Help needed for kaypro Public domain software archiving

[Lendorien]

This is cross posted from the vintage-computers.com forums. Posting it here on the advice of some folks in the chatroom.

 

~*~

 

Back in the early 80's my father was the president of a Kaypro Computer's User's Group in PA. He served in that capacity for a couple years until a job change took him out of the country. He was a power Kaypro user and even had an article published in Profiles magazine (published by Kaypro). He used his Kaypro 2X until about 1994, when he moved up to a Windows based machine.

 

In any case, I now own his Kaypro 2X. It's a little worse for wear and the A drive (an epson drive) is failing. I also do have a copy of Uniform.

 

As part of his work as the club president, he archived a whole bunch of public domain software. I have probably about 50 or more disks worth (DSDD) all from the 1984-86 era. I have no idea if it's archived anywhere else, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of it was.

 

In either case, I'm a video game enthusiast, so I know a bit about how data just gets lost because no-one ever saves it. Since I do know the importance of archiving this stuff, I'm here to ask for some help. I'm really afraid bitrot might set in. They are all stored on floppies, all of which are probably around 25 years old or more and are currently sitting in my basement getting older.

 

I don't know how to proceed on trying to archive them. I'm willing to put in some time, but truthfully, the easier the method the better as my time is limited. I would of course share the data to whatever community asked for it.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions and/or advice? I have no idea even on where to start. I could really use the help because without it, I probably won't end up doing anything with them as time for original research on how to proceed just isn't there.

 

Thanks for responding!

[Ze_ro]

The first step would be to find yourself a 5.25" PC drive and try some of this stuff. You might need to use a slightly older computer, as some of that software might not be compatible with XP/Vista/Win7.

 

--Zero

[Lendorien]

The first step would be to find yourself a 5.25" PC drive and try some of this stuff. You might need to use a slightly older computer, as some of that software might not be compatible with XP/Vista/Win7.

 

--Zero

 

Thanks! I got similar advice from the other forum. I have a cousin in law... is that a proper term? ... anyway, he has an old pentium computer with such a drive he's going to led to me. We'll see how I do.