Survival rates in computers with the eye on archiving.

PIII machines, heck, I keep checkin' on my ol' 333MHz Celeron and it runs fine. I'm guessing a Workstation would be the way to go since they are tested to last. But are you serious about this?

For a number of years, bad capacitors were cropping up all over the place and killing motherboards right and left. Stuff made before that and stuff made after that should be fine, aside from faulty capacitors, fans, and mechanical storage devices, I've never had a computer component fail, they just become obsolete.

If you really need to keep something going forever, I'd advise you to just go out and buy a pile of identical inexpensive modern parts, you should average at *least* 5 years out of a motherboard, but 10+ would not surprise me in the least.

I'm afraid that the current situation may force me to do such thing, yes. The monitors do worry me as well, although they could be more repairable.

Cheetah

What would prevent you from replacing the monitors with something else?

Hi!

Theoretically speaking, it's doable. What history has shown us so far is that the reality may be a little different. Semiconductors ("chips") are themselves very reliable and can last an extremely long time in a well designed circuit running within specifications or close to. The problematic areas include mechanical parts (disk storage), power supplies and some supporting components like capacitors.

That said, I have a lot of 286 and 386 machines around that are still in fairly regular use.

You also have to factor in exteral influences...lightning strikes, natural disasters, etc. These things can wipe out otherwise healthy and properly functioning equipment almost instantly. And don't forget the upkeep (human) factor as well. If everything else goes well, the systems will still need periodic restarting, cleaning and other work.

Truthfully, I think you'd do very well to consider building a system that could be upgraded and moved to newer equipment as time goes on and things wear out. Sure, you could stockpile many parts and systems in order to keep the same old thing running along, but leaving yourself an option to upgrade to more modern hardware over time is a much better plan. You can reasonably assume that new computer hardware will be available. You can't assume that any spare parts will be in serviceable condition by the time you need them.

William

No one has considered the software in this thread. The ferrite material , whether on a hard disc platten, floppy or tape streamer tape can debond from the backing. With optical media the code carying metal surface can oxidise/ part company from the plastic media, Unless anyone knows of the ideal storage media that is incorruptible, is this the best procedure ? Store the original media plus copies on perhaps more futureproof media in an evacuated container. Then another repeat of that collection at another site , in case of fire or flood at one site. Is long term optical storage more reliable as far as it cannot spontaneously change magnetic state by coalescence of neighbouring magnetic poles or whatever the corrupting process is.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

company

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site

spontaneously

A recent newspaper article on this matter

tion.news part quote "I always end up doing really interesting work with the data conversion," he says. He spent almost five years working with treasure hunters on his own salvage mission, trying to access photos of tens of thousands of Spanish coins retrieved from a wreck off the coast of Florida.

"There were 65,000 of these doubloons that were pulled up, and the archaeologists took digital photos of the front and back of each individual coin because they were all unique," he says. "It was very early digital technology back in the mid-80s, and they had all these tapes and discs that they couldn't access. All this was before jpegs and gifs and today's standard formats."

On another job Ismail had to go back in time to resurrect the dead from a huge graveyard in California. The cemetery records stretched back to the

1950s and 60s on 50,000 punch cards, and staff no longer knew who was buried where and what plots were already taken.

"None of the data was printed on the top of these cards, so you could not have had a human doing the job," Ismail says. Instead, he hooked up his technological time machine and came up with a system that could read up to

200 cards a minute.

Resurrecting classics

Ismail's talents stretch to his own computer workshop, where he has built replicas of some of the earliest machines from scratch. "The one that's in demand is Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP 1 from 1961," he says. "It stands for program data processor and it cost $120,000 (£60,000) new, but it wasn't called a computer. Budgets were scrutinised and if it had said 'computer' on the request it would've been turned down."

The PDP 1 featured the first ever video game, Spacewar!, before there was such a thing as a gaming industry. Ismail has made a replica for a Japanese display on the history of computers and gaming, and he is working on another one for a touring exhibition of videogames. end quote

Presumably Sellam Ismail

would be worth contacting as he is going to know more than most , how to archive/futureproof hardware and software

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Please don't think I am against modern technology in any way but I think by trusting any modern form of storage alone, we're asking for trouble.

Magnetic media such as hard drives are fragile. Water, shock, lightning, and other factors can easily damage a hard drive beyond repair. Some or all of the data may be retrievable by an expert using expensive methods and equipment, but it's a gamble. Optical media is very fragile. Discs can easily be broken, and a single deep-enough scratch on the reflective (top) side of a disc will destroy some of the data. Older methods that are proven to work: Paper - writing on paper with permanent ink can survive hundreds of years and can still be legible after being torn, floods, etc. Parchment, papyrus, etc, may last thousands of years! Stone carvings last even longer, but are a problem when shock is involved such as earthquakes, landslides, etc.

I'm not suggesting that we go back to the last century and store everything on paper or back to the stone age... I'm suggesting that we find a way to store our data in a way that can last hundreds to thousands of years, while making it repairable and retrievable, and able to be understood by the equipment we will have a century from now. At this point I believe that everything that is stored in some elctronic way should be constantly updated and translated into every possible file format, especially the newest formats as they are created.

Perhaps take a lesson from Voyager; encode baseband data by engraving spiraling grooves onto a noble-metal disc (phonograph record). The recordings attached to the spacecraft are intended to endure the journey between stars :-) Closer to home and seriously, home recordings made on disc machines from the 1930's are often as good now as when originally made; consider this technology using existing equipment and add robust error correcting coding. Also, some photographic films have good longevity; consider microfiche printouts for data archiving.

In terms of supporting technology, if personnel are available throughout the archiving period, a periodic refresh of data onto contemporary media is in order using updated equipment at each cycle. If this is not possible, one of the archiving methods described above would require only basic technology to reconstruct the data by future societies.

Regards,

Michael

On Nov 2, 1:40 am, CheetahHugger wrote: > Complicated one, let's say i have a need to keep certain programs/ data > in running order for the next 50 years. > Don't discuss upgrading, converting ect, it's not applicable in this > situation as the actual structure hard and software have to match each > other and you cannot emulate.

I don't believe it. If it's that important, everything can be emulated.

Yes do that

Radium, is that you?

GG

I think you see my problem, reliabillity goes down and modernization comes with new systems every few months, we sit with over 2TB on private pics and videos and come to the conclusion my granny's super 8 films last longer then any of today's media. Blank dvd's corrupted in a month, harddisks last a year, a pc 2 years if you're lucky. How can anyone base a buisness on such low quality standards, failing capacitors being one example. I (and a few other people) refuse to upgrade anymore and rather stock up parts to keep existing equipment going. Due to high volumes and recycling problems, older machines can often be had for practically nothing. Conversions are good but reliabillity of current hardware is poor, so poor that i don't even consider using cd's for music anymore, i run everything off solid state, music on a fileserver accessable in the entire house, same for video and pictures, no DRM and no milky way nonsense. No future headaches on what version of xp will run what without any new restrictions to make the life of users to a hell, linux on a p3 running off solid state memory might be a way out, and all data on triple mirrored harddisks.

Cheetah

Why you think there has been such a massive campaign to have people send in equipment for recycling and at the same time promote digital as the new future? because they know it won't last, my father's records all play, my old tapes from 1980 still play, my cd's with pictures burned in 2004 are unreadable, i do have backups. The cd's were bought from TDK and advertised as archive grade. guess who didn't made the standard.

Cheetah

I don't get that, i was asking this question with serious eye on archiving. Thanks for the input everybody, i will draw conclusions.

Cheetah

Well I have CDRs nearly 10 years old that are still OK. We bake tapes at work (135 F for 12 hours) to get them to play on the 1978 Ampex 2" quadruplex VTR. My turntable is OK but you can't get a replacement stylus (Shure V15 type V) anymore. 50 years is a LONG time to expect electronics to keep working. You might be dead by then, I certainly will be and its pretty arrogant to assume whatever task those old machines do couldn't be done by newer people and machinery.

GG

If you stored items of hardware in evacuated containers are there components that will fail if subjected to 0 psi ? Will hermetically sealed crystal oscillators explode for example ?

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

"N Cook" wrote in news:fgk1hi$9ng$ snipped-for-privacy@inews.gazeta.pl:

Do NOT vacuum seal them!

That will draw out any volatile or semi volatile materials in any components.

You probably should seal them with 1 or 1.5 atmospheres of DRY nitrogen.

Even then, some plastics will out gas plasticizers over time and may crumble.

Again slightly above atmospheric pressure, a dry, inert gas such as nitrogen, will give the best protection.

--
bz    	73 de N5BZ k

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an 
infinite set.

bz+ser@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu   remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap

Good question, maybe just vacuum packing is better, and the reason for archiving is a personal one, if i die the matter is no longer relevant.

Cheetah

I doubt the oscillators will be a problem, but I would be concerned about electrolytic capacitors. An atmosphere of dry nitrogen or other inert gas at approximately atmospheric pressure or even a slight positive pressure would be better. Some hermetically sealed military subcircuits are pressurized with nitrogen.

Hi!

Fragile? Easily?

With all due respect, have you tried this?

I got a bunch of America Online CDs a long time ago. It's a long story, but it involved a display being taken down. Despite the fact that the software was unchanged (same version), the CDs were "useless" and would be thrown out with the rest of the display. I asked the woman tearing down the stand if I could have them...as I was thinking thoughts of "what wastefulness", "maybe I could do something with these" or "anything would be better than throwing most of them away".

Once I ran out of ideas (hanging them in trees to annoy birds, using them to reinstall AOL software on AOL-users computers after they'd messed something up--why they make it so hard to download a simple one-shot installer is beyond me, using them in art projects, etc)...there was really only one thing left to do, and that was to find out what kind of abusive handling it would take to break them--both in and out of their paper sleeves.

I used a few implements of destruction--an office chair, a table, a PS/2 model 85 (!!!), one file cabinet drawer and a vehicle. Of all of these things, only the file cabinet drawer could break a disc into pieces on the first try, and that was only by "cheating" and holding the disc in the path of the moving drawer. One *slam* and it was all over for that disc. It didn't matter if the disc was in its sleeve or not. I could run over the disc almost to my heart's content with the chair, slap it against the PS/2's heavy steel case as hard as I could manage to do so or run it over repeatedly with the vehicle. If the disc was in its sleeve...it would survive. If the disc was out...it got scratched but was at least partially readable.

William