are you going to use it for?
There's a plethora of different media out there. Anything from Punch-cards to Single-reel tape to QIC, HDD with different interfaces, hell, even Magneto Opical/UDO and Microfilm or, God forbit, Floppy or even normal Casette Tapes (Remember MSX "DatRecorders"?)
Then there's a plethora of software used to write to these media. Any tape drive usually was written to with Networker, DataProtector/Omniback II, AMANDA, NetBackup or BackupExec, not to mention older iterations such as ArcServe and whatnot. The Harddisks can be formatted with the most wild versions of FAT, FAT16, 32, NTFS in various flavours, Ext*, Reiser and so on, while Casette tapes were written by a BASIC OS.
Then there's a plethora of software used to create the objects on those media. You have your CoDecs for rich media, your office formats of yore like WordPerfect 5.1... The list is nigh endless. When you say you want a media reading PC, you need to delimit your project somewhat, because you could end up with half a data center filled with machines for various purposes.
So, again:
- Why do you need it?
- What for?
Besides, if you still have floppies with your original copy of The Secret of Monkey Island on it, do you really need to be able to read those, or do you simply surf into a retro-gaming site to find the images and a suitable run-time environment for them?
Re:existing pc (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think openoffice will be very useful to read any document a 5.25" floppy, a QIC-20 tape, a IOMega drive, etc...
Anyway I don't think this guy is going to be very successful building a computer that can read everything. Some tapes need a controller that must be plugged into an ISA slot, for example.
Not exactly true. What you are likely thinking of are qic-02 or qic-36 tape drives where you have an isa controller. However, scsi->qic-xx controllers exist. I remember buying some PC solutions with their proprietary software and isa card just for the drive, specifically a Wangtek 5xxx series. Wangtek I know offered a drive that could write 120+megs to a DC600a tape. Very handy. However in my quest for speed and efficiency I discovered issues reading things written on Archive 5945C drives, or was it Kennedy 6500? It's hard for me to remember such details at this point but I do remember the joy of
1) Compatibility between drives
2) Compatibility between controllers
3) Compatibility between software
Come to think about it, it was about the windows 95 era that I thought it was a wise idea to ditch the whole QIC concept and go with Exabyte 8mm, or better yet CD-R via the good old HP 8200 series.
But to be fair, I'm sure I have some tape lying about off a qic-02 drive using some funky arse proprietary software.
http://www.qic.org/html/qicstan.html [qic.org]
God I hated that era. But I imagine you could get a few drives for each given size and get software that would read the various formats. I'm sure compression would be tricker but I'm sure it would be possible. I see this as being useful to those few bits of tape that haven't been moved yet.
But does it run Vinyl-ROM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Get busy with eBay (Score:4, Interesting)
game port (there is actually backup media that connects to the game port, what where they thinking)
I can't say I've seen the gameport used that way, but I can somewhat imagine why.
On the PC, there was IRQ hell. You have the serial ports at 3 and 4, IIRC lpt1: was 7, and IRQ 5 was that wonderful general purpose one that anything you wanted to add was set to. The game port, which doubled as a Midi port, was something that could be had cheaply, that didn't really add to the IRQ hell as it was the standard on sound cards.
But what were they thinking? They were likely thinking it was cheap.
Gawd how I hated that age.
It seems a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
This will be a lot harder than you think. It's not just the problem of keeping that machine running, having software that can use all those arcane formats, fitting it all into a box etc. The problem is that the hardware WILL die, whether it's the computer (which might have to have ISA slots etc. for some peripherals and so will be tricky to replace) or the media readers.
The method I use for data (and bear in mind that I haven't really bought anything new for a PC in years, so we're talking cheapskate methods) is to get a large hard drive every now and again (Christmas presents, recovered from broken PC's, old ones from work, etc.), and convert the media up to "hard drive" format. Being an emulation fan really helps here... disk images are the way to go. The first time you do it, it's an immense pain because you're swapping media, etc. But then, say your hard drive gets out of date (e.g. IDE vs SATA). You buy a SATA drive and automatically copy across all that old data including your virtual CD ROM images. Then when SATA is out of date, you do the same again.
Because of the increases in capacity each time, you'll barely notice that you're carrying around 10-15 year old data. I do this properly about every 2 or 3 years (and gradually over time as well), I end up getting a bigger hard drive from somewhere and "upgrading" again. My current PC has six hard drives (two of which are very old ones which I've already copied onto larger ones within the same machine and so can just disconnect them) and about four CD/DVD players (the first was a CD drive, the next was a CD-RW, then a DVD, then a DVD-RW, etc. each one superceding the last). I still have my very first hard drive laying about (it was a 40Mb Connor) and I still have the data that was on that drive on my newest drives.
Each one of those hard drives in my PC has the complete contents of at least two previous hard drives on it. And I still have the original hard drives (powered off in the base unit, or kept safely somewhere) for extra backup should I need it. It means that I don't lose my files, I never have to "recreate" something I've already done (scripts, programs, documents, etc.) and that I can do a quick search and know that I'm searching in every bit of data I've ever owned. When you KNOW that you saved something but can't remember the filename, when or where, that's a great assurance to have. I also have disk/tape images on every Spectrum game I ever owned, if you want to get silly. It's ridiculous how little space my entire Spectrum software library that took years to build up actually takes on a modern hard drive.
For peripherals, what I tend to do is wait for a format to establish itself (e.g. USB) and then slowly get all the adaptors I need to run all my old hardware on that format. So I have USB->just-about-everything adaptors. My main PC runs an AT keyboard with a PS/2 adaptor on a USB->PS/2 convertor. Then, when Wireless USB or some other successor comes along, all I need to do is buy a single USB->Wireless USB adaptor and I'm instantly back in business. No new keyboard required, and I have every adaptor necessary to run ANY type of keyboard should I need to. It means that my favourite hardware can last a lifetime (barring failure of the device itself).
It also makes things incredibly useful when you need to fix/repair/gut older PC's. If someone is still using an old AT PC, I'll have at least one cable/adaptor that will let me pull the data off it somehow, and a few more adaptors to get it working enough with modern hardware (USB, SATA, HDMI, etc.) so that I can get to the point to diagnose the computer if it's broken. If that means a daisy-chain of adaptors because the format is so legacy, so be it. At one point my mouse was a serial one, with a PS/2 adaptor, plugged into USB. I only upgraded because I wanted a scroll wheel. It can happen with everything. For example, I know for a fact that I have enough adaptors to convert a modern PSU (even ones with only SATA connectors but watch out f
First, get a building... (Score:3, Interesting)
I do some of this stuff for a living, and even though I can cover only a fraction of the media formats out there I have rack upon rack of obsolete peripheral devices. Most of the more recent ones are SCSI, some differential, some single-ended. A good few of the older ones (especially the old 12" 1GB glass optical disk drives) are bus and tag (I have SCSI converters for those...)
As for actually *reading* the data, I have about 19 feet of dog-eared, yellowing documentation and a C compiler.
You *sure* you want to get involved in this?
Re:Big long SCSI bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of our old Office Manager. When she wanted to archive an important email, she copied the main text into Word, then printed it off before storing it in files in her desk. Rather than, you know, at least printing it out from Outlook, or freakin storing it in her personal folders like everyone else.
I wasn't aware of her weird filing system, so when she scanned in one of these emails and sent it to me as a type of 'forward' I thought she was trying to bullshit me. It clearly said at the top of the scan that it was a Word document.
The text of the message actually included something like "I have sent this email to you on 20th of Whatever" which made the whole thing look incredibly fake.
The sad thing is that it turned out it was actually a real email from her to me months before, but I had deleted and forgotten the original because it was so incredibly dumb as to be offensive to both my Inbox and my mind. The headers are there for a reason, technophobes! I don't need you to tell me the date in an email, thankyou very much.
I was relieved when she got made redundant last year. There's something about having half-wit control freaks in positions of authority that disturbs me.
Magic Wand (Score:3, Interesting)
What the op, tsm_sf, is looking for here, is a magic wand. He wants to build a cheap small machine he can stick anywhere and with it be a wizard at reading obsolete physical formats. But that's just plain absurd. The reason the old formats died off was simply because they WEREN'T small and cheap (and they ran out of bits).
So I offer two solutions to the OP. One is a usb floppy drive, which is everything his overly vague request requested. The second is a magic wand from Flourish & Bott's, 'cause that's the only thing that could possibly fulfill his request for anything older than floppy drives.
Re:Get busy with eBay (Score:4, Interesting)
Think I'm kidding?
It's commonly used in the recording industry to get reel-to-reel tape to "re-adhere" the magnetic coating to the plastic.
After about 10 years, and certainly after 20, the tape becomes brittle and the magnetic material just flakes off.
I have read several articles (from the early 90's when I was a sound engineer) about how a food dehydrator like this one [net-blue.net] is perfect for treating the tape, since the reels fit right inside it.
I think you leave it in for about 24 hours and the tape comes out like new, and the temperature is low enough not to damage the magnetic layer.
Get a CatWeasel MK IV so you can read any floppy (Score:4, Interesting)
Get a CatWeasel MK IV so you can read any floppy disk format.
http://www.nishtek.com/cw.html [nishtek.com]
http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog/hardware/accelerators/catweaselmkiv.html&cart_id=6841513_65721 [softhut.com]
Re:Magic Wand (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm assuming that around that time (when 3.5 inch floppies hadn't completely replaced 5.25) there were many proprietary formats in fairly common use. Amiga or Atari, perhaps.
Things weren't really any worse than the different file formats around today - IIRC, Atari used the same PC format, and although Amiga and Mac had their own custom formats, they also supported reading and writing using PC formatted disks.
In a way, things are worse today - e.g., I believe that non-Windows platforms can't write to NTFS drives, due to it being a closed format?