11 Jul
2004
11 Jul
'04
12:12 a.m.
On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 06:40:52PM -0700, John McCarthy wrote:
Martin Frost and Lester Earnest made a heroic and successful effort to transfer the Stanford AI Lab backup tapes from 7 track tapes to 9 track tapes. Heroic because the tape drives had got out of adjustment and sometimes had to be realigned several times to read a given tape. Later Martin Frost and Bruce Baumgart transferred the files to disk. Now I think the data are safe, because the files can readily be transferred when new kinds of memory replace the old.
The standard techniques for dealing with old tapes include baking the tape (in the oven!) for several hours to prevent sticky residue on the tape. Peace, Dylan