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What is worth saving

M

mark0x01

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2015
Messages
219
Location
Kaiapoi, New Zealand
My "junk" collection has created the "painted into a corner" issue making it hard to access and sort through.

So the question is, what is worth saving and what to toss.

I have been adding electronics stuff to my "junk box" for at least 35 years but now need to have a cleanout.

Are things like old bios rom's worth saving a file?

EPROM's all go in the keep list.

What about DVD's ? I have thousands.

Are old magazine cover cd/dvd's with software on woth keeping?​

TTL IC's all are keep - I build a basic arduino TTL tester so some day I can test them.

CPU's are keep

For origional manuals' if they exist elsewhere in good scanned format, I may toss them.

Then there is media. Thousands of everything from 8" on. I will probably look at buying an imager some day, but haven't a compatibile fdd controller for a hardware based tool but I don't have a working 8" drive.

Cards - all the PC bus types and S100 as well.

I have a working 20+ year old Pentium Slot1 system with a pair of Bigfoot ATA drives to drive "old" stuff with, including ancient programmers of various types.​

Disk Drives by the hundred, from Pre SASI on.
I'm probably going to just keep ones that fit something I have and tossing out quite a few SAN's and all their SAS drives.​
​
The other half would be very happy to see me just bin the lot and being so far away from the rest of the world freight costs makes it expensive for most of it to find a new home.


Any suggestions on what is worth keeping ??

Mark.
 
WRT cd's, dvd's, etc ...

Just went through this exercise with huge stacks of old cd's & dvd's ... one large HDD later, and I've migrated the majority to local HDD, and copies to Synology NAS. Now, all the data is easily accessible, and multiple stacks of cd's/dvd's reduced to a handful.

Only kept a few that were commercially printed dvd's; all the handwritten cdr's & such were binned after reading the data off of them.

After upwards of 20+ years, amazingly, very little data loss.

I have to run through the same exercise on floppies, as I have myriad 3.5" ... data loss might be a tad higher on those.

On everything else, if any way to produce a listing, someone somewhere might really need something, and might be willing to pay freight. If no takers, then check the "museums" in your region.

Always disliked sending things to the landfill, so have gotten real handy at "recycling at home" ... once disassembled, everything in its pile, it can go to recycling (metals, plastics, electronics, etc.)

This way, I ended up with discrete components, motors & such, for the SBC projects. Screws bins all refilled. If hard disk drives, I disassembled those as well ... rare earth magnets (powerful little beasts), shiny disk platters for art projects, aluminum for recycling.

Anything you don't keep, goes to maker spaces all around you ...
 
Honestly "What is worth saving" IS really only something you can answer because of your situation. Obviously everything has value to someone.... With that said if you are going to toss anything try and make a quick list and offer it up free to folks on here or elsewhere. Even if not working most people who like to tinker will take stuff.

I find packaging/boxes, pamphlets and inserts to be the first to go. CD's and floppies go into organizer boxes or 3 ring binders. Alot are gotten rid of . Books can bury you so I would rather have hardware than books so I sell or give those away if I get too many, IT happens.

I tend to TOSS newer stuff like pentium 4 era stuff as it has no real value to me.. Again its your discretion.

I have thousands of DVD's too. Had netflix DVD mail service since 2002 or 2003 so I copied EVERYTHING!. All in neat binders... Does my familiy watch them.. Nope.. But maybe a day will come before the cd material fades and it cant be used.. or when there arent any more working dvd players..




If you are getting rid of 3.5" floppies reach out to me. Ill buy them or pay the shipping whichever. I can always use them. Send me a PM
 
mark0x01 said:
Any suggestions on what is worth keeping ??
Click to expand...

I hear you, Mark! This week, I wanted to make a bit of room to store some old motherboards and I discovered not only a couple hundred empty CD jewel cases, but boxes of "overflow" from my MSDN CD collection (dating back to at least 1994). Release candidates, betas, etc. of long-gone OS stuff, not to mention lots of "library" CDs. Problem is that I don't think I can legally sell or give these away...
 
See I bought 100 blank jewel cases a couple years ago... Everyone has some need. But in a pinch if time is of the essence you have no choice but to toss things.
 
RE: digital media - like old Magazine CDs, MSDN, etc.

I wish there was an easy way to determine that something is already archived out there.

Some kind of process like this:

1 - Have a machine with a DVD drive (or 4)

2 - Pile A - random CDs/DVDs

3 - Pop one (or 4) into the drive, hit go

4 - system creates an image of the media, calculates the ID (checksum? MD5?)

5 - on screen - Found: match to checksum: "NASA Lander Plans" - is this a match?

6 - if so, cool, you can toss the media or whatever. Goto 1

7 - if no match, or match is a different thing - enter the metadata, photograph, scan, whatever, and the system uploads it to IA or wherever

etc
 
The internet archive is building a software collection so if what you have isn't on it then you could always scan or take a picture of the DVD or CD and then image it and upload it to them for anyone to use. The documentation is trickier if you have it. Like the other person I'm changing those over to other media although I'm not putting mine on hard drives I'm putting them on thumb drives. Which are ridiculously cheap. The only true long-term storage is putting them on somebody else's hard drive in the cloud.
 
That could be tricky. A lot of the MSDN-related content is still under copyright protection and will continue to be so after I'm gone. It would likely be refused by the Internet Archive on that basis.
 
Chuck(G) said:
That could be tricky. A lot of the MSDN-related content is still under copyright protection and will continue to be so after I'm gone. It would likely be refused by the Internet Archive on that basis.
Click to expand...
Because the internet archive is a LIBRARY they can have copyrighted material in collections. It becomes then a lending issue.

Anything that you're likely to be uploading from this era of PC is not anything that anyone's going to be going after you for a copyright on.

But that's just the commercial software side. What about all of the service manuals, single sheet documentation, drivers, firmware.... that stuff is being ARCHIVED.

You really should check-out (pun probably intended) what they have up there right now in the form of digital history.
 
They have licensed copies of Windows XP and Vista? Point is, that the agreement with MS was that I would not sell or otherwise distribute the stuff. If MS wants to put it in the IA, they've got the stuff.
 
Okay see that's the disconnect you are having.

The license is separate from the media.

Microsoft doesn't want you selling the media that they make available for free. They suggest users not use software from other sources for security reasons. Msdn and TechNet were just ways to get access to more of the media along with sets of serial numbers for development and support purposes. The version of the serial number that you use determines the resulting media installation that is active for anything modern.

Someone would still need a license to use the software, and in the scope of XP and Vista, you can still validate those licenses with Microsoft. Although if you call the Microsoft validation number, they tell you to download the offline validation tool and use that to validate the key you are using so they obviously don't care either.
 
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Validate what? The MSDN comes either pre-validated with all of the CD keys filled in or the CD keys printed on the CD/DVD. The point was to make it easier for developers to test their work.
Unless you're an IP lawyer, it's my impression that the copyright applies to the content; it doesn't matter what the book covers look like.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Validate what? The MSDN comes either pre-validated with all of the CD keys filled in or the CD keys printed on the CD/DVD. The point was to make it easier for developers to test their work.
Unless you're an IP lawyer, it's my impression that the copyright applies to the content; it doesn't matter what the book covers look like.
Click to expand...

The problem I'm having with this discussion is that this forum is not geared towards modern Microsoft software. The original poster is not talking about modern software. All of us are talking about old stuff. Over 20 years old.

That aside, in the 10 years that I had TechNet which is the exact same thing as MSDN, just with a different pool of software to choose from, the software did not come with embedded keys, and the license count was validated against Microsoft servers. Anything that did not require a key was available from Microsoft directly on the public side if you knew where to look. The only exception I can think of was the OEM PRE-Build software that let you do install branding. Even Volume Licensed software was not licensed on the media, but was built using sysprep kits. That let the volume licensing entity build their own media. I was a MS Partner and had access to that stuff. That once again is all modern and out of scope for here.
 
What was the release date for XP? 2001, IIRC. I dropped out of MSDN around 2002 but have most CDs issued since 1994, which includes betas, RCs, toolkits, foreign language versions, etc. And yes, there are pre-embedded keys, particularly on the Windows 9x stuff. If I understand copyright law, the stuff will be covered for about the next 50 years. I guess I can quote the license if you wish.
 
Chuck(G) said:
What was the release date for XP? 2001, IIRC. I dropped out of MSDN around 2002 but have most CDs issued since 1994, which includes betas, RCs, toolkits, foreign language versions, etc. And yes, there are pre-embedded keys, particularly on the Windows 9x stuff. If I understand copyright law, the stuff will be covered for about the next 50 years. I guess I can quote the license if you wish.
Click to expand...
Yes I was a member then too. I was in the beta program for Windows 95.

My take on the really old 9x stuff is that they don't care. If anything it could be put in the internet archive so that it's in the archive for when the copyright does expire.

I really don't think they're going to get upset if I upload a copy of Microsoft EnCarta 95. It came with every new Pc for a while... not that you had any choice in the matter because Microsoft was the only way you could buy a new system then, unless you built it yourself. Microsoft has made all their money off of that. With the software being on the internet archive in their software section I don't think Microsoft is going to be losing money if that's the case. I can't see enough people running out to get 25-year-old encyclopedia software that Microsoft themselves do not even support anymore. From a historical point however it shows a lot about how the world was viewed at that time and I think that in the future that would be something that somebody should have the ability to look at and not necessarily have the media need to survive until that point to be archived.

The same thing goes for Advanced Server 2000 or Small Business Server 2003. Putting that media online could be very helpful to somebody that's trying to recover some industrial PC someplace. Six months agoI had to locate install media for Vista Business for that exact reason. I don't know if that's in software portion of the archive or not but I'll probably be putting it there if it isn't. I got it from somebody else, who is like us, is a digital pack rat.
 
My point is--and remains--that the stuff is covered by US and international copyright law. You may not like it, but "they probably don't care" won't save your hide if someone's legal department comes calling.
 
Chuck(G) said:
My point is--and remains--that the stuff is covered by US and international copyright law. You may not like it, but "they probably don't care" won't save your hide if someone's legal department comes calling.
Click to expand...

Look we are just going to have to agree to disagree about this. and let other people make up their own minds, as they should.

If you received commercially pressed software from Microsoft that had a serial number built into the image, they did not create a special serial number just for you. Bulk manufacturing, which is what they used for MSDN, is not compatible with that use case. It just isn't financially viable. Check a few discs and it will be readily apparent.

I'm not talking about reselling the software. Nothing I'm suggesting reduces the current value of the software, negatively impacts the brand, or harms the corporation. I'm talking about giving it to a library to archive it for a future generation. I cannot control what another user who wishes to take that software does with it, nor should I.

I am also not suggesting that somebody get whatever the current version of MSDN is and upload that. I am only talking about legacy unsupported software.
 
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Support or lack thereof does not affect copyright status. Those are the rules. If you're one of those people who makes up their own rules regarding IP, good luck with that.

On reflection, I think I have a way out of this one. Here's a photo of a 22+ year old DVD with CD keys pre-embedded (I just checked). Why not write MS Legal and ask them if it's okay to upload it to the IA? I'll abide by their decision.
msdnw98.png
 
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Thanks for the great feedback.

I also have some folders of MSDN stuff, and something that is probably even worse.... Sun. I'm sure uploading Sun software images would have a very nasty response, even if it is ancient. I do have the licences for it and
a few servers that will run it.
I wish I had kept the MIPS and SPARC Windows 2000 stuff I used way back when.... it is probably worth a fortune now.
Don't know how many others have run Windows Server on all the CPU's ever supported. x86 wasn't the fastest one either.
 
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