Out in the garage or up in a closet, packed away with your high school yearbooks and your father's golf clubs, are memories.
Do you still have the equipment to watch that 8 mm movie of your son's first steps or to listen to the reel-to-reel recording of your grandmother's voice? Or does that shoe box contain only unplayable artifacts of dead technologies?
When a water leak damaged some 8 mm and Super 8 film shot by Glenda Wilson's father from the 1950s to the 1970s, the Garland, Texas, woman began to think about ways to preserve the rolls.
"The urgency, I guess, came when I was afraid that they might be lost forever," says Wilson, who had almost 8,000 feet of the film transferred to DVD format and then to VHS cassettes at a nearby shop.
The movies include images of family members who passed away years ago, including her father, who died when she was 12.
"There's my great-grandmother; she was almost 90 when these pictures were taken," Wilson says. "And there's my dad. I don't really remember all that much about him, so it was interesting to see him interact with other kids and with me when I was little. It was very interesting, very moving."
Americans have used hundreds of formats for audio and visual recordings since World War II. When the original playback equipment broke down, the recordings became unplayable for their owners. So the key to retrieving data from most obsolete media is to find a working machine, says Mark A. Hauck, production coordinator/ media services at Neumann College in Aston, Pa.
Experts say to start with the person who made the original tape, movie or files. He or she might have a machine that can be patched together long enough to make your transfers. Hobbyists hoard old cameras, tape decks and the like, so ask around.
Other sources are thrift shops, garage sales and newspaper ads. And the newest medium, the Internet, is one of the best places to look for retro tech. Try Web auction sites such as www.ebay.com.
Sometimes a little imagination and experimentation can help. For example, David Morton, research historian at the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University, says it's usually possible to find a way to play old audiotapes.
"You can modify a reel-to-reel tape player to play almost anything - even an 8-track, if you take it out of its old cartridge," he says.
But Bruce Sterling, a science fiction novelist and moderator for the Dead Media Project, an Internet study group, cautions that no medium - including new digital formats - is permanent. So keep your originals; you may need them again.
Here is advice from the experts about retrieving data from some of the most popular home media formats of the past few decades:
Reel-to-reel and 8-track audiotapes
"There are so many working reel-to-reel tape recorders out there that I think most people are able to pretty easily find a way to transfer them," Morton says.
"Most audio formats should have auxiliary jacks on the rear panel that say RECORD OUT/IN or AUX OUT/IN. The plugs that fit these jacks will either be RCA phono or quarter-inch phono. Connect the OUT jacks from the retro gear to the IN jacks of a good audiocassette, digital audiotape or minidisc with standard RCA cables.
"If no jacks are offered on the retro gear, you must record the audio acoustically with a microphone placed near the playback speaker[s]."
Apple IIe, IBM and other 5 1/4-inch drive computers
Early personal computers, including Apple II and IBM equipment, used 5 1/4-inch floppy disks.
Tom Carlson, creator of the virtual Museum of Obsolete Computers, says, "You've got three different problems that occur when you're trying to go from old stuff to new stuff. Step No. 1 is physical incompatibility: I've got a 5 1/4-inch disk and a 3 1/2-inch drive, and I can't physically stick one in the other.
"The second level is the basic operating system incompatibility. It may be a Macintosh disk and my computer won't read it. It could conceivably be a Commodore 64 disk or an old Atari disk. They're just totally different formats.
"And then the third level is, even if you can get the data from one computer to the other, do you have anything that can read it? Your copy of Word isn't going to be able to read those old word processor files."
Modern computers can't decipher Apple II disks, so your best bet for retrieving those files may be to find an Apple II machine with a modem, save the files in ASCII (text) format and send them to your new computer or to a bulletin board. Null modem cables connecting serial ports on each machine also may work using a terminal program, but you'll have to tinker, Carlson says.
For 5 1/4-inch disks in IBM-compatible format, you'll need a 5 1/4-inch drive, available at computer swap meets, by mail order or on the Internet.
The best solution, of course, is to be sure when you upgrade your computer that you don't abandon an old medium before you've moved all your data.
8 mm home movies
As video recorders became popular in the 1980s, most camera shops and drugstore photo departments offered to transfer movies from 8 mm to videocassette. The service is not so easy to find now.
Hauck says 8 mm films can sometimes be transferred by photographers who videotape weddings. Or you can do it yourself: "Borrow a projector and display the image onto a white piece of matte board. Place your camcorder on a tripod and tape that image."
Some mail-order catalogs also sell transfer boxes into which you put the lens of the projector. The image is reflected past a mirror and into the lens of your video camera.
Wire recordings
These analog recordings, made on thin wire instead of magnetic tape, are captured and played on a machine. Finding a working wire recorder is the trick. Morton says 10,000 to 15,000 were sold annually, even in the peak years of 1948-1949.
Once you have a working playback machine, the transfer can be as simple as putting a mike in front of the speaker.
"The audiophiles will tell you never to do that, but this is sort of a low-fi medium, and the results can be pretty good," Morton says. "Or you can make a direct connection, which requires getting into the machine. You can pretty easily feed the output of the wire recorder into the input of a cassette deck."
78 and 45 rpm records
The same transfer methods used with magnetic tapes can be used with records: Use jacks from the old to the new, or just stick a mike in front of a speaker and turn on your cassette to capture the sound.
It's also wise to stash away your originals.
"A lot of those old shellac 78s will outlive magnetic tape by an order of magnitude because they're not magnetically polarized," Sterling says. "If they take a hit from a passing cosmic ray or something, it's no problem."
Betamax video
Beta has survived as a professional medium, so tapes and equipment are readily available from Sony and from the many hobbyists who have stuck by the format and still use it.
Commercial movies also were issued in Beta, a Sony proprietary format.
"Beta tape can be easily dubbed to VHS," says Mark A. Hauck, production coordinator/media services at Neumann College in Aston, Pa. "As with the audio formats, a majority of VIDEO IN/OUT and AUDIO IN/OUT jacks on modern VCRs use the common RCA phone plugs. Connect these jacks, making sure AUDIO and VIDEO matches on both units."
The last word
Once you find a way to transfer your images or recordings, be selective in what is processed.
"Something's got to go. You don't want to drown in your own data," says the Dead Media Project's Sterling.
Photo buffs, he notes, can easily shoot four or five rolls of 35 mm film over a short period.
"If I get doubles, that's what, 600 pieces of film, from a weekend? Am I ever going to go put that stuff into any sort of retrospective order? I doubt it."
Want to learn more?
Here are some sources that can help you convert old audio and film media.
Betamax cassettes
Call Sony at 800-222-7669 or 800-488-7669 for parts and accessories. On the Web, surf to www.elektratec.demon.co.uk/home.html. This British fan site has links to U.S. suppliers, repair facilities and a chat room where users buy and sell machines and parts.
8 mm movies
Kodak (www.kodak.com) made most of the home movie camera systems used in the United States through the 1970s. You can still find cameras at independent retailers such as Prep Film Services in Northville, Mich. (800-793-3456). Locally, Ritz Camera will convert Super-8 movies to videotape for 12 cents per foot (about $6 for a 50-foot reel). On the Web, Mike Brantley, technology writer for the Mobile Register in Alabama, offers an extensive site with good links to suppliers and repair facilities. Surf to www.dibbs.net/brantley/super8.htm.
8-track tapes and players
Surf to www.8trackheaven.com, a helpful site with everything from RealAudio clips to a tutorial on cartridge repair.
Wire recordings and playback equipment
Surf to the Dead Media Society at www.rci.rutgers.edu/dmorton/ dead.html, a Rutgers University site "dedicated to the dead, dying or terminally ill technologies for recording sound."
Apple II and IBM 5[-inch disks
The Museum of Obsolete Computers has a lively message board and information on old computers. Surf to www.ncsc.dni.us/fun/user/ tcc/cmuseum/cmuseum.htm. For information on 5[-inch drives that will plug into the printer port of any PC, surf to www.micro-solutions.com.
Pub Date: 10/19/98