#RetroTech; The ZIP Drive

Another tech memorabilia from the 1990’s hidden away in a box for 25 year to be recovered during the attic exploration, the infamous iomega zip drive 100.

Iomega 100 ZIP Drive

This was certainly a smart innovation in the early 90’s when the predominant (transportable) media was the 3.5″ disk with 1.4MB. Iomega came up with this removable 100MB storage device using a similar form factor like a disk, but offering 70 times more disk space. Take note, at that time the average hard disk space was around 500MB, so 100MB were a decent backup option. The drive was not cheap with a price around U$ 200,- and single disks roughly at U$ 20,-. Various types were offered, supporting IDE, SCSI, USB, Firewire connections. Still the device was not as scuccessful as expected, it had to compete with the (writable) CD-ROM and CD-RW, it faded away in the early 2000’s. Iomega does not exist any longer, the company was acquired by EMC in 2008.

The above device was recognized by Windows 10 and the 20 years old backup files could still be read.

Some other similar devices were introduced during the same decade, all eventually disappeared: Jaz Drive, EZ 135 Drive, Super Disk and a few more. All sharing the same faith and leaving you in trouble if you trusted them for long term archive purpose.

Usual office desk sight with storage boxes for disks.

This is a common theme and “retro” problem that we look at here, starting in the last episode with the 3.5″ disk, a few more similar cases I will discuss in upcoming posts. We are now roughly 35 years into main stream office and home computing and we already facing challenges to persist data more than a few years.
Book-printing was invented by Gutenberg in the 15th century, there are still books around from the medival times and we still access the data, aka. read the text. The comparison can be challenged, not feasible to store today’s data volume on paper.
Fun fact: There are some tools and libraries that support creating paper-based backups, though volume-limited, this backup will survive dooms-day and any EMP, as long the paper does not catch fire and is laminated to protect against humidity. Give paperback a try, it even supports key encryption.

Main problems with old storage media and types:

• File Format
  The format certain type of data is stored on any medium (no matter if magnetic tape or BlueRay or cloud storage) might not be supported any longer after a few years because the format is e.g. propietary or outdated, like the MS Access 2.0 format from the last post.
• Storage Media Type
  Propietary devices from decades ago to read the respective media, are not built any longer, not supported by current OS or just do not function any more.
• Media Preservation
  Depending on the media type, magnetic, optical, flash-memory (semi-conductor), the data can survive a more or less long time before it starts to degrade and become corrrupted or unreadable.

Stay tuned for more retro tech explorations..

#RetroTech; Rewind 35 years with the 3.5″ disk

A recent visit to our attic during the xmas break revealed a number of technology artefacts from the past. Holding these items in hands you will realize how long you already have been working in IT. Let me share some of the findings with you, like these installer disks (3.5″) sitting in a box for almost 20+ years. Surprisingly the majority of these disks, kept in a dry box, still can be read without problem.

You noticed when 3.5″ disks faded away ? At some point the drives were no longer built-in notebooks (same already happend to CD/DVD-ROM drives today) and eventually disappeared from desktop PC’s too, maybe with the end of the Windows 95 start-disk. In the 1980’s the 3.5″ disk was launched as replacement of the infamous 5.25″ floppy disk. While the initial SD version (early 80’s) only offered 360kB, we could store 1.4MB with the HD version towards 1990. Take note, a 3min MP3 file is roughly 4 MB in size. It was the main media to store and transport any kind of data. Only by 2010 Sony stopped producing them, now in 2021 the disk is extinct.

Some of the above highlights:

• MS DOS 5 and 6: Release 5, first version supporting 3.5″ disks, released in 1991. The same year I bought my very first (own) IBM compatible PC. Release 6 came in 1993 and eventually 6.22 was the last official release in 1994. (Wikipedia link)
• MS Windows 95
  Released in 1995, it merged DOS and Windows 3.1 into one OS. The first 9x release with the distinct Windows look that persists until today. Slowly stepping into the 32bit era, unfortunately it was not really stable, crashed frequently and slowed down over time (my most prominent memories at least). I remember the plug’n-play feature which was not so plug’n-play as proclaimed and spending endless hours finding and fiddling with obscure drivers for hardware. (Wikipedia link)
  That’s 25 years ago, you remember the commercials with the Rolling Stones song “Start me up” and the “Where do you want to go today ?” slogan ? Fun fact: Bill Gates paid something like 14 million dollars to Rolling Stones.
• MS Visual C++
  You notice there is no release number ? Right this is the initial (“visual”) release 1.0 in 1993 running under 16bit Windows 3.0. My first steps with this programming language. I remember how troublesome it was to create even basic looking application gui’s. (Wikipedia link)
• SUSE Linux 7.2
  Five years after the initial release 4.2, the version came out in 2001. The first Linux I installed on my own PC, until then I used Linux solely at University and work.
• 3D Pool by Aardvark
  This 1989 game came with my first PC set, a 3D pool simulation. Quite amazing 3D rendering on a 256kB PC with a simple S3 VGA adapter supporting 16/256 colors. Experience it here.

Using this USB disk drive I was able to retrieve my digital sourcecode memories. You get these drives for about Euro 30,- . If you look for a 5.25″ solution you have to ressort to the used stuff on the usual selling platforms, plus you require a desktop that still supports IDE.

USB 3.5″ disk drive

Nerve-racking transfer speed

It took only a few disks to stumble upon a time traveller, the AntiCMOS.A virus from 1994. Survived on the disk for 25 years and being kicked out by Windows 10.

Some sourcecode retrieved from old disks, like these memories of Z80 assembler code. Can you be any closer to the CPU than this ?

Z80 Sourcecode

Extract of a Turbo Pascal application that manipulated the graphics card directly using Assembler.
Supposedly there was a way to brick or burn the 1992 graphics hardware with a combination of specific direct calls, I remember vivid discussions with the head of the IT institute at my university fearing I would damage something. Today I think that was a tech myth.
I came across Pascal first time in the mid 1980’s at high school in the IT class equipped with Apple IIe and Apple Pascal. Btw, Pascal is 50 years old in 2020 !

Pascal Code

I remember my very first PC system, a 80386 SX running at 20Mhz, 256kB RAM, equipped with 5.25″ and 3.5″ disk drives, plus a whopping 20MB harddisk, which I thought would provide enough space for many years to come.. I spent DM 2,500.-, today’s equivalent of roughly Euro 2,300.- for this set, inclusive of a 14″ CRT color screen and a Star LC 24-10 dot-matrix printer.

You fancy to run the old systems ? Let’s go, we have a few options at hand.

1. Original Hardware
   Provided you are willing to spend money on old harware and find an old IBM comp. PC (like a 80386) on Ebay, plus all the installation disks, this is truely the retro nerd way. You going to experience 1990’s first hand with all the slowness and swapping disks, failing stuff, etc. I skip that one.
2. Virtual Box
   If you still own the original disks (like I do in this case), you can spin up a DOS guest session in Oracle’s VirtualBox and install everything from the scratch. Much faster than option 1, but still a little bit more nostalgia than option 3 and 4.

Windows 3.11

Windows 95

3. DOS Emulator
Save the time creating a virtual PC and install a native emulator on your windows environment. Try DOSBox.

4. Online Emulator
As usual, there is an emulator for everything now, any you can spin up an old piece of hardware in your favourite browser without touching a screwdriver or a disk. Drop by the PCjs website and explore all kind of OS and software from the past with the click of a button.

Conclusion

Fun nostalgia experience exploring the roots of software and hardware we use today. I learned a lot during this barebone hands-on times back then, valuable when looking at today’s IT environment where you are layers and layers away from hardware and the basic understanding how things work under the hood.

There are times you need to spin up these emulator or old OS, when you come across files that are no longer supported by modern OS and software releases. I had to install MS Access 97 in order to read old Access 2.0 databases.

MS Access 97 Installer

Stay tuned for more retro tech exploration..

Airport Simulator on Android

Dont rise your expectation to high on this topic for now. Before jumping into the serious use cases for airport process and environment simulations, as well the gamification of enterprise environments, I will review some simulator apps available on Android and PC in a rather humorous way.

I just love simulators, it is amazing to see how current 3D and physic engines running on today’s powerful and affordable hardware can execute real-time simulations that were only possible in well equipped research labs 2 decades ago. I am experimenting with various 3D engines like Unity and CryEngine, both freely available as personal or educational version or for indie games.

OK, lets have a look at simulators available for the Android mobile platform. If you search for the term simulator you will get thousands of apps, and there is a simulator for almost everything and anything you never heard of before, though the majority is plain crap and only exists because Unity makes it so easy to create a game by clicking-together some assets and adjusting some properties, almost without the need to code. Most of them are just badly made and often only serve the purpose to bombard you with ads once installed or running.

We find 100’s of car, truck, train simulation apps, plus dozens of somewhat strange apps to simulate dogs, cats, dinosaurs, Fishing, Fork Lifts, shark attacks, Miami Crime, swimming trains, flying boats and tuk tuk’s and endless more objects.

Finetuning our search towards the term airport (vehicle) simulator we still reveal dozens of results. Here we have a selection of flying, airport construction and all kind of driving around the airport tasks. The majority is made with Unity engine and the free assets, one reason why most of these apps display the same assets like cars, trucks and planes.

Selection of simulator apps

Most of them have in common: Well rendered icons and preview images in the play store to catch your interest, generous with requested permissions and truckloads of ads.
Surprisingly all of them have downloads of well beyond 100.000 ! Guess we don’t know the uninstall-rate though, but if you look at the user comments you know.

Permissions galore inclusive to run as service during startup, snooping accounts and location, downloading files.

Here some actual screenshots of the often weird gameplay or scenery I found.

Factory Airport ? Not much room to maneuver. Where are taxiways, positions, gates ? But 3 Towers !

If your are short of pushbacks, go for a regular truck as fallback !

Personal pickup service for MIB passengers in Area 51 ?

Taking off from a construction site with speed limits and stop signs. Here the tower also a bit too close to the runway maybe.

Disembarking Zombie passengers walking down from the service staircase to the waiting Cobus(?)

Driving a heavy duty tow truck between the planes parked on the grass. Nothing else to do. Maybe one of these defunc airline desert airplane parking grounds ?

This time we drive an airport security car in a totally static airport. Someone forgot to add tarmac lines here ?

This plane looks like the airport fire brigade drill setup. But in this app all planes look like this model (front part is mocking a war train from the 1930’s). Not so standard cargo handling either.

Interesting, floating mobile stairs supported by a RC wreck. Walls at the tarmac ?

Winter wonderland. Random assets like palms, lamp posts and others stuff thrown at the scene. Big Christmas trees at the end of the runway… Walls again.

Gives the term Greenfield Airport a more genuine meaning ! Randomly appearing zombie passengers again. Leave the boarding gate through the window ?

Oh yes, that is a smart way to avoid a potential IP conflict with a famous airline ! Bonus: Floating bridge and you fly with a 1:5 scale plane ?

Smart parking, what to say ? Smart as in stacking cars on the back of a truck or smart as in placing this thing at the end of the runway ?

Conclusion: Dont expect anything when downloading these simulators, other than uninstalling it again and potentially being spied or bombarded with ads. None of the app I tried even remotely comes close to any real operations. These are games – confirmed – nothing else.

In the next blog entry we will look at Simulator Software available for Windows PC’s.

Stay tuned.

 

Mobile Computing in 1977

The IBM 5100
A reminiscence to computer history as my 250th post !
[youtube:http://youtu.be/9m54rKlErwA%5D

Where is the Cloud ?

Java Security

I always knew secutiy is of high importance, but I didnt know already in 1969 books where available on the same topic.

Java Security anno 1969

Just to mention that Apress (link), Packt (link) and Pragmatic (link) are my favorite publishers for development related topics.