The Road Ahead Left Behind

[ownedbycats]

The disc image is available on the Internet Archive's Software Collection, so I investigated.

setup.exe is a 16-bit file. Winevdm might have some success, I got it to open the installer at least but did no further testing. If not, a virtual machine running Windows 9x almost always works.

I have a fair amount of experience in getting older games to run on modern systems.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The disc image is available on the Internet Archive's Software Collection, so I investigated.

setup.exe is a 16-bit file. Winevdm might have some success, I got it to open the installer at least but did no further testing. If not, a virtual machine running Windows 9x almost always works.

I have a fair amount of experience in getting older games to run on modern systems.

I thought 16-bit was the problem.

[haertig]

It sounds like this Mircrosoft "book" was not actually a book or an ebook format (like EPUB, MOBI, etc.)

It was a 16-bit program that displayed text/pictures/videos. And you are now having trouble running this 16-bit program.

This is not surprising. But it is not an indictment of the long term viability of actual formats like EPUB, PDF, MOBI, etc.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by haertig

It sounds like this Mircrosoft "book" was not actually a book or an ebook format (like EPUB, MOBI, etc.)

It was a 16-bit program that displayed text/pictures/videos. And you are now having trouble running this 16-bit program.

This is not surprising. But it is not an indictment of the long term viability of actual formats like EPUB, PDF, MOBI, etc.

This is exactly why I cringe when people who poo-poo multimedia and/or interactivity in ebooks suggest that it would be better to do such things in "an app" instead of an ebook. Let the future decide if the world needed multimedia ebooks or not. If such capabilities are baked right into EPUB, at least many of them will have been created with open standards, rather then being fragmented into a million proprietary binary programs.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

This is exactly why I cringe when people who poo-poo multimedia and/or interactivity in ebooks suggest that it would be better to do such things in "an app" instead of an ebook. Let the future decide if the world needed multimedia ebooks or not. If such capabilities are baked right into EPUB, at least many of them will have been created with open standards, rather then being fragmented into a million proprietary binary programs.

I agree it's the best argument for epub3 multimedia, because unfortunately iOS (more deliberately) and Android orphan apps faster than Windows or Linux.

[cgsmom]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Loads of Windows stuff doesn't work on current Windows.

No kidding! I started reading ebooks on 2005 on a PDA with Pocket Windows and Microsoft Reader, with books in LIT format. That was when I learned the value of backing up my ebooks. Thank goodness for ConvertLIT.

[ownedbycats]

This is why LCP DRM and their aggressiveness towards people who break it worries me so much. Proprietary program required to read files with LCP. When company goes out of business, no longer maintaining it, it'll break eventually. Books become useless.

[pdurrant]

This reminds me of the BBC Domesday Project from 1986. Done for the 900th anniversary of the book compiled by/for William the Conqueror. There have been preservation efforts, but none have been simple or wholly successful.

[PeterT]

I saw a comment from someone that they were able to use the CD by running Windows 3.1 under DOSbox.

Might be worth a try.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

This is why LCP DRM and their aggressiveness towards people who break it worries me so much. Proprietary program required to read files with LCP. When company goes out of business, no longer maintaining it, it'll break eventually. Books become useless.

Mobipocket eBooks were tied to your computer's hard drive. So if you changed the hard drive, you had to download your eBooks again. And after they wen out of business and you changed your computer, you lost access to all of your Mobipocket eBooks.

When Microsoft closed there server for LIT eBooks, you lost access to all of those eBooks.

When Amazon stopped selling eBooks, if you needed to download any of them to update the DRM, you were screwed and access to all the eBooks you purchased was gone.

Fortunately, when I started reading eBooks, there was a way to remove the DRM from Mobipocket and MS Lit.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I saw a comment from someone that they were able to use the CD by running Windows 3.1 under DOSbox.

Might be worth a try.

Yes, that's the common fix for 16-bit games that don't work with winevdm.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This reminds me of the BBC Domesday Project from 1986. Done for the 900th anniversary of the book compiled by/for William the Conqueror. There have been preservation efforts, but none have been simple or wholly successful.

They chose a crazy format. Some people at the time thought so. Interactive Laser Disc was doomed before it was even released.

It was obvious by 1983 that it was doomed. An analogue system and very large disk. CD was a success by 1986 (Audio CD demo 1982)

By 1988, CD sales in the United States surpassed those of vinyl LPs.

CD-ROM was released in 1985, though home writeable CD-ROMs about 1988. But the Laserdisc used with the interactive system were factory produced from other media sent in.

No doubt the BBC didn't keep that, as they were run by bean counters and erased £85 tapes that had cost £10,000 to produce to save money from the 1970s.

Almost no BBC episodes of anything were lost. They burnt 16mm film to save on storage costs and re-used the 2″ video tapes.

By 1972 it was known that analogue Laserdisc was a dead end and Philips established a digital lab in 1977.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Quoth

…
But the Laserdisc used with the interactive system were factory produced from other media sent in.

No doubt the BBC didn't keep that, as they were run by bean counters and erased £85 tapes that had cost £10,000 to produce to save money from the 1970s.

Wikipedia

Data and images were selected and collated by the BBC Domesday project based in Bilton House in West Ealing. Pre-mastering of data was carried out on a VAX-11/750 mini-computer, assisted by a network of BBC Micro microcomputers. The discs were mastered, produced, and tested by the Philips Laservision factory in Blackburn, England.

So likely no-one archived the data. Otherwise it would be no problem that no-one can read the laserdiscs.

I've readable floppies nearly that old and it's possible with current Linux and a 64 bit Mobo that has a floppy port to read 3", 3.5" 5.25" and 8" disks in many formats (most CP/M, DOS). But not Apple II discs or Amiga discs. I forget what floppy format BBC/Acorn drives used.

There are still working VAX-11/750 computers and tape drives. Well kept 70 year old tape still works.

You can only read DOS format on an USB floppy drive.

[Quoth]

And they new it was doomed
Wikipedia

Archival of material
The deputy editor of the Domesday Project, Mike Tibbets, has criticised the UK's National Data Archive to which the archive material was originally entrusted, arguing that the creators knew that the technology would be short-lived but that the archivists had failed to preserve the material effectively

The BBC also was responsible.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Loads of Windows stuff doesn't work on current Windows.

Isn't that kind of the whole Microsoft business model? Break stuff so that people have to keep continually upgrading (both software and hardware)?