Retro Reunited - Pictures

Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

It was pretty awesome, Gareth and I had a great half an hour playing about on it looking up our home towns. As I remember in our school it was part of a National Domesday project which included burying time capsules all over the country and a census of all the school kids at the time as well. My memory is a bit fuzzy going back that far TBH.

For it's time it was very impressive, although the LP size discs were pretty unweildy and I do recall being told (back in the 80's) that they would store everything so that it could be read hundreds of years in the future!
If that's even remotely true, it knocks modern DVD +- R's into a cocked hat! Maybe I should get one to store all my personal data for posterity. :jester:
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

Brataccas said:
Gutted, again i miss another event!

@Merlin - Fancy doing the first Atari TT-030 RetroBright job ;)

Cheers,

I might - have you any pictures of the patient? It might be better if we take this discussion to AmiOracle, if that's OK.

(y)
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

@ Merlin - Yeah sure, i have some pics at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1406

I`ll add to the existing Retr0Bright thread under AmiOracle so we can chat there, this would be so cool restored back to it`s original white look!

Cheers,
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

Did you know that a project to restore that Doomsday project was begun in 2001, but is sadly currently up in the air as its founder died last year? The problem was suddenly realised that the old 12" analogue Laserdisc technology is now obsolete, and the information on the discs is programmed specifically for the BBC Master, which is also now obsolete. Therefore the restoration project was setup to try and extract everything from the discs and make a more future proof version of the Doomsday project to safeguard it into the future. In addition the original higher quality video, audio and other multimedia material used to make the LD discs was stored on large magnetic tapes at the BBC and these were deteriorating badly.

An internet version of the project was put online for anyone to access, but since the founded death it has been offline. Some others are currently trying to locate a copy of the site to get it back up and running. I hope they do.

My biggest memory of the project in 1985 was having to go out on field trips in small groups and do surveys of the surrounding area counting the number of trees and other items and recording them on a map.
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

I think that answers the "these discs will be readable in 200 years" comment with a resounding "Meh".....I don't believe that any recording system has that level of reliability.

The nearest and oldest thing we have to that standard in terms of still being readable on a portable medium is audio recorded on wax cylinders and 78rpm records, I suppose.
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

now does that mean that the info on the discs will still be readable? but they'll have nothing to read it on? on the data will deteriorate and become unreadable?
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

Those 12" laser dics never really got off the ground. It was like the VHS/BetaMax thing all over again & we ended up with DVD. Still nice to see one though. Huge Shiney. :)

Kin
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

Merlin said:
I think that answers the "these discs will be readable in 200 years" comment with a resounding "Meh".....I don't believe that any recording system has that level of reliability.

The nearest and oldest thing we have to that standard in terms of still being readable on a portable medium is audio recorded on wax cylinders and 78rpm records, I suppose.

No one can know for sure if something will ever have a real 200 year life span.

As for wax cylinders and records. Both have downfall of degradation with each play/reading, so are not an ideal storage format.

Laserdisc was a very interesting format because whilst it was a digital disc, it stores its contents in an analogue form, so it held more of the original video and audio data than current purely digital formats like CD and DVD.
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

JuvUK said:
now does that mean that the info on the discs will still be readable? but they'll have nothing to read it on? on the data will deteriorate and become unreadable?

The first. The data will still be readable on the discs, but without a BBC Master and the correct controller to an LD player there would be no way to access and make sense of the data.
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

The lads at Byte Back were part of a group to keep the Origional Kit running. Although retrieving the data saves that for the future they said that it just became snippets of infomation without the program that was designed to use it.
 
Re: Retro Reunited - Pictures

Have a read of this interesting article that explains about the Doomsday project. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/13419/?a=f

And if you are interested in reading more take a look at http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html

Interestingly the two articles/sites do contradict each other slightly. The first article states that the Doomsday project has been successfully transferred from the original Laserdiscs and can now be run on modern PCs using a specially made BBC emulator. However the second site states that this project is up in the air and currently in an unknown limbo. So who is right? I would love to obtain a copy of the Project to use myself.

The second link/site goes into a lot of detail about the UK 1985 Doomsday Project. It details the technology developed to store and run the program, as well as the attempts so far to restore the original video footage, and to reverse engineer the original programs, data and images in an attempt to develop a new version of the Project that would run on current PCs.

Interestingly the Amiga was considered as the platform to be used to run the Doomsday project, but it was passed over for the BBC Master due to all UK school and many libraries already having them. How annoying it that? Had the Amiga been the platform they would have been able to create a much richer multimedia experience than they did, and they wouldn't of had to develop the custom trackerball interface to use the program (as the BBC had no built in support for pointer based interfaces), and the special video overlay technology to overlay the data content output from the BBC on top of the video and picture content from the laserdiscs. The Amiga and a Genlock could have done this very easily, and at a fraction of the cost. Plus if the Amiga had been used I doubt we would be in the current situation of not being able to access this project easily in the mainstream.

The other mad part is that the BBC worked with Philips to develop the Philips VP 415 Laserdisc player. It is the only player that can run the Doomsday project discs (no other Laserdisc players work with the discs), and the Doomsday project is the only project ever developed to run on this VP 415, so it was a very static hardware/software solution. This is the real reason why the Doomsday project was/is in real danger of being lost and unable to be accessed. It isn't just the computer program and platform being used to run it, but also a completely proprietary version of a laserdisc player.

On that page it also mentions that the complete combined Doomsday project package, consisting of the Doomsday (Philips VP 415) Player, a BBC Master and the 2 LV Discs cost £4000 on release! And schools had to pay the full amount if they wanted one. My Junior school had one of these setups, and at the time I didn't realise the expense they had paid to obtain one. Had I known I would have tried to gain access to use it myself. I wonder what happened to it? I might contact my old school and ask them.

I would love to try and work on creating a new version of this Project. With todays multimedia capabilities a feature rich project could easily be created.

The first article also discusses a lot of interesting things regarding archiving of digital data in the modern age and the best way to go about it. Using open formats is concluded as being the direction to always take because such standards being open means that in the future the technical detail is always going to be available to access the data stored in an open format, even if programs to access it are no longer available, so a new program can easily be written.
 
GreyFox from the Retro Gamer forum has just posted up the Retro Reunited DVD on You Tube.
You glimpse some of us looking knowledgeable in Part 2 at 1:17. :D

DDGreyfox's Channel

A few things in there I had forgotten about already!!
 
Awesome,

ya beat me to the postin' =D

for those of you that want to know what the retro-reunited was all about - check out greyfox's chan in r0jaws's post =D

(you can skip the singing and beatles rock band too... *wish i could of done lol*)
 
Here's the part r0jaws was talking about... why do I get the feeling there's a caption contest in this picture somewhere......

:LOL:
 

Attachments

  • RReunited.JPG
    RReunited.JPG
    25.9 KB · Views: 0
GreyFox from the Retro Gamer forum has just posted up the Retro Reunited DVD on You Tube.
You glimpse some of us looking knowledgeable in Part 2 at 1:17. :D

DDGreyfox's Channel

A few things in there I had forgotten about already!!

ROFL @ the Nigel Mansell bit on the Vid link. :LOL:

Kin
 
Who crept into the shot just after the picture I posted earlier.....:whistle:
 

Attachments

  • R_Reunited2.JPG
    R_Reunited2.JPG
    28.1 KB · Views: 2
Back
Top Bottom