Brian Thomas, Aditi Worcester, Austin Hixson, Samantha Bruner

Outline

1. Background: the creators, the game, how the tapes got to the Briscoe

2. Scope and Contents of the Collection

3. Hardware

4. Process/early challenges

-Commands

5. Emailing the creator(s)

6. Accomplishments

7. Moving forward

Background

• Origin Systemso Richard Garriott

• Wing Commandero Chris Roberts

• C I C (Combat Information Center)o Ben Lesnick

Scope and Content

36 Digital Data Storage Tapes

Scope and Content

But what's on them?

Hardware

Process

Research

• Manual pages

• Published material (print and online)

• Online Forums, most critical becauseo It provided directions o Problem workaroundso Practical advice on issueso BUT, not complete or reliable

Breaking Dracula

Process

The setup

• Challenges in creating a valid connectiono New card and cable

• Challenges in getting the computer to communicate with the driveo Loading the st driver moduleo Loading other moduleso Finding out which drive is correct

Process

Testing the setup

1. Created test content

2. Wrote content to a spare tape

3. Tested extraction/image commands on the tape

Process

• Imaging the tapes: sudo dcfldd if=/dev/st0 of=CIC_tape_#.img hash=md5 hashlog=CIC_tape_#.md5

• Results:

Process

Imaging the tapes: Attempt 2

• Added optionso sudo dd if /dev/st0 of=CIC_tape_#.img

bs=512 ibs= 512 obs=512 count=1 conv=sync,noerror,notrunc

• Mixed successo Produced images with mass to them, but which were

unreadable.

Process

Further imaging attempts:

• John Filo's program

Process

• At Alex North-Keyes's request, we extracted the first KB of one of the images we had created for him to analyze. o Discovered that the tape contains a POSIX tape

archive

Analyzing the Partial Images

• tar tvf and tar xvfo tar tvf lists the contents of the file o tar xvf extracts the contents

However, this command risks overwriting files in the same directory.

Analyzing the Partial Images

• less CIC_firstkb.img

Analyzing the Partial Images

• od CIC_firstkb.img

Analyzing the Partial Images

• strings CIC_firstkb.img

Communication with Stakeholders

An important part of our process

Who were the stakeholders?

• Zach Vowell of the Briscoe

• The donor, Ben Lesnick of the CIC site

Resources?

• Alex North-Keys

• John Filo

Communication with Stakeholders

What do we know about the tapes? Part 1

Ben Lesnick - the Donor

• Provided us with contextual information about the provenance of the tapes

• Connected us with the primary source of outside help, Alex North-Keys

Communication with Stakeholders

What do we know about the tapes? Part 2

Alex North-Keys

• Person responsible for setting up the system used to create content

• Familiar with how the tapes were created and under what system

• Expert at command line in Linux/Unix and provided multiple options to try that we did not realize on our own

• Came in to try to retrieve content

Achievements

• Learned a lot of commands

• Gained firsthand experience with the challenges of working with legacy media

• Discovered the creating environment and the format of at least one tape

• Made contacts with experts in the field and consulted with creatorso Ben Lesnicko Alex North-Keyes o John Filo

Moving Forward

- IRIX

• Put Alex in contact with Zach Vowell so that the project can move forward

- Maintain contact with Briscoe Center

- Interview Alex