[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Chris]

On 08/08/18 01:30, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

>
> Back in the days when I still had the 11/44's and VAX
> running at the University I used to get approached all
> the time by random faculty members to read tapes they
> did not know the format of or even what machine made
> them but they needed the data for a book they were
> writing. (As an aside for Kerry, who thinks University
> datacenters are all that is needed, the reason they
> approached me was because the University datacenter
> had gotten rid of all their tape drives!!)
>
> bill
>

Would like an 11/44 right now, but I digress :-). The
same problem applies to older mfm or esdi drives when
trying to recover data and have no idea which controller
and data organisation was used, perhaps an even greater
challenge. At least scsi is block oriented and if the
controller can see the drive, you can usually read it.
Differing sector sizes can still get you into trouble
though.

Not had to do a any serious data forensics, but must
be fun to get paid for it...

Chris