Data recovered from Gene Roddenberry's old floppy disks
- Thread starter IrvinWithAnEye
- Start date
I would say this year being the 50th anniversary has more to do with it than the new series coming next year does.
Well, Roddenberry himself did write the pilot for Earth Final Conflict, but otherwise you're right, he had nothing to do with the direction that series took starting with the second episode. Hell, not even the writers or producers involved with the first season had any say with how that show developed in subsequent seasons.
Similar situation with Andromeda, except I don't think he even wrote a pilot for that, just an outline that Tribune ran with. And once again, the show went in a completely different direction in the second season than the writers and producers of the first intended.
Recovered from the discs: Roddenberry's draft script for a proposed movie telling the story of Captain Garth at the Battle of Axanar.
Oops.
Oops.
One might argue that it doesn't belong in the kind of commentary you are offering, but I think that there are some in the world who feel a little less than adulation for him due to some of his, not exactly enlightened, or even retrograde, social mores. It is a part of who he was and inevitably played a role in how his creativity was expressed and I think is fair game to remark on along with everything else, not necessarily as a negative screed, but merely as something that was present and can reasonably be attempted to fit into an interpretation of the mosaic that forged the man's influence.
A
Amaris
Guest
I was surprised that Gene built his own computer (or had a hand in it anyway). It's a side I didn't know about. Plus, I love old hardware like that, and can't wait to find out what's on it.
Has anybody said anything about when we can expect to hear about the disks content? Even if I'm not a big fan of some of the Trek episode he wrote, Rodenberry did still have some interesting ideas, and I'd love to hear about anything we weren't aware of before the discs were found.
This one made me laugh.
This one made me laugh harder.
This, however unlikely, would be great and is what I am hoping for as well.
And lastly, 2takesfrakes, I like it when you do this. Makes me smile every time.
Thank you very much, bbailey861 ...
Be Sure to Collect them all:
Scotty, Riker, Kirk, Chakotay ... and Kenneth Branagh (from his turn as Benedict in "Much Ado About Nothing")!
Be Sure to Collect them all:
Scotty, Riker, Kirk, Chakotay ... and Kenneth Branagh (from his turn as Benedict in "Much Ado About Nothing")!
I'm sure that the Roddenberry estate will be releasing the contents ... for about $99.99 in a nice boxed set.
Then in a year or so will recover a small amount of addition information, which will be released with commentary ... for about $99.99 in a nice boxed set.
.
That's such a case study/PR piece just regurgitated as a news article.
I imagine the Roddenberry estate would love for there to be something juicy and usable, that work would cost a lot of money. The worst case for them is they spent a lot of cash on nothing usable.
I imagine the Roddenberry estate would love for there to be something juicy and usable, that work would cost a lot of money. The worst case for them is they spent a lot of cash on nothing usable.
An longtime computer engineer posted the following on a group I am a member of. He thinks the computer experts in question weren't as expert as the press piece implies.
Obviously, he's speculating, but from my long-ago experience with CP/M he sounds like he knows of what he types.
Mark Graybill: I could have had this data off in mere minutes. And I would have signed an NDA. I could have thrown one of my systems in my car, and done the conversion on site for them.
The cabinet is one of many that you'd build up your own system in. From the sounds of it, he upgraded to an x86 machine in there at some point. It may have been Ampro Little Boards--first a Z-80, then an x86 board. Or he may have started with a Ferguson, then changed over to a generic PC-XT board of some sort.
I probably could have had the original system working faster than transferring the disks (I could have fixed it while the disks were being transferred.)
At any rate, this isn't rocket science, especially for us old timers who never give up an old computer system.
...
The software they wrote was probably modern equivalents of Wordstar high bit strippers and such to convert the data to modern formats. Once you know the disk format, there's really no impediment to getting at the data, especially with a computer from the right era, and of the same OS.
You do want to inspect the disk surface to look for areas where the oxide has lost adhesion. It's not a common problem unless the disks have been stored in a high humidity environment. What passes for "high humidity" in California isn't enough to cause a problem for disks of this age, in all the cases I've encountered.
The cabinet is one of many that you'd build up your own system in. From the sounds of it, he upgraded to an x86 machine in there at some point. It may have been Ampro Little Boards--first a Z-80, then an x86 board. Or he may have started with a Ferguson, then changed over to a generic PC-XT board of some sort.
I probably could have had the original system working faster than transferring the disks (I could have fixed it while the disks were being transferred.)
At any rate, this isn't rocket science, especially for us old timers who never give up an old computer system.
...
The software they wrote was probably modern equivalents of Wordstar high bit strippers and such to convert the data to modern formats. Once you know the disk format, there's really no impediment to getting at the data, especially with a computer from the right era, and of the same OS.
You do want to inspect the disk surface to look for areas where the oxide has lost adhesion. It's not a common problem unless the disks have been stored in a high humidity environment. What passes for "high humidity" in California isn't enough to cause a problem for disks of this age, in all the cases I've encountered.
Obviously, he's speculating, but from my long-ago experience with CP/M he sounds like he knows of what he types.
Yes, he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, but...
I've done some of what I thought was pretty impressive data recovery in my day, too: setting up a Linux based emulator for a RAID controller in order to recover data off of a damaged RAID array when controller was shot comes to mind. My initial impression was similar to Mark Graybill's - "so they charged an insane amount to do something simple, eh?" - but after looking at the specifics, I'm not ready to assume that anymore.
Ah, there's the rub, isn't it? They *didn't* know it, and they didn't want to risk destroying the disks by just trying formatting settings until they found the correct ones.
I've done some of what I thought was pretty impressive data recovery in my day, too: setting up a Linux based emulator for a RAID controller in order to recover data off of a damaged RAID array when controller was shot comes to mind. My initial impression was similar to Mark Graybill's - "so they charged an insane amount to do something simple, eh?" - but after looking at the specifics, I'm not ready to assume that anymore.
My funniest data recovery story was that I had a computer that got fried by a power spike which killed the motherboard and a SCSI hard drive. I nearly tossed the drive, but decided to hang onto it. Years later I sent it to some data recovery experts, who quoted me a $1,200 fee to pull the data off it. What little that was on it that wasn't backed up wasn't worth that kind of money, so I said no. They sent me back the drive. I got curious and decided to unmount the controller board from the drive, and upon doing so I noticed a very obvious burn mark on its hitherto hidden side. I went onliine, found a new drive of the same model for $19.95, swapped the boards and bang it worked. So much for the drive recovery experts in that circumstance.
Last edited:
on the data found, I believe it may be a let down. The way the age of the disks was mentioned, its most likely going to be either scripts for seasons 4+ of the original series, movies set before TNG.
In fact there is a possibility that it is unused scripts from TNG. Remember how after he died, berman and braga used up all existing Roddenberry scripts and notes, and when those ran out the entire theme, feel, and look of TNG changed horribly?
Everything ive ever seen regarding source material for Andromeda and final conflict was that those were all typed or handwritten notes. SO in theory, the disks should be all STAR TREK related.
One article felt that 2 disks should equal a single episode in script form.
In fact there is a possibility that it is unused scripts from TNG. Remember how after he died, berman and braga used up all existing Roddenberry scripts and notes, and when those ran out the entire theme, feel, and look of TNG changed horribly?
Everything ive ever seen regarding source material for Andromeda and final conflict was that those were all typed or handwritten notes. SO in theory, the disks should be all STAR TREK related.
One article felt that 2 disks should equal a single episode in script form.
There was no "Berman and Braga" on TNG. Although Braga did work on TNG, it was just as a writer with no real authority, and most of his collaborative work on that show was with Ron Moore.
And that's exactly what the "experts" would have done. $20.00 for parts and $1180.00 for knowing what to do.
In my last job I've done something similar with an IDE notebook drive in a destroyed company laptop.
HINT for mobile laptop users: NEVER leave an unsecured laptop sitting on your back seat of your vehicle. If you have a wreck, it will turn into a very expensive projectile.
Similar threads
