Old Disks, Discs

Chewbode posted on

It’s been a busy summer. I last posted about two months ago, which is a little disappointing as I was on such a good roll. So, I figured I’d drop this update real quick.

Retro Computing

Carl sent me a bunch of very old 3.5″ floppy disks along with some old CDs and DVDs with the hope that I could recover the data off them. So far, I’ve gone through all of the floppies and have built a database and web-based front-end to create a proper catalog of everything including:

  • High-resolution scanned image of disks
  • Searchable version of the text appearing on the labels
  • Name of the archived disk flux images (IMG/BIN/ST)
  • List of disk contents showing filenames and file sizes
  • Meta data indicating DS or HD disk type, and if it’s Atari or IBM formatted

Also, if the disk contains any Cubase songs (ALL files) or arrangements (ARR files):

  • Name, datetime stamp, and any Notes of Cubase song files
  • Tempo of Cubase songs
  • An export of the Cubase song to MID format
  • A video with audio of the song playing in Cubase

The last item is being accomplished by using OBS to capture Cubase running in Hatari with a Munt (a Roland MT-32 emulator) instance stitched to it. These are recorded as MP4s and linked to the Cubase song entry in the catalog. All of the data mentioned above has been put in the database, with the exception of recoding the videos, which I’m about 41% done with so far.

I was able to retrieve the data from all but three of the CDs and DVDs, seemingly due to heavy scratches. I’m assembling an automatic disc polisher to see if that will fix them.

Another box arrived yesterday with a bunch of 5.25″ floppies and CDs/DVDs. I’ll start the recovery efforts on these next week.

Miscellany

Video games added to the library:

Comics added to the library:

  • The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 7): 32 | 33 | 34 | 35
  • Aquaman (Vol. 9): 19 | 20 | 21
  • Challenges of Doom: Mr. Fantastic: 1
  • Challenges of Doom: Spider-Man: 1
  • DNX: 1
  • Doctor Strange (Vol. 7): 8 | 9 | 10
  • Doomquest: 3 | 4
  • Fantastic Four (Vol. 8): 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
  • Fantastic Four: First Foes – Shalla Bal: 1
  • Gargoyles (Vol. 2): 1 | 2
  • The Mortal Thor: 12 | 13 | 14
  • Sorcerer Supreme: 8 | 9
  • Superman Annual: Year One Thousand: 1
  • Superman (Vol. 6): 40 | 41

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