[Warning: this message contains oldster talk.] I've always kept my data on rotating media. Its density far exceeded my ability to produce digital artifacts. I own about 40 million times more storage today than I did in the 70s. Last year I re-used, verbatim, some few hundred lines of C that I wrote 40 years ago, repurposing it as part of an ipad app. My elisp code base only dates back 35 years, but I use core parts of it daily, as in sending this email message. My sewing machine is about 90 years old. Needs some oil once in a while. Newer machines are not 40 million times better. Hilarie
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:25:01 -0700 To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> From: Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> Subject: Re: [math-fun] Ancient computers still live in cloud heaven
The limiting factor for old-timers is most likely that it's now next to impossible to read those old backup tapes you have moldering in a closet. Mag tape drives are virtually extinct.
I was careful to migrate my bits to new formats from time to time, so I have access to archives of my programs from the 70's - not that any of them are actually useful today, except as nostalgia or archeological evidence.
I mess around with a simh based pdp-10, it's much faster than any PDP-10 that ever existed.