Subj : Re: Archiving For Armageddon
To   : warmfuzzy
From : Greenlfc
Date : Wed May 31 2023 14:18:08

On 30 May 2023, warmfuzzy said the following...
 
 wa> Sounds good.  This would be stored for future generations, like 40-200
 wa> years. So for this purpose a hollowed out compartment on a chair might

200 years of electronic data is *tough*.  Even if the media survives flawlessly (and the idea of sinking it is solid, to protect it from radiation/cosmic rays/etc, and keeps it at a constant temperature), someone's got to be able to read it.

If you were to walk up to me today and hand me a hard sectored 8" floppy disk from 40-50 years ago, it would probably take me *months* to recover the data off of it reasonably safely.  Look at what CuriousMarc went through with that fossil archive.

Dropping a computer off with it may or may not help.  If you're serious, you'd need to have everything they would need to build it from the ground up; clean PCB, detailed schematic, any specialized chips that are necessary, etc.  Again, look at 40 year old computers today, or even 30 year old computers with random self-destructing components.

It's another case of perhaps going for a diversity of devices.  Remove all batteries, of course, and pick things that can be powered by simple DC power.  Different devices from different brands will die at different rates and give you a higher chance of success.

A fun idea I just had that may or may not work would be to replace all of the electrolytics with pin headers so A) they don't leak on the board and B) hopefully that future generation can swap them on easier.

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