Gene Roddenberry's Computer Conundrum

How Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's words were freed from old floppy disks

Call the engine room and get Scotty to the bridge: When the long-lost words of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were found on 5.25-inch floppies—yes, floppy disks—it would take a Starfleet-level engineering effort to recover them.

Roddenberry, who died in 1991, apparently left behind a couple of shoebox-sized containers of those big floppy disks.

The problem? As any techie knows, floppy drives went out off fashion around the turn of the 21st century. Even if you bought a used 5.25-inch floppy drive off of Cyrano Jones on space station K7, you wouldn't be able to read the files on a modern computer, let alone plug in the drive.

Roddenberry's estate knew of two possible computers the author had used to write those final words. One had been sold off in a charity auction and the second wouldn't boot when plugged in.

(Read more at: PCWorld)

via ehMac.ca http://ift.tt/1mBOGtk