"programming" versus "scripting"

[BobH]

So, do you suppose that Word documents might one day be found near the Dead Sea?

[stuck]

Very possibly Bob. I base this on the fact that only the other week I found some old 3.5in floppies in a last opened donkey's year ago drawer. In theory the disks hold documents in IBM DisplayWrite 4 format.

I've yet to fire up a machine that has a 3.5in drive to see it the disks are still accessible. However,even if the disks are readable the DW4 file format is so arcane I think I need a 16bit DOS (but might get away with a Command window in Win 95/8) machine to run a file convertor that I once found. Assuming I can still find a copy of said convertor. It's probably on another 3.5in floppy somewhere else...

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

V... found some old 3.5in floppies in a last opened donkey's year ago drawer. In theory the disks hold documents in IBM DisplayWrite 4 format.

Those 3.5in floppies, you will notice, are perfectly sized to be wrapped in 80-column punched cards to protect the floppies from the elements.
The punched cards are water-absorbent and grit-resistant, as the engineer found when he rested his can of pop on the 1200-cpm card reader serving our CDC-3300, and from across the computer-room watched the can wobble off the reader and empty itself on to the 2,000 card deck that was being read into the reader at 1200cpm.
The reader didn't even hiccough⁽¹⁾, and the cards, on inspection, came out neatly dried and pressed. No creases.

Another engineer (this time on an IBM 1401 at BHP Newcastle) could patch his punched cards with a sharp penknife, making new holes, and filling in old holes from a matchbox of chads which he kept in his desk drawer. Just try scraping individual bits of data from the surface of a floppy disk!

Best of luck
Chris
⁽¹⁾ "burp"