1701 News: Gene Roddenberry’s Lost Computer Files Resurrected

More than 200 floppy disks belonging to “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry have finally been accessed and the content will be revealed later this year in time for the show’s 50th anniversary.

Unreadable by modern computers, the 5.25-inch disks worked from a pair of custom-built computers used by Roddenberry to write scripts and take notes.

The computers ran on CP/M — short for Control Program for Microprocessors — an operating system that had its last update in 1983 after MS-DOS’ popularity derailed it.

Roddenberry died in 1991 and his disks were later discovered by his estate and passed on to DriveSavers Data Recovery at the suggestion of LunaTech, an IT company working with Roddenberry Entertainment.

“We’ve been working with DriveSavers for over five years; we knew if anyone could get this unique data back, they could,” said Bobby Pappas, president and founder of LunaTech.

During a three-month period, DriveSavers was forced to backward engineer the data on the disks, essentially creating a disk image. About 3MB of data was recovered, or about 95 percent of the files saved on the disks.

But what tantalizing files were discovered?

“Lots of documents,” said Mike Cobb, DriveSavers director of engineering. “2016 just happens to be the 50th anniversary of the original ‘Star Trek.’ Anything could happen; the world will have to wait and see.”

“Star Trek” made its television debut Sept. 8, 1966, on NBC.

Source: PC World