Railroad picture archives.net gone what do you guys use now

[ednadolski]

... (entering the instructions by-hand, one-byte-at-a-time). ...

Yep!  And then press the 'run' key, screen blinks, and program is gone  (w/no tape or other media backup).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

(Love the membrane keyboard tho)

Ed

[peteski]

Yep!  And then press the 'run' key, screen blinks, and program is gone  (w/no tape or other media backup).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

(Love the membrane keyboard tho)

Ed

Yes Timex took over the Sinclair's sales in USA, but the 1000 was just re-badged ZX81.  They no longer sold kits either. It did use standard audio cassette recorder to save and load programs, but that was always an adventure.  And yes if I wiggled the power connector I could lose the program.

Actually these computers had quite a bit of following. I subscribed to a newsletter and even a full color magazine.  Several companies started  producing software, upgrades and peripherals.  But many of us rolled our own using surplus computer components.

It originally came with 1k of RAM which was upgradable to 16k of factory-made RAM module.  Later on I designed and built a 64k memory module. The tiny membrane keyboard was a pain, so I built a full-size keyboard and added a dual 5¹/₄" (360k) floppy drive originally made for DEC computers.  I also had a printer and a 300 baud modem.  Then I added a 12" dedicated video monitor (no longer needed to use a TV set) and a light pen I could use to draw on the screen.  I also bread-boarded a speech synthesizers using a chip made by TI.  That was fun.

Being a hoarder that I am, I still have most of that equipment in the basement! 

This was just a hobby. For real job I troubleshoot Z80 based controller boards, and bit-slice processors based on Data General CPUs.  Then later 68000 based Sun Microsystems Sun3 workstations. Later I worked on the SPARC/RISC processor based Sun workstations. That is where I learned Unix.  That is going back 25 years!

LOL, in a the typical TRW fashion, we have really derailed this thread. 

[John]

You started it.

[peteski]

You started it.

Well . . . actually . . . you did, with:

Don't hate on the C64 -- I learned how to do assembler language on that thing .. and basic

 

[packers#1]

Don't hate on the C64 -- I learned how to do assembler language on that thing .. and basic

Some say Southwest Airlines has one in a hangar at Love Field still running their entire system. They say sometimes you can see the flash of the time traveling portal they use to get spare parts for it if you take off at just the right time.

[randgust]

Hey Peteski, I can probably match you on that stuff.

Learned mainframe programming (RPG, Fortran, COBOL) an IBM 1130 with a Model 25 keypunch as the input device.

Programmed for 10 years on IBM System 360, 370, 4341, 4381 in PL/1, COBOL, Fortran, Assembler.

Got my first PC in 1982, a Radio Shack CoCo with 8K of memory and the unique floppy disks, the home of DOS 1.0 and the Worlds Worst Error Message:  IO ERROR.    Translation:  Walk away, get a beer, start over tomorrow.  Wonder if the backups worked?

Best feature of the chicklet keyboard CoCo was a big red BREAK key.  It worked, it really did break whatever was running; corrupted all media, made any diskette worthless if it was opened.   

Got a Packard Bell 286 for home that ran circles around the IBM AT's at the time, and the craziest thing was programming my own driver and wiring up my own custom serial interace to link the 286 to the original printer from the CoCo, the Line Printer VII, a SINGLE DIRECTIONAL dot matrix that at best would do a page a minute.   

I learned to imitate the whistles on a Hayes Modem connection pickup when I started running computers remotely for the company.  Did you know that a page forward command of three pages on a VT100 terminal emulator is "+++", the very same command that hangs up a Hayes Modem?

Left to join railroading in 1991, still did another 8 years of IT consulting on the side.   Still run the company server and IT, grudgingly.

Meanwhile, back to the thread, that's a rather valuable database, not sure how to help preserve it, but I use it a LOT in research.   The search feature could use some additions, though.

[C855B]

Anybody have any updates on rrpicturearchives.net? It's been offline for over a week. You'd think that Tim would at least put up a "mea culpa" page.

[Missaberoad]

Anybody have any updates on rrpicturearchives.net? It's been offline for over a week. You'd think that Tim would at least put up a "mea culpa" page.

https://rrpicturearchives.godaddysites.com/

From the bits I've gathered he's still working away...

[C855B]

https://rrpicturearchives.godaddysites.com/

From the bits I've gathered he's still working away...

Good deal. Appreciate the link. I've been in his boat, but not quite to that degree - maybe 1000X smaller. 

[Missaberoad]

A couple messages from John Bukenas on the MFCL over the past day.

last Wednesday Tim said he was having the drives mailed to a data recovery company to recover them as the RAID array suffered a worst case scenario type failure, and he'll be able to access the data on Monday at the latest, which means the site could be back up any day now!

Oh he recently responded that the servers got delivered yesterday, and now he's waiting for the data recovery which will be tomorrow

Source:
https://groups.io/g/MFCL/topic/rail_picture_archives_down/109705144

[peteski]

last Wednesday Tim said he was having the drives mailed to a data recovery company to recover them as the RAID array suffered a worst case scenario type failure, and he'll be able to access the data on Monday at the latest, which means the site could be back up any day now!

Ouch!  In my last job in tech support of Dell's storage arrays I was the bearer of this type of bad news to our customers. I found it surprising (working in that capacity for 16 years) just how many companies (large and small) depended solely on the RAID, not having any good backups of the data.  There were likely many jobs lost in their IT departments because of this.  RAID is high-availability, but not fault-tolerant.  If enough disks drives fail, RAID goes down.

I sure hope that data recovery company can recover the RAID set.  Their services are pricey and not guaranteed depending what in the disk drives has failed.

[Point353]

RAID is high-availability, but not fault-tolerant.

The fault-tolerance of the RAID configuration depends upon the RAID level and number of drives it uses.

[peteski]

The fault-tolerance of the RAID configuration depends upon the RAID level and number of drives it uses.

Well yes, but regardless of that if enough drives take a dump, a RAID will go down.  RAID is not infallible.  That is why good backups are vital for preserving the data.  As I said, I worked on storage array equipment for 16 years and customers didn't open cases when things were working - only when things were not working. Many times we were able to bring the RAID back online, but not always.  That's when we recommended data recovery services.

[John]

No backup is infallible …. But you can reduce the risk by properly maintaining backups that are reliable. 

Since I retired, I still teach cybersecurity at a university … it’s amazing how many of my wanna be tech students have “hard drive” issues and couldn’t turn in their papers on time.  The modern equivalent of the dog ate my homework

[nkalanaga]

The only hard drive failure I've had in almost 30 years of work and home PCs was "act of cat".  Our female cat, due to senility, forgot where the litterbox was.  One day she used the front of my PC, and managed to corrode the connections on the hard drive. 

Amazingly, some clean water and a little toothbrush scrubbing got it to working again, for a day or so, before it died completely.  But that was long enough to create a current backup, and buy a new drive.