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Today, technology archivist Jason Scott announced a new website called disk manager this allows anyone to search 91.7 million old computer files from CD-ROM versions and floppy disks. Files include images, text documents, music, games, shareware, videos and much more.
Discmaster opens a window to digital media culture at the turn of the millennium, making everyone become a digital archaeologist. A rare glimpse into a slice of cultural history often obscured by the rigors of legacy media and file format incompatibilities.
The files in Discmaster come from the Internet Archive, which has been uploaded by thousands over the years. The new site brings them together behind a search engine, with the ability to perform detailed searches by file type, format, source, file size, file date, and many other options.
“The value proposition is the value proposition of any freely accessible research database,” Scott told Ars Technica. “People have been able to dive deeper into more history, refer to their findings, and encourage others to look the same.”
Ars Teknik
Discmaster is the work of a group of anonymous history-loving programmers approaching Scott to host it. Scott says Discmaster is “99,999 percent” of this anonymous group’s business, down to the old gray theme compatible with web browsers for older machines. Scott said he put a name on it and volunteered to host it on his site. And while Scott was an employee of the Internet Archive, Discmaster”100 percent unrelated to this organization”.
One of the highlights of Discmaster is that it has already done a lot of file format conversions. in the backendmakes old files more accessible. For example, you can search for old music files like MIDI or even digitized Amiga sounds and listen directly in your browser without any additional tools. The same is true for low-resolution video files, images of obscure formats, and various types of documents from the early 90’s.
“It has all the transformation to let you preview everything instantly,” Scott says. “So there’s no additional external setup. I think that’s the core strength of what we’re dealing with here.”
In the Discmaster Twitter announcement thread, people are using the service to reinvent the programs they already use. loss Rare in the 1990s BBS files, ZZT worlds, bitmap fontsshared software they wrote more than 20 years ago and old music software. The cluster contains a lot of user-generated data, not just professional publications.
Ars Teknik
“Probably one of the most important computer history research project opportunities we’ve had in 10 years,” Scott says. “It’s not finished. They’ve analyzed 7,000 and some weird CD-ROMs. And they’re about to make 8,000 more.”
Because humans are human, you’ll find a large amount of old pornographic media represented in the Discmaster dataset – easy to stumble upon by accident. Users who wish to avoid NSFW material should select “Strict” from the “SafeSearch” options at the bottom.
By creating a vast web of archives, everything is captured and presented unpolished. ” [resources] They specifically choose compilation and presentation CD-ROMs as well as the best shareware discs,” says Scott.
Scott is no stranger to the radical actions of digital archiving. backup GeoCities protect Flash files, making thousands of MS-DOS games playable via a web browser and more. He hosts archives of BBS files on his personal site Textfiles.com and CD-ROMs for almost twenty years. But until now, these resources have never been searchable with the degree of precision Discmaster allows.
“Maybe some people just don’t want to review a bunch of old stuff,” he says. “But if you’re someone who’s really going to have a positive impact on going through a bunch of old stuff, it’s Shangri-La.”
