At the beginning of the home computer revolution, humble compact magnetic tapes were the most popular choice for data storage in microcomputers, especially in continental Europe. As a volunteer of the Computer Museum, [Keith] Help Restore and archive Roger Dymond’s early works, The pioneer developer of early British computer software.
In his video, [Keith] I spare no effort to introduce in detail Roger Dymond’s influence on the early home computing scene. After freeing himself from his board apprenticeship, Roger turned his attention to developing games for ZX81 and later ZX Spectrum. With the help of his family, he continued to run a successful mail-order game publishing company for many years. Increased advertising costs and crowded development scenarios made Roger’s business infeasible in 1983, but this was not the case until several gambling-style games and excellent space invader clones were developed.
Fast forward to 2021. Although some of Roger’s Spectrum software has been archived, many of them have been marked as “lost” by online archivists. After further research, [Keith] Realize that another potentially important tape has been forgotten. ZX81’s “Game Outline” has been completely forgotten by time. The only evidence that it ever existed came from an advertisement in the “Sinclair User” magazine in 1983. The outline was written for the earlier model ZX81, and will undoubtedly arouse the interest of software archivists and game historians.
Roger died unexpectedly in 1999, and his parents later donated some of his computer software to the Computer Museum in Swindon. Sixteen years after visiting the museum for the first time, [Keith] Able to get in touch with Roger’s parents again and ask about the missing software. Roger’s parents were happy to help, found the lost master tape, and kindly donated it along with Roger’s other precious computing properties, including his original Spectrum.
The master tape is likely to be the only existing copy, and [Keith] He personally repaired the 40-year-old cassette device carefully. Although the degradable foam gasket is an easy job to replace, an unusually sticky tape surface may break the tape during the first recovery attempt. Fortunately, the tape was able to be completely cleaned and repaired, and the data was successfully restored.With the permission of Roger’s parents, the contents of the tape were subsequently Online archive For everyone to enjoy.
In another year, the contents of the game summary tape may have been lost. A lot has been said about storing these fragile media in the right environment, but entropy will eventually catch up to everything. In the past we have introduced some special stories about software archiving, but we are not sure how many software is on the verge of perpetual decay.