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New The machine has a SCSI Zip drive attached
...and that will be the lifeboat for such files as might potentially be useful. A less compromised unit in the office (a grey-and-white G4, circa 2001) can read the Zip disks and transfer the contents via USB 1.0 to a thumb drive. I know that my PageMaker 2.0 files from the late 1980s are irretrievable without costly and heroic measures (and there's no practical use for them today), but I think I've still got a machine somewhere with PM 4.2 that can still read archived PM 3 documents, assuming the floppies haven't rotted in storage. PM 4.2 can be read by PM 5, and thence by 6.5, and finally to InDesign. The undertaking may be more trouble than it's worth, but there are three or four book-length projects from back in the day that it would be useful to have to hand, even in text-only versions—assuming, of course, that those floppies haven't perished of neglect. Yeah, paper and stone are more reliable archival media.

Thank gawd that Illustrator reads legacy formats back to v. 1.0! I actually had a request last year to rebrand a document I created back during the Alzheimer Administration—I had fortunately long since saved all my Illustrator files from the eighties and nineties to a single CD-ROM, which appears to have preserved its contents impeccably over the long years of its confinement in a cool, dark file drawer.

cordially,
New Magnetic decay...
This hits sampler users harder than most other musicians as most samplers are very much a product of their computing times.

I have a SCSI Zip drive for my 20 year old Ensoniq ASR-10 and hope to source a spare Zip drive in case it dies. Meanwhile, computing hardware that can read the old Ensoniq floppies is becoming harder to find (USB floppies can't do it) and Ensoniq enthusiasts are also starting to report disks that are unreadable as the magnetic field fades too far.

Fortunately the Ensoniq hardware also supports CD-ROMs and they are a lot more long lasting.

Wade.
Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
     scary legacy system - (rcareaga) - (6)
         Digital black hole - (drook)
         That thing has a SCSI disk, right? - (crazy) - (3)
             Nope. - (folkert)
             The machine has a SCSI Zip drive attached - (rcareaga) - (1)
                 Magnetic decay... - (static)
         serial port available? - (boxley)

I see mass suicides and riots in the future as every urkel fashion sense inspired computer nerd throws down their oxy pads and mutters, "enough is enough," then takes to the streets, scsi cards in hand, and it will be dark, dark day indeed my friend.
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