Digital BW, The Print

I have a whole book stored  on 3 1/2" floppies made on a Brothers Word 
Processor  in about 1987. There's not a machine around that can read those floppies. 
I found a company somehwere in the mid-west that can transfer to current 
discs - but for an exhorbitant sum. I'm glad I have a paper copy . I put all my 
photos on CD's, but still rely on always having an archival print. Yes, it takes 
a lot of space, but if my CD fails, I can always copy the print.  There are 
those who  only  feel safe wearing a belt AND suspenders. ( And some of us 
carry a safety pin in our wallets, too).
                Arlene
www.arlenelove.com


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ArleneLoveL@... wrote:
> I have a whole book stored  on 3 1/2" floppies made on 
> a Brothers Word Processor  in about 1987. There's not a 
> machine around that can read those floppies. 

Yes, but how many of those Brothers-format disks ever existed in the
world?  It's probably in the tens or maybe hundreds of thousands at
most.  How many ISO9660 format CDs and DVDs exist?  It's at least in
the billions or tens of billions.  There's also no end in sight for
new formats that use the same 12cm optical disc form factor and which
are backwards compatible with older discs.

I'll bet there will ways to read CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs for at least the
next 100 years.  I'm sure we'll be using other types of storage
technology long before then, but there is such a critical mass of data
in that format that there will be a market for readers for a long long
time.

--
Steve

<<ArleneLoveL@... wrote:
> I have a whole book stored  on 3 1/2" floppies made 
on 
> a Brothers Word Processor  in about 1987. There's 
not a 
> machine around that can read those floppies. >>

If you are referring to the same Brother word
processor as my daughter used in college, Brother used
a proprietary formatting such that it was not readable
by any other computer, even then.....

Jerry in Houston

This is why museums that purchase digital works (art that runs on a
computer) for the collection often buy the hardware as well as the
"software" artwork, so that in the future there is still a good chance of
displaying the work. I do have a small collection of drives that support the
various removable media I have used over the years, just In case I come
across a disk I forgot to update.

Wendel

> <<ArleneLoveL@... wrote:
>> I have a whole book stored  on 3 1/2" floppies made
> on 
>> a Brothers Word Processor  in about 1987. There's
> not a 
>> machine around that can read those floppies. >>
> 
> If you are referring to the same Brother word
> processor as my daughter used in college, Brother used
> a proprietary formatting such that it was not readable
> by any other computer, even then.....
> 
> Jerry in Houston