[Simh] Preservation matters

[Timothe Litt]

This isn't strictly SimH, but it is a related story about the importance
of preservation.

For those of you who may not have been following it, here's a story that
emphasizes why preserving computing history matters. 
https://go.nasa.gov/2EeF5SO

Additional resources:  https://skyriddles.wordpress.com and
https://twitter.com/coastal8049

There's quite a bit more about it on the web - it actually made the news.

The gory details belong in other forums.  But the bottom line is that
"old" software and computing environments (among other things) may
enable an exciting science project to come back to life.  (And at
trivial cost.)

Enjoy.

[Paul Koning]

This isn't strictly SimH, but it is a related story about the importance of preservation.
For those of you who may not have been following it, here's a story that emphasizes why preserving computing history matters. https://go.nasa.gov/2EeF5SO

Amazing. We hear stories from time to time about government agencies such as NASA misplacing old tapes, and occasionally those stories may even be true. But this is the first I've heard of them misplacing a satellite.

paul

[Timothe Litt]

Post by Paul Koning

This isn't strictly SimH, but it is a related story about the importance of preservation.
For those of you who may not have been following it, here's a story that emphasizes why preserving computing history matters. https://go.nasa.gov/2EeF5SO

Amazing. We hear stories from time to time about government agencies such as NASA misplacing old tapes, and occasionally those stories may even be true. But this is the first I've heard of them misplacing a satellite.

It wasn't misplaced.  They knew exactly where it was.  It just stopped
talking due to a cosmic ray-induced hardware fault.  NASA stopped
listening for it when they ran out of recovery options.  Long after
that, it woke up (I have a pretty good theory on how and why), and when
someone else heard it the fun began.  How to reconstruct a ground
station that depends on abandoned hardware & software?  Not to mention,
when it's proven healthy, how to find money to operate it and collect
the data?

If you follow the references, NASA did an excellent detailed failure
report and analysis.  If you're at all interested in such things, I
recommend it.

There was an earlier recovery effort for another space veteran, in which
I was (very) peripherally involved.  Search the web for ISEE-3 reboot.

As for missing tapes, I'd really like for someone to find the original
slow-scan TV from Apollo 11.  They seem to have been recycled because
"tape (and storage space) was expensive".  (Heard that before?)

Post by Paul Koning
paul

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Post by Paul Koning
We hear stories from time to time about government agencies such as
NASA misplacing old tapes

The FSF sent their old backup tapes for a facility for reading them, and
apparenly they got lost somehow. They didn't get the tapes, or the
data, back.