Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

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speedyG's picture
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Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hello AF-members

About 2 years ago i did quite rough research about Apple in the Internet
and collected about 60 or more links to pages related to the Apple and
related topics. I repeated a "refreshing" of that collected links
several days ago and realized a lot of that sources went offline...

well of course that can be expected in a general view....
quite a lot of that privat pages that are related to those poeple that have
reached quite passing age drop servicing their pages or carrying the fees related
to the service with privat homepages.....

but what really makes me quite irritated is that even large sources are shut down...

for example the University of Michigan hosted quite a bulk of pages related to the Apple II
and that pages just vanished away from internet ....
the University seems to have just deleted the entire directory and an the mainpage
there is no indication that this pages have been archived anywhere....

similar seems to be valid - at least in parts - with the Apple Documentation Project -
only parts of it have been hosted at asimov and the parts outside of asimov seen to have vanished...:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mressl/a2dp/

does anybody have knowledge which persons are related to the Apple Web Ring ?
maybe one of that persons past away and nobody entered the task of continueing
that listings and the management of preserving the contents before the sources went offline....

on keypoint is: if that is not managed every bulk of pages vanishing without beeing relocated
will be finally lost - irrevocable....

this is scaring because it indicates that even large members / branches within the formerly
so called "Apple Web Ring" are breaking of and it seems to me that the contents haven´t been
saved to alternate sources not that redirective links have been prepared ....

Similar situation is with the pages related to the Apple pages in New Zealand...:
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/
i guess this link is in nearly every secong link collection..

they hosted hundreds of pages and have been working as one of the most important mirrors
of other sites within the internet.... calling the adress only brings up the display
of the freshly installsd Apache server..... no other content....
i reaolly hope this is only temporary and that at least soon a page will be displayed
that former contant is just being reorganized and will be availiable soon again...
otherwise the community will loose ververal hundreds of pages containing hardwaremanuals,
pictures of hardware, and tons of software.....

I´m not able to perform at the moment an entire research to all the links i have collected...
but within this community it should be possible to verify which pages and sources went parttime offline
and which have vanished finally to the data nirvana......:
http://apple2.tffenterprises.com/apple2/
http://174.45.237.10:6502/apple2/a2shh1.htm

sincerely speedyG

jsa
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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hey SpeedyG.

I hope it's temporary. Some might be on the Internet Archive. Individuals over the years have amassed copies of the content as well, we just have to find them.

I realize this isn't the solution, but if you and others can archive or get copies of sources, I'd be willing to donate bandwidth, machines, hosting, etc., and we can make an effort to create a viable new (modern) collection and mirror. I have machines, transit and peering in multiple datacenters in the world (long story). I know it seems like a large undertaking, but we can make it a community effort, pool resources, establish a wiki, etc. I could talk to folks at the various universities and try to find private archives. Hope is not lost.

I have a number of these relationships (I'm involved in the establishment of the past/current Internet infrastructure) and can see what else we can find.

Obviously we can't materialize content that is gone, but I guarantee it exists in private archives. Ex-Apple people, some of the original Merit folk, etc.

-J

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hello JSA,

well to establish a platform to bear the contents is only one side of the medal -
allthough this is a very inportant aspect....

it would also be required to have an infrastructure that makes it knowlegable to the people,
that if they discontinue the hosting contract of their homepages - to offer a adress, where
that guys may send for an example a Backup DVD with the Apple content
that might be taken into the respository
and linked in the indexpage....

if such a really vaible respository would exist - i would be happy to make a backup of my archives
( being little more than 80 GB.... and is still increasing but far too large to host within my own webpage
which is limited to 3 GB and hosting also other topics too....) at the moment i´m happy that i have at least dragged down about 25% of the contents from the Documentation Center before the University of Michigan had shutted off the contents from internet....

and it might be a good idea to get in contact with the University of Michigan and trying to get access
to the backups of their servers ( at least that parts, that hosted the Documentation Center....

it´s a shame, that that source has seemingly just been shutoff without any kind of responsible actions taken before to ensure preservation....???

it would have been an act of responsibility to first contact other sites hosting Apple content and offering them a transfer of the contents to a site, that is vital for the next years and that may carry on the tourch and host the additional content....

but for example within my archives i have excluded nearly everything related to the Apple IIc.....
that´s just an example, that such archives are also determined by the favors of the guys, that keep them
and collect stuff for that archives....

but i guess this is a topic that should be kept "on the table" and if more sources get offline and material is vanishing from possible access, its far more a task that should be handled by more than only few persons....

i hope this thread gets some kind of results upraising if that development contionues....

sincerely speedyG

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Dont know if this is the same as what was up:

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/apple2/

jsa
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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?
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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

That´s excellent news.... the question remains why a redirecting link to the new location hasn´t been left at the former pages... and it remains with the question what happens if one of this sources drop off the list....
for example at the Documentation Center is the largest library of pictures about peripherial interfacecards which helps on identification of such cards.... not to talk about the other sources within the books and Software....
there is only a very smaller part within asimov....
and similar is valid about the contents at Michigan....
are there valid procedures in this locations how to handle preservation of the content,
when shutting off one of this sources ????
And the question still also remains on the topic of creating a place where stuff can be deposited with apple content
when other sources like private sources drop off the scene....
sincerely speedyG

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

I believe that stewardship is an alien concept to many sites, whether they be ftp, archive, any general www page, or any kind of repository. Not many site operators provide for continuity if their site goes down(for whatever reason). And that's a shame. Enormous amounts of material can be lost.

A lesson I learned very VERY early on in the days of 300 baud BBS'ing - If you see something online, or if it comes into your computer via a wire that connects to somebody else, consider it a temporary thing!

The source of the data can go away at any time. I learned this by getting a hacked copy of A2-FS1 with shaded mountains. I was short on disk space, and deleted it. I figured I could call up the BBS next week and get it again. After I finished mowing a few lawns I would then be able to afford another box of blank disks. Well, that wasn't the case. The BBS number gave those three tones and "We are sorry we are unable to complete your call. Please check the number and try again, or ask your operator for assistance." I figured that it would show up somewhere someplace sometime. Never saw it again.. My only hope for recovering this unique mod is to go through about 200 disks (out of 4,000+) and scan for and undelete files. Even snippets of the code would be useful in recreating it. I also have about 10 or 20 disks that are worn out from acting as "temporary" storage for my old BBS. These would start and stop and run constantly for months on end till they wore out. Thankfully I never trashed them, but put them in a box labeled EOL. With my data recovery skills built up over the years I hope to do something with them. And I strongly suspect the patched A2-FS1 is on one of those.

This also highlights the temporary nature of anything in the "cloud". Whatever term you use. Whatever material comes in through a wire IS TEMPORARY when compared against a local archive on floppy or HDD. Sites come and go, but your saved material that you took the time to, well, save, will always be there.

People naively think and believe that the internet is a big permanent "monster" that will always be around. Sure, that's probably true, but as we can see, content on it will change and fall out of favor, get lost, or just magically disappear.

A friend of mine thinks very similar and rapes, pillages, and plunders, anything and everything classic computing related. With special emphasis on 8-bit material. Filling TB HDD by the box full.

Now, on some message boards I frequent, I typically hear in casual conversation that Apple II guys are the worst when it comes to preserving documentation and original disks and all sorts of general information related to the platform.

Many theories and reasons have been proposed why this is so. And I'm not sure any of them are correct. The reasons I state also laughed out and poo-pooed by the wayside as invalid. But no one can explain why. So there you have it.

jsa
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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

I agree about the lack of permanency on the Internet. Well, at least for things you want to be permanent, as the case may be. Smile

As for setting up a new sanctuary, I'm still game. The one comforting piece I can offer as it relates to my space/bandwidth is that since I'm the founder of the datacenter company associated with it, I get to keep the rack/power/etc., so it's not going away if someone doesn't pay a bill or an ISP goes under. It's not a cloud service, though it would behave similarly. If we were really ambitious, we could set up self replicating mirroring in a few cities, but that would require I travel (unless we had collaborators in those cities). We could set up Amazon Glacier to back it up as well, just for safe keeping.

I throw it out there as an idea to discuss, there is no real rush. There are a thousand ways we could set up administration, as it would have to be collaborative because I just don't have enough time on my own.

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Would one site that hosts and covers all classic apple material even be feasible?
Asimov is a good start, but it's certainly incomplete. And there are these small pissant "rogue" sites. How does one go about reliably pilfering their material and putting into the master archive?

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Who is the person responsible for keeping asimov together?

It seems pretty robust, and if they are accepting mirrors, we can simple establish the system as a mirror as a start.

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hello to AF-Members,
the point at the moment would probably be first to contact the admins of the large sites, asking for permission of backing up session to one big respository....

that would porobably look like the top entry point of the site at New Zealand.....
they have at the top the major sites listed....

after that structure has been preserved next step would be to create a "public pass-incoming dir" similar to asimov
and creating a instruction page for unexperienced users....

then there should be a very general large dir structure similar to the one i´m using in my archives, that is very close to the structure used in the Documentation Center as the target for collecting and sorting of all the content from the private pages.....

and a group of persons willing to admin that respository.....

i´m willing to take part in such a task and, due to fact that i´m off from job tasks, i can offer quite time in that task...

my priority would be the Apple II line ...

therefor it would be very usefull for some poeple enlistening up here for other lines too,

like someone taking care of the early macs ( probably up before first G models entering market)
and another person taking care of the entire G series
and probably a person responsible for somputers from the very early era like the altair and cbm´s and similar....

I´d try to create within that respository a communication space for the admins for discussion on the furher handling and communication on tasks like taking concerns about vacation or absence replacements.... or spreading workloads....

by technical eqipment: i´m online with DSL flat 16000MBit so i can handle quite a lot of trafic and transferamounts
without getting charged besides anything else except the basic flatrate i pay anyway...

sincerely speedyG

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

I sent an email off to modus-apple2@pr.es.to, which at least used to be the email for whomever is moderating the asimov archive. I'll start there. Baby steps. Smile

This was the mirror list as of 5/2012:

List as of May 2012

Full mirror:

ftp://208.185.231.250/pub/apple_II/
ftp://public.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
ftp://lahtermaher.org/pub/emulators/apple/

partial mirror:

http://ftp.crihan.fr/crihan/apple.asimov.net/ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
ftp://fr2.php.net/crihan/apple.asimov.net/ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
ftp://ftp5.fr.proftpd.org/crihan/apple.asimov.net/ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/
ftp://www.macbsd.com/pub/ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/
ftp://ftp.cuhk.hk/pub/oldies/apple2/
ftp://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk/pub/oldies/apple2/
http://linuxfan.org/~todor/down/www.apple2.org.za/mirrors/ftp.apple.asimov.net/images/

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hello jsa,

of couse at the start of the thread - is was the point taking a view to the large sites -

but in the progress the question raised, that in majority the problem will be the smaller sites
without and kind of mirror at all....
for that kind of sources there is no backing up at all....
i just think about that guys like me that have reached age beyond 60....
i seriously doubt after passing away, that any of my heirs will realy take effort of preserving the archive...
the reality will be the moment the payments to the hoster stop... latest 2 years after that - contents will be deleted..
at least if i don´t take care in my lifetime before passing away....
and this is a common problem to a lot of Apple enthusiasts...

and remaining to the large sources is the question - have steps been taken, that for example if the management of a University decides to "free" their servers from specific content - that such contents aren´t "lost in space"....

this might kick a task to make an interview with the sysops or admins of the larger sites to research if such
a "todo"-list for preservetions exists
.... within that investigation it should also be asked - if the "todo" list is updated / verified periodically ...i.e. : it´s not a good idea to backup contents to an alternate source that isn´t online anymore...

but at the moment - it´s of course a good news, that seemingly the large sources are mirrored....
although it is also not calming us to herethat parts of that mirrors only partialy mirror some contants...

i believe there are still some tasks remaining to do......

sincerely speedyG

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Delete

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

I've found that the most successful way to make copies of my site is to offer it on DVD for the cost of postage. I've sent over 30 DVD sets to people all over the world. After Asimov, there are more copies of Mac GUI Vault than of any other Apple II archive. Most recently, someone even made a torrent of it all.

Calling everyone else a "pissant 'rogue' site" is probably not the best way to start this project.

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Well, obviously a lot of history here and a tremendous amount of work went into everyone's collections.

I completely agree that any single site mirror doesn't preserve the archive entirely. You all probably know about the efforts of the Internet Archive, such as the Apple1 Cassettes:

http://archive.org/details/Apple1Cassettes

...or the Apple II image library collection:

http://archive.org/details/apple-ii-disk-collection

Part of the idea behind this was preservation, with an organization whose charter is to keep things beyond any single person or organization's life span.

In a similar vein, when folks orchestrated some of the early domain name system and the theory around it, the idea was that no one single element could eliminate a record. So for that reason, what I would suggest is that folks like the Mac GUI Vault and Asimov collections, along with any other small site that can be preserved, be combined into one reflecting mirror that auto-updates itself across many nodes worldwide, located at network access points and other exchanges. Then those archives would transition to being reflections of this new, combined architecture.

I'm just throwing out ideas here, feel free to tell me I'm a lunatic...

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

not at all.... but there are still some problems remaining with this....
just let me get in detail in one example i can trust in:
along with the last 12 months i´ve started to scan the entire bunch of German User magazins from AUGE,
( Apple User Group Europe ) from 1979 till 1986 and converting them to PDF-files by anual files....
my webspace is that limited that i haven´t launched them up online up till now....
and i have scanned in the same time several hundreds of books but before they may be launched for
public use there is still the problem remaining with the German publishers and the copyright and therefor
i have refused to release them to public up till now.... there is a difference in law here in europe
compared to the USA and for example the solution taken along with google books by U.S. laws.....
that are issues to be solved before tossing along the entire bunch of scans to internet.....

just by the way .... some of these issues would even lead me to prefer part of the discussion not in the
public area but rather more in the pm area..... up till now i can continue to argue that the entire bunch
of scans is just remaining ( at least for the moment ) for private archives....

and i´m not talking about the fact that i´m still sitting on the bunch of listings of the entire source code of UCSD still remaining unscanned up till now... and i also have bunches of CPM compilers like LOGO, LISP, PL1,
Fortran 80, Pascal MT+, MuLiSP, COBOL80 and disassemblers like TRACE80 which still must be converted someday to
images in DSK format.... or the entire collection of the German technotes....

within that archive of more than 80 GB more than 25% have never been released to the internet yet...
due to legal issues or to limited webspace or still waiting for being scanned...

just to give a idea about what i´m talking:
the archive subdirectory of magazines has 42 magazines listed with each in one subdir and the entire bunch of subdirs amount up in the dir magazines to 25,9 GB ! And i´still sitting on a pile of Dr Dobbs Journal from the early 80´s remaining unscanned and therefor even not a specific subdir created...

jsa
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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Well, just a thought:

At Digg we ran into some similar issues related to international copyright considerations, and one option (probably similar to other archives) is to create the directory/file tree, include the copyrighted material, but only list the item and make it impossible to download. Then create an online process where permission may be granted, such as Getty Images or other sites have done. Take no money, but once you are in contact with the proper copyright holder, give them the ability to grant rights online. If they insist on collecting money for it, you could create a transaction engine.

This way we (the community) feel comfortable that the item exists, isn't lost to the hyperspace of the Internet past, yet we respect any touchy copyright issues.

I could get something like this coded and set up, create an uploading mechanism or rsync process, and then let the chips fall where they may. Wink

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

Hello jsa,
well just some arguments...:
how do i fit 80 GB in a site limited to 3 GB ?
and to tell the truth... there sre also some limits to run a kind of business ( even if it´s running at other persons behalf.. )

up to the very moment my target is only to complete adrchives as far as possible by completing material to dirs that is still missing, like adding interfacecards by pictures ROM images images from related sidks and adding circuitplans to that dirs... another target is archivieng entire availiable material in german language because there is only very few material in german language availiable in internet.... i also have nearly the entire bulk of PD-software related to the Apple and released between 1979 and 1986 ( including international sources like all disks from IAC and so on )
it would go far to far to list everything here within that archive.....

At the moment my preferred solution would be uploading the stuff to a provider or organisation and somebody checking along the dirs for notes i might add to explain if the stuff has been released previously in some source in internet or if origin is by scanning from me or if copyright is not researched yet...( requiring to research copyright holder from publishers notes off the book cover or magazin cover ) and similar notes to the pictures classifying pictures ripped from other persons site or pictures with origin taken by me.... in such cases ( the picture or content taken from other privat site ) i usually have performed a conversion to pdf-file and that file contains in headerline the webadress of the site where the content has been saved from....

pm sent

sincerely speedyG

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

This is an awesome idea. I've collected all sorts of Apple software and documentation, whenever i find a site of interest i tend to download it all over the next few months for fear of it disappearing.

To have free hosting would be incredible.

Site structure and weeding out duplicates would be very time consuming, but who is to say this is a quick easy project, it would be a work in progress.

Copyright is and always be an issue, I'm sure lots of the content on Asimov is still copyright and doesn't have the permission of the copyright holders, but then again many of those companies no longer exist.

I like the idea of a password protected area for when permission is granted. So at least we can archive all of the software and documentation for prosperity sake.

Not sure if I can be of any use, but I'll put my hand up for helping.

Cheers, Martin...

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

btw, if anyone would like the Vault DVD set, that is still available. Just email me, dog_cow@macgui.com

I could also SFTP the entire Vault collection on to your server-- just provide me with your server details.

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Re: Apple Internet Sources going OFFLINE ?

I'll get a machine and service set up with some TBs of space. I'm just hunting for some kind of file/repo management software that would be a bit more robust with web options and roles.

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