Cold dead media

by

PARADISEC’s director Linda Barwick has been raising the alarm for years about the way media are becoming obsolete because the machines to read them are dying.
So it was very sad to hear the death-rattle on the CHILDES list in this message from Brian MacWhinney

Dear Colleagues,
It appears that we are now just about at the end of the rope in terms of our ability to rescue by digitization any data from the 1970s and early 1980s that was recorded using the half-inch reel-to-reel video of that time. The problem is that the machines required to play these tapes are now virtually all non-functional. And there are no “new” units of this type that one can purchase. I have been working with Canaan Media in New Jersey to rescue old audio and video through digitization. The old reel-to-reel audio is not at all a problem and the machines that read these tapes will last still for decades. However, the Sony and Toshiba machines that read the half-inch helical tapes seem to be more sensitive. Canaan Media has three of the Sony AV-3650 machines, but none of them are operational. They have asked me to post a note to info-childes asking if anyone has operational machines like the Sony AV-3650. If so, we would be happy to pay for shipping costs to send these to New Jersey…..

Go to info-childes AT googlegroups.com for more information

Email, RSS Follow

4 thoughts on “Cold dead media”

  2. Thanks! Have passed it on – guess there may be a “buyer beware” concern. What they need is a handy, inventive, cannibaliser of old machines to build new ones. AIATSIS used to have such an essential person – who haunted auctions hunting down old recording machines for spare parts.

  4. Hi, Just stumbled across this blog.
    I have several of the machines in working order here in Sydney. Not interested in selling as I still use them for archiving material but if I can be of help, let me know.
    Roderick AT stagesafety dot com

Here at Endangered Languages and Cultures, we fully welcome your opinion, questions and comments on any post, and all posts will have an active comments form. However if you have never commented before, your comment may take some time before it is approved. Subsequent comments from you should appear immediately.

We will not edit any comments unless asked to, or unless there have been html coding errors, broken links, or formatting errors. We still reserve the right to censor any comment that the administrators deem to be unnecessarily derogatory or offensive, libellous or unhelpful, and we have an active spam filter that may reject your comment if it contains too many links or otherwise fits the description of spam. If this happens erroneously, email the author of the post and let them know. And note that given the huge amount of spam that all WordPress blogs receive on a daily basis (hundreds) it is not possible to sift through them all and find the ham.

In addition to the above, we ask that you please observe the Gricean maxims:

*Be relevant: That is, stay reasonably on topic.

*Be truthful: This goes without saying; don’t give us any nonsense.

*Be concise: Say as much as you need to without being unnecessarily long-winded.

*Be perspicuous: This last one needs no explanation.

We permit comments and trackbacks on our articles. Anyone may comment. Comments are subject to moderation, filtering, spell checking, editing, and removal without cause or justification.

All comments are reviewed by comment spamming software and by the site administrators and may be removed without cause at any time. All information provided is volunteered by you. Any website address provided in the URL will be linked to from your name, if you wish to include such information. We do not collect and save information provided when commenting such as email address and will not use this information except where indicated. This site and its representatives will not be held responsible for errors in any comment submissions.

Again, we repeat: We reserve all rights of refusal and deletion of any and all comments and trackbacks.

Leave a Comment