Bitsavers Software Archive (2022)

by gballan • 3 years ago

99 17 3 years ago

I'm surprised they don't make a torrent available, instead of encouraging users to rsync the entire site.

ssl232• 3 years ago

Can files included in a torrent be updated after the fact? I guess the issue is the archive is constantly growing and rsync deals with that gracefully.

v64• 3 years ago

Don't quote me on it, but I think this would be possible with v2 of the protocol. Changes were made so that file hashes are also part of the protocol (in addition to piece hashes), so versions of the torrent with added files would not change the hashes of the existing files, enabling users with older versions of the torrent metadata to still join the current swarm and get information on the new files.

kevincox• 3 years ago

No, but if you point the new torrent at an old data directory it should skip downloading the existing data.

Although you will only download from people on the same version as you.

IPFS us probably a better fit here as content will be downloaded from anyone who has it even cross-version. IPNS could also be used for distributing updates.

pjmlp• 3 years ago

In general, bitsavers is a treasure trove for computing archaeology.

There is so much to learn about alternative computing realities, outside what was happening at Bell Labs.

The two decades that predated UNIX, what was happening at Xerox, DEC, IBM, GE,..., while UNIX was being developed, and the early 8 and 16 bit home computing.

So many alternative realities and what ifs to discover.

lockhouse• 3 years ago

I think a user friendly modern desktop OS built upon a foundation of OpenVMS would be amazing.

Ultimately of what you listed I think the stuff developed at Xerox shaped modern computing the most. The rest of them focused too much on mainframes, minis, and backend enterprise computing instead of personal computing.

masswerk• 3 years ago

I'd mention the DEC PDP-1: most of what is not batch processing and many software tools with some linage to things still used today starts there.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

I looked at the xerox/sdd folder constantly for my first book. If you want to know why the hardware was bit-sliced processors instead of a 68K or 8086, it's all right there.

GTP• 3 years ago

What did Bitsavers do that was/is so interesting? A quick look on Wikipedia didn't turn out anything.

kps• 3 years ago

Archive tens of thousands of documents.

sillywalk• 3 years ago

1000bit.it has some documentation plus a ton of old advertisments and brochures.

hluska• 3 years ago

The site archives a lot of old content, from software to print that helped define many of our youths. As an example, I can go to Bitsavers and find copies of all the magazines that I used to read in my high school library in the 1990s.

If you weren’t alive (or into tech) back in the day, you might get a laugh out of some of the predictions. If you were alive/into tech, it’s a place for nostalgia.

bitsavers• 3 years ago

Make documents and software available that no one else had. Some people like to fly under the Wikipedia self-promotion radar.

unixhero• 3 years ago

There is also http://tenox.pdp-11.ru which archives and hoards tons of very old software.

From the readme.html file:

# Tenox Operating Systems Archive

This is an archive of operating systems, firmware, drivers and documentation. We mostly focus on RISC systems of the 90s and early 2000s.

## Directory structure

The main part of the archive is the /os directory that is sorted by operating system name. Each os subdirectory will have install media, apps and docs for that specific OS. For systems that have multiple names eg. `OSF/1`, `Dec Unix`, `Tru64`, we would name it from first to last, eg. `osf1-tru64`.

The other top level directories like /apps /hw and /docs are for categories that do not fit with an OS. For example apps that run on multiple operating systems or docs for hardware that runs many OSes.

## Access information

- http://osarchive.org

- ftp://osarchive.org

- rsync://osarchive.org/osarchive

## Public Mirrors

- http://tenox.pdp-11.ru/

## Legal Status

This site operates under a DMCA exemption for obsolete computer media and archives. For more info refer to:

- https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23... - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/1201_recommendation.pdf - https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_01.h...

dark-star• 3 years ago

Yes, Tenox's archive is awesome and you can find some very rare and interesting bits on there.

But it is also terribly un-curated. Some directories look like someone just slapped a bunch of ZIP archives in there without checking. Some archives don't have version numbers at all, sometimes the version numbers are wrong, sometimes you end up with three archives containing the same disk images just in different formats.

Still, it'S the best place to find rare and unexpected things, so I can definitely recommend it, if you have enough time to do the sorting/curating yourself

sudobash1• 3 years ago

and.. the site looks this way for a reason, to leave it static and easy to mirror, so don't remind me that it looks like it's from 1995

Nice. The software and documentation provided on this site isn't flashy or modern, so I see all the less reason for the website to be so.

Bitsavers Software Archive (2022)

Related Stories