As the state of the art for hardware and data storage evolve and change, there’s a risk that much of our computing heritage is lost or locked up on old media. These old media may physically deteriorate and become unreadable, or become inaccessible due to the lack of availability of hardware that can successfully read the media.
We are interested in tools and techniques for reading data on old media and obtaining high fidelity digital copies for long-term preservation.
To this end, we have available to the group a small (but growing) collection of equipment for reading old media such as: Floppy and Zip Drives; CD/DVD-ROM drives (with varying laser strengths); and the necessary controllers and interfaces for driving them.
We welcome people coming to us with questions or media in need of reading as well as donations of old hardware to assist in this process.
Available equipment
Please contact Jonathan to arrange use of the equipment. Donations are always welcome!
- USB floppy drive
- USB Blu Ray reader / DVD±writer
- USB Zip drive (250M)
- Magneto Optical drive (230MB)
- 2.5inch to 1.8inch PATA drive converter (plus a 40GB 1.8inch drive)
- various SCSI controllers
- 5.25inch floppy drive
- 3.5inch floppy drive (internal)
- various PATA and SATA CD/DVD drives.