I worked 13 years for the french subsidiary of Control Data Corp.
I too did see the first memory "boards", matrix of thin wires and ferrite beads (tores ??) ...
And the huge hard disks... I think that was the 844 disk drive..... Older coworkers have kept those disk plates, to make tea tables .....(well... they don't drink tea, rather something stronger ... but that's not the point .... <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

At that time, you used a scope to troubleshoot the machine .... now you just replace it !!


Alain

Okay! Okay! I remember ...

I had a prototype personal computer disk drive Wang was working on that really predated any of the PC microdrives.

They fashioned a formica top that sat on top of a metal case (actually an empty MV2000 chassis for those familiar with the gear). Underneath was the spindle moter. On top a plater clamping knob that retracted and extended wire fingers meant to hold down the single platter. And then there was the head retactor to move the two read/write heads, one on top and the other for the bottom platter surface. Topped of with a smokey plastic hinged cover that looked more like a record player dust cover. I must add that it was an antique when I worked there, I'm not THAT old! <img src="images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

O.K., you win .....
I am not that old either. I joigned Control Data France in 1976.

My first personal micro-computer was a TRS-80, for which I made a memory extension and added single sided 5" floppy disks (was it 80kb ??)

Man,.... how many nights did I spend with Thérèse (for TRS) ....?? ........ <img src="images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


Alain

Only poblem with the viewer theory is you have to have the viewer on the cd. Then you have to make sure it will work in whatever OS and test/update it for newer OS's. I keep mine in text with uncompressed graphics. If I want to make it look nice I write it in HTML. HTML is simple text with control tags so if the www and html were to go away I still can open and read the text. The nice thing about html is creating hyperlinks to jump around and you can use common tools to create a site map/index. I've been able to read my data on everything from DOS to Windows, Linux to MAC, PC to PDA. HTML reformats well so I can read my info on large to small displays easily. I actually have a calendar file (ics format which is plain text) that is a hournal of my life foing back to 1988. When I started and quit jobs, school schedules, class notes, accomplishments, school notes, etc. All those years fit into a 2M file.

How durable are the CD-R discs? I recently read a technology news item that said burnable cd's are only good for 2 years or so then the data gradually becomes unreadable.
OTOH if you update your data backups maybe it's easier to burn new discs.

Brian

I ran across an interesting shareware application that scanned your directory tree, on a CD for example, and produced an HTLM page of the contents. This is an easy way to create a table of contents without much effort. I can't remember the name of the software I used, but I'm sure there are several out there. Plus each OS has commands to print a directory tree to a text file. The hyperlinks to the file and readability are the main advantages to the shareware app.

> With most email accounts, you get 5-10 MB of space ... upload zipped, password-protected files, or encrypted files...

Unfortunately, everyone else in the world can get your files, too, and ZIP file password "protection" is notoriously easy to crack. At lease use an encryption tool (PGP, etc).