P3D Re: P3D Re: P3D Re: P3D Re: P3D Prints vs slides - Archival Qualities

[norml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

What you say about the _possibilities_ of upgrading digital storage
is true, Mike, but most people won't do it with personal pictures--it's
too much trouble. Commercial users, TV stations, etc. won't go to the expense.

Much historic TV stuff was lost because it was thrown out with the obsolete
Ampex quad recorders.

Film stuff survives, on the other hand, because, so far, time is kinder to it
than it is to magnetic materials, because the formats remained stable for so
many decades and because the playback hardware was so durable.

The present period is going to be underepresented historically because the
records are so ephemeral. This may change in a couple of generations. (I am
thinking
of the spinning rings in "Forbidden Planet"--which supposedly retained their
data for 
thousands of years.

Norm Lehfeldt

>When I bought a new tape-backup for my
>PC, I loaded my old tape-drive tapes onto disk and then re-wrote
>the info onto new tapes.  I now have new exact copies of my old archive
>data in a newer technology, and because capacity expands as time
>goes on (both in disk and tape-backup size) doing so is actually
>easy -- a whole pile of old tapes fit on a single new tape with
>room to spare.
>
>Mike K.


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