[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[peter]

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As many of you may be aware, Bruce D. Evans <bde at freebsd.org> died in
mid-December.  I am currently looking through his digital estate on
behalf of his family and the FreeBSD Project.

I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[krewat]

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My take on it: It all needs to be preserved. Whether or not it's public, 
that's up to his estate.

Yes, I am a data-horder.

On 3/8/2020 4:22 PM, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> As many of you may be aware, Bruce D. Evans <bde at freebsd.org> died in
> mid-December.  I am currently looking through his digital estate on
> behalf of his family and the FreeBSD Project.
>
> I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff

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[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[lars]

Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Yes, I am a data-horder.

Bless you!

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[imp]

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On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, 2:22 PM Peter Jeremy <peter at rulingia.com> wrote:

> As many of you may be aware, Bruce D. Evans <bde at freebsd.org> died in
> mid-December.  I am currently looking through his digital estate on
> behalf of his family and the FreeBSD Project.
>
> I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?
>

I can image just about any 5 1/4 disk.

Warner

-- 
> Peter Jeremy
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[@ 2020-03-08 21:16 UTC (permalink / raw)]

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On 9 Mar 2020 07:22 +1100, from peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy):
> I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?

Suppose that we say no, there is no interest in the material. The
upside is that it'll be less work in the short term; the downside
seems to be the possible loss of actual interesting material.

Suppose that we say yes, there is at least potential interest (now or
later) in the material. The downside is that it'll take some work to
process once; the upside is that _if_ it turns out to be of interest,
even if we can't see that interest now, then the material will be
available or at least preserved somewhere.

_I would say YES, it should be preserved._ Far too many computer
historical artefacts have been lost to various trash containers over
the decades because people didn't envision at the time how they might
be of interest later.

Just consider: back in the 1970s, who'd have thought that a sales
department printout of minicomputers and corresponding peripherals
would be of any interest whatsoever upwards of half a century later?

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[wobblygong]

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I'm in favour of preserving both the software and the newsletters.
History _is_ important, and knowledge of history doubly so when you
have predatory IPR scavengers on the loose, as we saw in the infamous
The SCO Group versus Linux and the World case.

Wesley Parish

On 3/9/20, Peter Jeremy <peter at rulingia.com> wrote:
> As many of you may be aware, Bruce D. Evans <bde at freebsd.org> died in
> mid-December.  I am currently looking through his digital estate on
> behalf of his family and the FreeBSD Project.
>
> I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?
>
> --
> Peter Jeremy
>

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[spedraja]

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I suggest to contact Al Kossow for this matter. As a Museum Curator and
owner of bitsavers.org, he is keeping an impressive bunch of scanned
manuals and software from years. I am absolutely sure that he will do the
right thing about all this estate and legacy.

On the other hand, it's Warren.

Cordiales saludos / Kind Regards.
Gracias | Regards - Saludos | Greetings | Freundliche Grüße | Salutations
-- 
*Sergio Pedraja*

El dom., 8 mar. 2020 a las 23:33, Wesley Parish (<wobblygong at gmail.com>)
escribió:

> I'm in favour of preserving both the software and the newsletters.
> History _is_ important, and knowledge of history doubly so when you
> have predatory IPR scavengers on the loose, as we saw in the infamous
> The SCO Group versus Linux and the World case.
>
> Wesley Parish
>
> On 3/9/20, Peter Jeremy <peter at rulingia.com> wrote:
> > As many of you may be aware, Bruce D. Evans <bde at freebsd.org> died in
> > mid-December.  I am currently looking through his digital estate on
> > behalf of his family and the FreeBSD Project.
> >
> > I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> > disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> > things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> > though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> > selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> > there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?
> >
> > --
> > Peter Jeremy
> >
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[dave]

On Mon, 9 Mar 2020, Wesley Parish wrote:

> I'm in favour of preserving both the software and the newsletters. 
> History _is_ important, and knowledge of history doubly so when you have 
> predatory IPR scavengers on the loose, as we saw in the infamous The SCO 
> Group versus Linux and the World case.

About a decade ago I read a story about someone discovering that a 
supplier had some CP/M boxes in stock, but still wanted full book-price 
for them...

-- Dave

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[wkt]

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On Mon, Mar 09, 2020 at 07:22:30AM +1100, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> I have discovered that he kept an extensive collection of 5¼" floppy
> disks.  I haven't looked through them but they appear to include
> things like OS-9 and Hitachi Peach files (and presumably Minix stuff,
> though I haven't found any of his Minix work).  He also has a
> selection of newletters from an Australian Peach users group.  Is
> there any interest in this material from a historicial perspective?

I still have a 5¼" floppy drive, not sure I have a PC to plug it in to.
Give me a few days and I'll let you know.
Cheers, Warren

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[dave]

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On Mon, 9 Mar 2020, Warren Toomey wrote:

> I still have a 5¼" floppy drive, not sure I have a PC to plug it in to. 
> Give me a few days and I'll let you know.

Don't forget that there were many "standards" for those things; a popular 
utility was "Alien" for MS/DOS, which accessed the hardware.  There was 
also a version for ye olde Microbee called "Bee-Alien"; I made heavy use 
of it :-)

-- Dave

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[imp]

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On Sun, Mar 8, 2020, 9:18 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Mar 2020, Warren Toomey wrote:
>
> > I still have a 5¼" floppy drive, not sure I have a PC to plug it in to.
> > Give me a few days and I'll let you know.
>
> Don't forget that there were many "standards" for those things; a popular
> utility was "Alien" for MS/DOS, which accessed the hardware.  There was
> also a version for ye olde Microbee called "Bee-Alien"; I made heavy use
> of it :-)
>

That's why I got a kyroflux...  too hard to find an old enough pc that the
floppy controller supports the full range of crazy that once roamed the
earth...

Warner

-- Dave_______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[dave]

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On Sun, 8 Mar 2020, Warner Losh wrote:

> That's why I got a kyroflux...  too hard to find an old enough pc that 
> the floppy controller supports the full range of crazy that once roamed 
> the earth...

There were also many devious copy protection schemes used for games etc. 
One common one was to punch a hole in a known sector (!) and if you didn't 
get a read error when accessing it then it was an illegal copy; another 
was to store data in an otherwise unreachable sector e.g. track 41 on a 40 
track disk...

In short, good luck :-)

Hmmm...  I just looked up the KryoFlux, and it's a fascinating device; it 
actually gets right down to the flux level!  I've never seen a 3" disk 
before though.

-- Dave

[COFF] Old non-Unix software and manuals.

[tih]

Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> writes:

> That's why I got a kyroflux...  too hard to find an old enough pc that
> the floppy controller supports the full range of crazy that once
> roamed the earth...

For the record: the Adaptec 1542B ISA bus SCSI controller includes a
floppy controller that's compatible with the one in the original PC, and
which can be programmed in minute detail for tracks, sectors,
interleaving, inter-sector gaps, and so forth.

I used one of those and a modified NetBSD floppy driver to create boot
floppies for my Osborne 1, after downloading images off the net.  :)

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay