Who is maintaining a boot disk archive?

[billdeg]

This topic came up in my local vintage computer club (see: marchclub.org) and I thought that I would expand the conversation to this forum too...

Who is maintaining a boot disk archive currently? I have read about the lack of these resources in various circles, although there are some limited sources spread around.

Here is my definition of a boot disk archive:

1) A person goes to a central location to review a comprehensive list of all boot disks available in the archive

2) The person scans the list and then contacts the library/archivist to request a copy of the diskette(s)

3) The archivist acts as a go-between to contact persons who have agreed to burn a copy of the requested boot disk

4) In one form or another the requestor gets confirmation and an address to send a SASE containing a blank diskette of the required media.

5) The archivist or associate of the archive makes a copy of the requested boot disk using the disk sent by the requestor and mails it back in the SASE. It is presumed that the disk is tested on the type of system native to the boot disk or the equivalent.

I would be willing to participate in such a project.

I like the idea of an internet resource for downloading boot disks, but it would be so much easier if they disks were burned directly from the original system rather than converted back and forth. Some boot disks are just too hard to transfer to and from the internet. It's so much easier to test on the real mcCoy as well. In addition to being a good hobbyist citizen the benefit to the person making the the copy is that they can exercise their systems, keeping them in working order.

Bill

[Unknown_K]

Having a program make an image of the boot disk and having those images available for download would probably work much better then mailing in a floppy and having somebody make disks plus the hassle of postage.

[mbbrutman]

I have an archive of 'original' diskettes for my PCs, including bootable diskettes (DOS and copy protected games), system diagnostics, etc. In a single zip file I include a raw binary dump of the diskette (sector by sector), a zip file of the individual files (if applicable), and a scan of the diskette label.

There is no shortage of diskette archives for the PC - I suspect you are more interested in knowing how much coverage there is for other platforms?

[nige the hippy]

I mostly agree, Vast majority of boot disks etc could be stored as an image (we'd have to agree on the imager program) there are some which can't be written on a pc. perhaps we should have a simple html list of machines, and a link to either image files for those we can write, or a text/html file of people (name,location & email?) with a machine & willing to copy one for those we can't.

You could also put incidental links to external archives of other software.

There's also the issue of CMOS setup disks & drivers etc.

I wouldn't think that it would take vast numbers of megabytes for the archive, as most disks are "K"s, what about this server (Erik??)

[kb2syd]

I am currently working on an online archive of disk images using Dave Dunfields ImageDisk and when that won't work, my catweasel. I am tracking (when known):
Source of the diskette,
Format of the diskette,
Picture of the lable,
Any obvious boot or copy right strings,

The images are stored in a mySQL database, with a lot of related information. I can't readily image non FM and MFM diskettes yet, but I'm working on it.

When I've finished the definition I'll post a link. It is still in progress due to figuring our data formats and storage requirements.

[billdeg]

There is no reason why we can't have online resources *and* sources for the actual disks! The more the merrier. I do not agree that it would always be easier to have the resource online vs. having a disk made. It depends on the OS and disk format whether it would be easier to download vs. having a disk copied.

This had been a topic on the mboards a few years ago. Does anyone think that things are better now than they were a few years ago?

[rmay635703]

There is no reason why we can't have online resources *and* sources for the actual disks! The more the merrier. I do not agree that it would always be easier to have the resource online vs. having a disk made. It depends on the OS and disk format whether it would be easier to download vs. having a disk copied.

This had been a topic on the mboards a few years ago. Does anyone think that things are better now than they were a few years ago?


NO, things have been degrading since the 80's many of the extremely odd and old or expensive types of bootables for say mainframes, decs and others including general software are dissappearing rather than being archived for a variety of reasons, least of which is ideotic copywrite law.

I would recommend all bootables be archived for all platforms before history is lost so to say, we've already lost much of ibms old developement goodies from the 60's & 70's. (this includes IBM themselves)