Boing Boing BBS: Data recovered from Gene Roddenberry’s floppies—but what’s on them?

Publié à l'origine par Boing Boing BBS.

Several years after Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died, his heirs found a cache of floppy disks. It’s taken until now, some 20 years later,for the data to be recovered. The reason it took so long is awe-inspiring: he made his own computers, only switching to commercial products near the end of his life.

Les disquettes ont été utilisées avec les ordinateurs personnalisés, mais malheureusement, l'un de ces ordinateurs a été vendu aux enchères et l'autre n'est plus opérationnel. La succession de Roddenberry a envoyé les disquettes à DriveSavers, qui a passé trois mois à écrire un logiciel capable de lire les disquettes en l'absence de toute documentation ou de tout manuel pour le système d'exploitation personnalisé.

But what did they find? They’re not saying, yet!

This, of course, leaves one more question: What, exactly, is on the disks? Mike Cobb, director of engineering at DriveSavers, confirmed that they found “lots” of documents. The company will undoubtedly have a confidentially clause signed with the Roddenberry estate, which likely explains why it won’t be revealing what it found. But in a major anniversary year that will see a new Star Trek movie come to fruition, with a new Star Trek TV series premiering on CBS All Access in 2017, there could be some surprises in store.

The custom computer looks wonderful, and very focused upon its word-processing purpose. I wonder how hard it’d be to make a replica (or perhaps an homage, with a Raspberry Pi, a cap-swappable mechanical keyboard, elbow grease…)

Plus d'informations ici : http://boingboing.net/2016/01/05/data-recovered-from-gene-rodde.html