A Python Toolchest to excavate data media into static HTML pages.
Old, rare and often historically important computers uses weird character sets, data formats and data media, which makes it hard to study and appreciate what those historic artifacts teach us.
This project is a toolbox for presenting datamedia as static HTML files which can be browsed with any browser either locally or from a webserver.
Here are two examples to show what we are talking about:
This excavation contains harddisk images from Commodore CBM900 machines. This was a prototype UNIX computer which Commodore abandoned after building a few hundred prototypes of which only a dozen or so has survived. (More info: https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900)
Start with this deep link, which shows you the contents of the "fortune" file, and use the various links to navigate the full excavation:
https://datamuseum.dk/aa/cbm900//5c/5caa31010.html
The GIER was the second computer designed and built in Denmark, and like most computers built in the 1950-1960 timeframe, it had it's own character set, data formats and used paper-tape as datamedia.
GIER is of course also the computer Peter Naur, of Backus-Naur-Notatation fame worked on, and his demonstration program is a good example of the output:
https://datamuseum.dk/aa/gier/9c/9cb418c94.html
You can find a full list of the excavations maintained by datamuseum.dk here:
If you want to try for yourself, you can run this example::
python3 bitsavers_demo.py
This will fetch some IBM S/34 floppies from bitsavers.org and excavate them into your /tmp directory, this probably takes some minutes, and then tell you to point your browser at the excavation.
I have started a proper documentation project, but there is not much in it yet, I plan to flesh it out as I saunter through the source code in the future:
https://datamuseum.dk/aa/docs/
The development in this project is very much driven by the needs of datamuseum.dk's data preservation activities, but we are trying very hard to move in the direction of generality and usability.
Right now you probably need at least basic python skills to use this, but you can probably get far by playing with and modifying the scripts in the ddhf subdirectory.
(Yes, I'm working on a command line interface)
/phk