Museum of Obsolete Media
obsoletemedia.org
obsoletemedia.org
As a musician myself, I just last night recorded on cassette using a 1970's Magnavox personal recorder I have. I do modern recording techniques too, but for B sides or just a novelty, it is so nice to just press a button and record. No DAW, interfaces, amps. Just a cheap mic in a 1/8" port, play until you run out of tape.
I "woke up" after 10 years of streaming servies and realized that all my favorite artists are out of print and I've just payed X amount of monies during the last 10 years to own absolutely nothing.
2020 has been my year of buying up music I grew up with. So far this year alone I have a whole shelf of CDs that I OWN and I've only payed about half of what I did to stream music I don't own for 10 years.
Unfortunatley some albums cost 140 dollars and up to 300 dollars for me to import, because they're so hard to find.
In some cases it's actually easier to find the vinyl print than the CD, in good condition or new. Makes me wanna get a record player.
In January this year, one of my favourite tracks disappeared from Apple Music, I assume to a licensing dispute. Regret is a terrible thing. I haven't worked out where to go yet but streaming services are not the answer.
A few days ago, I decided I wanted to listen to some thirty-year-old CDs that I hadn't ripped, so I got them out of the cupboard and started converting them to mp3. Most are converting without any problem, but about twenty percent are unplayable because the plastic in the CD has decayed. The decay occurred most often in CDs that had foam liners in the package; the foam seems to have caused some kind of chemical disintegration in the CD itself.
Most of the unconvertible CDs I've found so far have been classical music from major labels, and I've been able to buy and download digital versions from prestomusic.com. CDs made by indie bands years ago are less likely to be available online. If you want to keep not only the physical CD but the music as well, you might want to rip them sooner rather than later.
BTW, if you're ever in Seattle (post-pandemic) you should check that place out. One of the coolest museums ever. They have a bunch of really old computers and you can use most of them.
This is very sad. I hope Paul Allen's estate (which I think his sister runs) helps out.
Its extensive list of media is at http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/index-cat.html
If I could print text or images (or Paperbak[1] backups?) to hardback books, I would do that instead. There are machines that can take PDFs or postscript data and print a book, softback or hardback in small quantities, which I'd love to do for small files backup via Paperbak (scan that image, reconstruct the file in your computer), as well as my personal journalling (workflow: dictate to wireless headset, phone stores audio recording, syncthing syncs that folder to a folder watched by Dragon Folder Watcher Transcribe Agent, transcribed file is written to a directory which is either batch printed to a hardback book or incrementally written to a single page in an existing blank book, turning pages as needed).
While paper may not be amazing at storing large quantities of data in tiny physical space like microfiche or microSD cards, it has a staying power that the latter lacks for both physical-medium, analog-vs-digital-degredation, and binary format obsolescence reasons.
So either I grow rich enough to spend the $$$$$ to get a Book Printer[2], or I keep settling for 'good enough' solutions like M-DISC DVDs, Verbatim Blu-Rays, and the online,offline dance of several different personally owned devices that sync up via syncthing, providing eventually consistent redundant copies.
I almost got one of these stringy floppy drives for my Commodore 64, but then my cousin discovered girls and didn't need his 1541 anymore, so I didn't have to buy one. From what I've read since then, I was lucky that I didn't, as they were supposed to be horribly unreliable.
It's interesting how almost all storage media for the last 70 years is either on a long string, a spinning circle, or now a chip.
I had the "QL" version mentioned on that page, which maybe explains why they worked better for me, despite their reputation.
I still have a bunch in a box, and I tried to read them just a few years ago, and they all still worked! I was amazed.
Concur on 'almost all', but machine readable 2D arrays (in various encodings) on paper or film substrates have never entirely gone away.
Elsewhere in this thread, Paperbak is mentioned, but there are other similar formats invented occasionally, like DataGlyphs: http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/DataGlyph
My favorite obsolete media is edge-notched punched cards. Oddly, not mentioned on the linked-to site, which only discusses interior-notched punched cards. Edge-notched cards could be searched manually. I made a deck a few years ago for fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card
Another missing one is music rolls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_roll .
- recordings made by Hayden in 1793 (probably not by playing at the playback speed) see https://www.authenticsound.org/a-1793-haydn-recording-what-c....
- mechanical automated carillons (http://www.kenneththeunissen.be/carillon-gent/the-drum.html , https://m.facebook.com/Beiaard-Boy-100932794844933/videos/sp...) these were and are programmed by hand (and may not be considered ‘media’, as they can’t be taken out of the device)
In my specific example, I'm looking to do a high-quality recovery of Hi-Fi audio[1] from a Super VHS tape that hasn't been played for many years, and I don't have either the expertise or the equipment to do it.
I'm interested that you're trying to recover the audio only, and from an S-VHS tape. Both VHS and S-VHS could do Hi-Fi audio, and the former was cheaper, so are you sure it's not just regular VHS tape you have? (Alternatively, some professional S-VHS decks recorded PCM audio, which you'll need special hardware to play back).
In any case, as the thread on DigitalFAQ attests to, many of the best VHS machines for recovering tapes are S-VHS models, so if you don't mind the higher prices, getting a good quality S-VHS deck is a good way to go if you plan on doing more recovery in the future.
[1] http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buyin...
Yes, but I imagine that's a common point of confusion. I was in college and had access to an S-VHS deck, so it served as a poor man's ADAT[1] at the time.
That site is gold, many thanks for the link!