[SCC_Active_Members] Obsolete media

[H.M. Gladney]

Ref: your attached note

For a different class of data than that of most concern to CHM, the BBC has
for about three years been engaged in converting ALL their radio/television
archival material from existing media (mostly analog) to digital.  They
surely have some pertinent expertise, and I expect them to be willing to
consult.

As you might guess, the BBC collection is huge.  Measured in shelf length,
over 9 kilometers!  And the number of physical and logical formats is also
very large.

For an overview, see Richard Wright. VINE. Bradford: 2004.Vol.34, Iss. 2;
pg. 71  (copy attached)

If you are interested, I could introduce you to Richard Wright, who has
directed this BBC project from its inception.


Cheerio, Henry

-----Original Message-----
From: scc_active-bounces at mail.computerhistory.org
[mailto:scc_active-bounces at mail.computerhistory.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 9:11 AM
To: Larry Masinter
Cc: SCC_active at computerhistory.org
Subject: Re: [SCC_Active_Members] Archiving 2007 conference

Larry Masinter wrote:

> I was wondering about coordination with other organizations that might 
> have relevant material in their collections or who might be willing to 
> help with transcription of CHM-acquired media.
>

I'd love to know about other non-profits with the technical capability to
process obsolete media. It is a very specialized field, and companies that
do it charge a lot of money for the conversion, as well as keeping
information such as reverse-engineered file and media formats to themselves.

This was one of the reasons that I've been collecting media format
information for a while now and started a media format library at CHM.

There was an attempt to do this years ago
http://www.deadmedia.org/index.html
but it never really went anywhere.

There is some information in the classiccmp archives a few people that have
been working the problem, primarily from data on floppies, including a
recent project to build a USB interfaced universal floppy reader that could
be loaned to people with old media and read on a modern PC.

I would like to do the same thing for 1/2" magnetic tape, and have a design
that I've not been able to get back to for almost a year now

http://bitsavers.org/tools/wizl/tapewizl/USB_TapeInterface_20060711.txt

I'm hoping that I can interest experienced hardware people in working on
prototyping the design. I accumuated the tools, and most of the parts, but
have not had the time to do the schematic or board design.


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