Back down MEMORY Lane

The handwavium of computer memory and more

No, the magic pixie dust isn't really needed for the advances in memory over the decades. But for those of us who remember the days of the 180 KB of the SS 5-1/4 floppy disks may think there is some magic coming from somewhere -- or at the very least some reverse engineered tech from the Roswell crash. Boy was I happy when densities shot up to 320 KB on SSDD drives and then to 720 KB and the whopping 1.4MB 3.5" "comparably indestructible" floppies. And what about the gamut of external contrivancies that read these floppies, many of which I'm sure that some of us still horde in our basements.

Some of you may even remember the age before floppies. The CRAM - card random access memory. My parents encouraged a collecting hobby of some kind. Mine was computers and calculators. I remember my first love of programming calculators that used magnetic strips as memory. Wow, what a literal stroll back down memory lane.

I ordered and gave all of my family and friends a pair of 200GB very fast Sandisk microsd cards. That is 200 gigabytes of storage capacity on a postage sized solid state device. Astounding!

On one of the cards I installed the entire wikipedia, with pics, for convenient offline viewing for when you're in a pinch. When there is no internet or phone service -- like some remote vacation or beach areas. For my foreign friends, I've installed an additional language specific version of wikipedia.

I took the liberty to install the entire wikipedia (images included), wikibooks and wiktionary on a single card which consumes less than 65GB. I've also included thousands of free books in all categories, over a hundred movies and several complete seasons of tv favorites (All legally paid for. I don't pirate) I've also included complete development systems for those, and would be, programmers. And there is still over 25GB left over. Don't forget that I sent them an extra card. I also sent everyone a 2TB external Seagate drive. (Seagate has always represented the most robust and reliably built of the external offerings) These things aren't much bigger than a pack of playing cards and they hold a whopping 2TB. Essential for complete image backups and archiving of data.

I'm still receiving calls and thank you cards for this years gift. "I've finally began a serious backup program." A complete image backup of your system should be automatic to any computer enthusiast. After finding out that many of my friends don't do a regular backup because of a lack of an external drive, I thought I'd end that problem. They are all very thankful and many are shocked that there's a 200GB microsd card. I rounded out the package with a Kingston 1TB USB thumbdrive DataTraveler HyperX Predator and one of their 64 GB DataTraveler microDuo -- very small thumb drive.

Oh yea, I sent all of the girls a 24kt gold bar 32GB drive that they are absolutely ecstatic over. The men are complaining. It's not my fault they were born with the incorrect plumbing to receive these kinds of gifts.

I also included links of free downloads of many useful programs. Here are a few. Share some of your own with the class if you will. Here are a couple.

- http://keepvid.com/ Allows one to save embedded video and movies for offline viewing. Works with youtube as well.

- http://www.httrack.com/ Allows the complete mirroring of almost any site for true offline viewing. But beware, some sites represent over a GB of data. But with a 200GB microsd card installed -- you're not much worried.

These programs are really not needed in a Linux system, as Linux includes software that accomplishes the same task.

By the way, Kiwix is the software used to view, and even install, the offline wikipedia databases. But getting it setup can be a pain and the initial download of the file can take days on a slow connection -- so I thought I'd alleviate that problem.

http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page

Note:
For anyone wishing to install wikipedia, please remember that some large capacity external filesystems, cards, thumb drives, come formatted with a fat32 filesystem. These filesystems cannot handle files larger than 4GB. So an approximately 60 GB wikipedia ZIM file is almost useless to you without extra painfull workarounds. Simply reformat the card to exfat before use. Which implies that quality cards should be used. I tend to stick with Sandisk, AData and Kingston. They reformat (even over and over) w/o a "gotcha."


****** *


And now, for a different kind of trip back down Memory Lane. Minnie Riperton's range is just as... memorable.

https://youtu.be/Pe3yPvY8Z10

I'm paranoid about backup. My main PC has two of 2TB drives that backup regularly between them(runs off a 500GB SSD). As well I have two external 2TB drives that I backup to and then disconnect, to avoid an ultra smart virus that wipes/encrypts backups as well.
I also have my most crucial files backed up onto archive DVDs (gold writing layer guaranteed for 100 yrs plus), that I store at a son's house. You do need an offsite backup for fire and theft protection.

Daryl wrote:I'm paranoid about backup. My main PC has two of 2TB drives that backup regularly between them(runs off a 500GB SSD). As well I have two external 2TB drives that I backup to and then disconnect, to avoid an ultra smart virus that wipes/encrypts backups as well.
I also have my most crucial files backed up onto archive DVDs (gold writing layer guaranteed for 100 yrs plus), that I store at a son's house. You do need an offsite backup for fire and theft protection.

Brilliant Daryl! You and my brother would understand each other quite well. Good 'ole brother says "You need about 2GB of paranoia per 1GB of data."

I say kudos to you both!

I'm not as paranoid. But my lack of thoroughness is asking for Murphy to strike hard. I have several homes and hidden backups of a lot of data. But I carry a 1TB encrypted thumb drive on my keychain that gets backed up daily. That is why I sent one to my friends, so they'll have an extra source of backup which is rugged and held on a keychain. I don't worry about losing data from a fire because my data is streamed to the pool house out back. I do worry about losing my mainframe though.

The kicker here is that backup is so painless now. I remember when a complete image backup was soooo painful. And it wasn't as intuitive for non-computer enthusiasts -- the average person couldn't do it. Now, many external bulk storage devices come with backup software preinstalled -- if you need it. However, the latest offerings of Windows has complete image backup support included. And you don't have to effect a complete backup every time. You can config for an incremental backup -- just the files and settings that have changed.

No more backing up to hundreds of 3.5 inch floppies!

I admit to not using DVD media anymore. Just make sure you're using systems specifically designed for data backup. Or you could end up with a totally worthless DVD. The problem oftentimes is the movable parts in a DVD system that can become unaligned (heads). And an unaligned drive will seemingly operate flawlessly, as an unaligned drive will read unaligned data -- data that it laid down. (Akin to the unaligned heads of a 3.5" floppy drive.) All's well until you try to use the media in another drive.


And the laser can become partially to completely obstructed by foreign objects (dust) and thus wasting DVDs and burns, and if the system isn't robust enough, you won't realize that you don't have a complete or usable backup until you attempt a restore. DVD backup systems that are specifically designed for error checking and auto head cleaning, etc. etc., tend to be pricey. I don't mind the cost if the performance is there. However, I just prefer a good Seagate drive, which is less the "is this really a usable backup -- should I try it?"

My mainframe system is continually backed up by tape. Tape is still much cheaper though external drives have been steadily closing the gap there. And restores from external drives are muuuch faster. However, my mainframe system deals with lots of data generated hourly. We're talking terabytes of data that need backup hourly. And here, tape is indispensable because its write speeds are incredibly fast! Write speed alone dictates my backup there.


I admit to not using the DVD media for years now. How has it changed?

I think you missed the point about my archive DVDs. They are permanent copies, stored elsewhere of only my critical files. These files include a range of photos from family snaps to scanned century old B&W heirlooms and all in between. Other files are copies of documents like deeds to my houses, marriage - birth - death certificates, wills, powers of attorney, contracts, tax affairs, and much more similar. I also had ripped all my music and have digital copies as some are hard to come by.

I'm sure that there will still be DVD readers available in 20 years if I need to recreate my records. You can still get beta video tape copied to digital now. This is hopefully a waste of time and never needed, but what if a massive EMP event degrades all magnetically stored information?

I'm not sure why anyone would copy program and app software, apart from the normal ghost drive copies; as they are easily replaced.

Daryl wrote:I think you missed the point about my archive DVDs. They are permanent copies, stored elsewhere of only my critical files. These files include a range of photos from family snaps to scanned century old B&W heirlooms and all in between. Other files are copies of documents like deeds to my houses, marriage - birth - death certificates, wills, powers of attorney, contracts, tax affairs, and much more similar. I also had ripped all my music and have digital copies as some are hard to come by.

I'm sure that there will still be DVD readers available in 20 years if I need to recreate my records. You can still get beta video tape copied to digital now. This is hopefully a waste of time and never needed, but what if a massive EMP event degrades all magnetically stored information?

I'm not sure why anyone would copy program and app software, apart from the normal ghost drive copies; as they are easily replaced.

Ah, I did misunderstand. Cool.

Yet, now you've got me all worried about an EMP strike. I have friends, and or their parents, who worry about a planetary or local disaster of some type and they've built themselves fallout shelters. I don't have a fallout shelter but I keep toying with the idea of purchasing a home in the mountainous regions of North Carolina just for that.

I also know people who cherish their computer data. I'm a part of that class. I suppose it is why I had to have an offline copy of wikipedia. If the internet goes down, I might miss it -- but I'll definitely miss Wikipedia. All I need is that.

Actually, if the internet goes down. I'll probably get tons more work done.

I don't know how the country would fare though. We've become so interconnected and dependent on the digitized Pony Express.

cthia wrote:
snip

I don't know how the country would fare though. We've become so interconnected and dependent on the digitized Pony Express.

"Solar Flare," by Larry Burkett
"Pulling Through" by Dean Ing

Anyone know others? Reality is always more than our ideas of it, sometimes better, but for this likely worse. Even bad preparation or understanding is worse than none.

Murphy raises black swans

The reason to back up software is upgrades.
Basically, your back up data might be version incompatable with the from the box software, and the updates might be difficult to reaquire.
(Unlikely of course, but paranoid backup etc)


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Annachie wrote:The reason to back up software is upgrades.
Basically, your back up data might be version incompatable with the from the box software, and the updates might be difficult to reaquire.
(Unlikely of course, but paranoid backup etc)


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Absolutely, Annachie. I forgot to comment on that.

Another important reason to backup software is that the newer software may discontinue a feature that was crucial to your needs. Or implement a current feature differently that breaks your existing code -- like what happened with many of the popular MATLAB clones. Or may not run properly on your system (AMD vs. Intel CPU's) altogether.

One of the more important reasons to me is when considering the awful amount of time configuring some software. If you've ever tried to configure Lisp with Slime, you'd know what I mean. Upon getting that configuration to finally work. You did NOT, still don't, wish to lose it.

Robust programming environments can be amongst the biggest "banes of the most people's" existence.

Configuring settings to your liking afterwards is an ongoing process. That appalling amount of time and those properly and personally configured environments, is too valuable to risk losing.

This thread has sparked a lot of interesting conversation amongst my personal friends.

"How could you forget about the 100K SS disks of the Heathkit computers?"

"Oh yea."

Then we discussed how the top of the food chain between computer and memory has changed drastically.

There was a time when the cost of the entire system was insignificant compared to the cost of memory.

I remember the Apple II cost about $1200 for an entry level computer which came with only 4K RAM. The 48K RAM configuration that I opted for more than doubled the cost of the system.

44K RAM, less than 1/20 of a megabyte, cost more than a computer!

That is why so many people got rich in Silicon Valley. RAM was more valuable than gold -- and much more expensive!


A Silicon Valley joke...

What is the ultimate measure of success in Silicon Valley?

When you can finally afford to buy yourself a vowel -- a lovely Silicone Valley.

Memory was so limited way back when, but programmers did so much more with it. There were so many tricks of the trade to augment limited memory back then. Like "page flipping" and double, triple and quad buffering.

When I recall that Gates managed to squeeze off all of BASICA into 64K!...

Well, that's truly chomping at the bits.