Monday, October 27, 2003
Longhorn and old code
Microsoft PDC 2003 is underway in Los Angeles this week. Main focus this year is Longhorn, the next version of Windows. Lots of press buzz for something that's not likely to ship until 2006. During Gates keynote they demonstrated how Longhorn was capable of doing all sorts of flashy things. I think it's pretty funny that they made a point in showing that VisiCalc, a 20 year-old DOS program, still runs on Longhorn. As Dan Bricklin points out, one reason that VisiCalc is even able to be shown now is that someone kept a bootleg non copy-protected version around. The original program would only run from 5-1/4" copy-protected floppies. Does anyone use 5-1/4" floppy drives any more? On a machine that's capable of running Longhorn? That would be compatible with 20-year-old copy protection code? Not too likely.
The interesting related problem here is that we can jump through hoops to make new environments capable of running old code; in some cases writing OS or processor emulators to fool the old code into working. But if we can't actually get access to the bits of the old programs and data, the effort is moot. I've got old Iomega® Jaz cartridges, NeXT optical disks, digital backup tapes, cartridge tapes and even some old 9-track magnetic tapes lying around. Except for the Jaz media, I don't have appropriate hardware to get the data off any of these media. And even if I have the hardware, I don't necessarily have appropriate drivers or applications to read the data. And digital media degrades over time so some of the old media may be worthless by now. In recent years I've been burning CD-ROMs for backups, I wonder how long it will be before these fall into the same technology dustbin as the other media?
The interesting related problem here is that we can jump through hoops to make new environments capable of running old code; in some cases writing OS or processor emulators to fool the old code into working. But if we can't actually get access to the bits of the old programs and data, the effort is moot. I've got old Iomega® Jaz cartridges, NeXT optical disks, digital backup tapes, cartridge tapes and even some old 9-track magnetic tapes lying around. Except for the Jaz media, I don't have appropriate hardware to get the data off any of these media. And even if I have the hardware, I don't necessarily have appropriate drivers or applications to read the data. And digital media degrades over time so some of the old media may be worthless by now. In recent years I've been burning CD-ROMs for backups, I wonder how long it will be before these fall into the same technology dustbin as the other media?
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