[GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures

[Alvin Starr]

On 8/9/19 2:44 AM, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:
> On 2019-08-02 8:03 a.m., Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 7:23 AM Stewart C. Russell via talk 
>> <talk at gtalug.org <mailto:talk at gtalug.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 2019-08-01 11:09 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
>>      >
>>      > - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years
>>      >
>>      > - 9-track mag tape: 10 years
> [snip]
>>     Good luck getting a reader for any of these now. At least the paper
>>     media is scannable.
>>
>>
>> Chances are if you have the data on tape, you already have the 
>> reader. These folks will repair or replace your equipment.
> [snip]
>> ????It may seem out of date, but there is still a strong business 
>> case for maintaining the original archive records on original format, 
>> as well as a copy transferred to newer media, depending on the 
>> importance of the dataset itself.??
>
This one piqued my curiosity having worked with most of these formats so 
I thought to ask the question.
"How many of these can still be read and how"
> I have printouts of programs that had been printed on an old IBM 1403 
> chain printer, some programs that are on punch cards, and one on paper 
> tape. I also have two mag tapes reels that were used with IBM 
> mainframes. I have no idea what is on those tapes. The printouts, 
> punch cards, and paper tape have survived intact for over 40 years.
>
You could retype them or cut them up and put them on a scanner with OCR.

> I still (mostly) remember how to read punch cards. I would have to 
> find a site to help decode the paper tape but it could be run through 
> an ASR 33 teletype to generate a printout.
I figured a DIY kind of reader would work but I fell over this one
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_CAds=&_ex_kw=&_fpos=&_fspt=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&_nkw=paper+tape+reader&_sacat=&_sadis=&_sop=12&_udhi=&_udlo=&_fosrp=1

80 col punch cards don't seem to have readers on ebay but someone built 
a really nice low tech arduino solution.
https://arduining.com/2012/06/10/arduino-punched-card-reader/
This project kind of makes me think of a book I saw years ago about how 
to build a computer using paper clips and a tin cans.
Here is  a serious overkill kind of solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcwxW2ne-UU&feature=youtu.be

>
> I recently discovered I have a cassette tape with 4K BASIC for Altair 
> 8800 dated 1976. I have now archived the audio on that cassette that 
> on to my computer. I have other cassette tapes I used with old 
> computers that I'm doing to digitize and attempt to decode.
These are more interesting because it is recording format can be much 
more custom from using multi-tone audio to custom raw encoding formats.

>
> It is interesting to realize that a lot of this "old school 
> technology" has survived many a decade yet modern devices like CDs, 
> DVDs, and hard drives often have much shorter shelf lives.
>
I am not sure if the durability was the primary concern when these 
formats were devised but it was likely more about increasing the 
information density and trying to make the format machine processable.


It would be interesting to see the bit densities over time from stone 
tablets(how would cave paintings count?)  to the latest production 
storage systems.
It would also be interesting to know how many people had access to the 
storage media over time. That would have started with a few priests and 
specially trained people to just about everybody having a cell phone 
with a few GB of storage.


-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.                   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
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