#vintagemedia — Public Fediverse posts

Nibble Stew: Digitizing super 8 film yourself. “In our previous post we looked at fixing a super 8 film projector. While watching film with a real projector has its own charm, it is inconvenient to say the least. … Even if you manage not to burn the film, merely running it through the projector causes wear, scratches and tearing. While film typically ages very well, eventually it will turn […]

Nibble Stew: Digitizing super 8 film yourself. “In our previous post we looked at fixing a super 8 film projector. While watching film with a real projector has its own charm, it is inconvenient to say the least. … Even if you manage not to burn the film, merely running it through the projector causes wear, scratches and tearing. While film typically ages very well, eventually it will turn […]

Council on Library and Information Resources: CLIR Awards Nearly $1 Million in Recordings at Risk Grant Funds. “The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to announce the thirteenth cohort of projects for Recordings at Risk, CLIR’s program that funds the digitization of rare and unique audio and audiovisual materials. An independent review panel selected 24 projects […]

Council on Library and Information Resources: CLIR Awards Nearly $1 Million in Recordings at Risk Grant Funds. “The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to announce the thirteenth cohort of projects for Recordings at Risk, CLIR’s program that funds the digitization of rare and unique audio and audiovisual materials. An independent review panel selected 24 projects […]

How-To Geek: This 3D Blockbuster recreation brings back the video store browsing that streaming killed. “Walking through the aisles of a video store used to be half the fun of a movie night. You judged films by their cover art, stumbled across forgotten classics, and often left with something you never planned to watch. A new site called Bingebuster brings back that experience with a fully […]

How-To Geek: This 3D Blockbuster recreation brings back the video store browsing that streaming killed. “Walking through the aisles of a video store used to be half the fun of a movie night. You judged films by their cover art, stumbled across forgotten classics, and often left with something you never planned to watch. A new site called Bingebuster brings back that experience with a fully […]

Ohio History Connection: Listen, Watch and Connect with LGBTQ+ History. “In 2025, the Ohio History Connection (OHC) was awarded a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to preserve fragile magnetic media – U-Matic, VHS, audio cassettes and 3/4” audiotape – that were reaching the end of their lifespan. The grant made it possible to work with […]

Ohio History Connection: Listen, Watch and Connect with LGBTQ+ History. “In 2025, the Ohio History Connection (OHC) was awarded a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to preserve fragile magnetic media – U-Matic, VHS, audio cassettes and 3/4” audiotape – that were reaching the end of their lifespan. The grant made it possible to work with […]

The Register: Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory. “If you have wistful longings for the days when your songs carried the subtle hiss of the cassettes you listened to, we have some reel good news. A new project takes modern music back to the analog era. The project, available on GitHub, is called ‘Audio Cassette Simulation’ and uses FFmpeg to transcode […]

The Register: Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory. “If you have wistful longings for the days when your songs carried the subtle hiss of the cassettes you listened to, we have some reel good news. A new project takes modern music back to the analog era. The project, available on GitHub, is called ‘Audio Cassette Simulation’ and uses FFmpeg to transcode […]

Hmm, here's a brand new media format I haven't run into before. Something called (I think) "Playtape" #vintagemedia

Hmm, here's a brand new media format I haven't run into before. Something called (I think) "Playtape" #vintagemedia

TechSpot: A new coding contest challenges developers to fit an entire game onto a 1.44MB floppy disk. “Korean website 2P Game Arcade recently launched a new ‘1.44MB Game Dev Contest.’ The challenge is simple: developers must create an entire game that fits on a single floppy disk. The maximum file size is 1,474,560 bytes, matching the capacity of the 3.5-inch high-density floppy disks commonly […]

TechSpot: A new coding contest challenges developers to fit an entire game onto a 1.44MB floppy disk. “Korean website 2P Game Arcade recently launched a new ‘1.44MB Game Dev Contest.’ The challenge is simple: developers must create an entire game that fits on a single floppy disk. The maximum file size is 1,474,560 bytes, matching the capacity of the 3.5-inch high-density floppy disks commonly […]

Hackaday: It’s Now Imperative That You Copy That Floppy. “Copy That Floppy! only briefly touches on the most ideal situation — that is, buying a USB floppy drive and making copies of the bog standard 3.5 inch disks you might come across. It then moves right on into more advanced topics, such as interfacing with less common drive types, how to safely clean floppies, and the use of advanced […]

Hackaday: It’s Now Imperative That You Copy That Floppy. “Copy That Floppy! only briefly touches on the most ideal situation — that is, buying a USB floppy drive and making copies of the bog standard 3.5 inch disks you might come across. It then moves right on into more advanced topics, such as interfacing with less common drive types, how to safely clean floppies, and the use of advanced […]

Engadget: PlayStation just struck a hammer blow to game preservation. “So, that’s it then. As of 2028, game discs will be a thing of the past for PlayStation. And after previously attempting to do so five years ago — before a backlash prompted it to reverse course — Sony is finally shuttering the digital storefronts on PS3 and PlayStation Vita. It doesn’t seem like the company will back […]

Engadget: PlayStation just struck a hammer blow to game preservation. “So, that’s it then. As of 2028, game discs will be a thing of the past for PlayStation. And after previously attempting to do so five years ago — before a backlash prompted it to reverse course — Sony is finally shuttering the digital storefronts on PS3 and PlayStation Vita. It doesn’t seem like the company will back […]

Designboom: VHS tapes and cassette recordings replace yarn in a woven archive of collective memory.”In Stories Seen and Heard (2025), Polish artist Kuba Święcicki transforms discarded VHS tapes and cassette recordings into a monumental woven installation, asking what happens when obsolete technology becomes a craft material. Encountered as part of Visteria Foundation’s Craft Days […]

Designboom: VHS tapes and cassette recordings replace yarn in a woven archive of collective memory.”In Stories Seen and Heard (2025), Polish artist Kuba Święcicki transforms discarded VHS tapes and cassette recordings into a monumental woven installation, asking what happens when obsolete technology becomes a craft material. Encountered as part of Visteria Foundation’s Craft Days […]

The Register: Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR. “Anthony Caccese, a principal product lead for enterprise platforms at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by day and a Raspberry Pi tinkerer by night, recently published an open-source project called 240-MP on GitHub. It’s a simple concept: Text-based menus that look like an old-school VCR interface, but with […]

The Register: Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR. “Anthony Caccese, a principal product lead for enterprise platforms at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by day and a Raspberry Pi tinkerer by night, recently published an open-source project called 240-MP on GitHub. It’s a simple concept: Text-based menus that look like an old-school VCR interface, but with […]

Digital Preservation at the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives: Digging for Data: Recovering Files from Forgotten Word Processing Systems. “The collections we work with contain disks from machines that were once used professionally but are now largely forgotten. While imaging the disks themselves was possible, none of our usual tools, or others we could find online, were able to […]

Digital Preservation at the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives: Digging for Data: Recovering Files from Forgotten Word Processing Systems. “The collections we work with contain disks from machines that were once used professionally but are now largely forgotten. While imaging the disks themselves was possible, none of our usual tools, or others we could find online, were able to […]

CD-ROM Journal: A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS. “XD-submit Vol. 1, as it turns out, is a promotional disc for a Kansai-area bulletin board system (BBS) called XD FirstClass Network. As I started digging into it I assumed this would be sort of a basic information kit, a digital pamphlet or something, but it’s something a lot more exotic: a functioning archive of […]

CD-ROM Journal: A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS. “XD-submit Vol. 1, as it turns out, is a promotional disc for a Kansai-area bulletin board system (BBS) called XD FirstClass Network. As I started digging into it I assumed this would be sort of a basic information kit, a digital pamphlet or something, but it’s something a lot more exotic: a functioning archive of […]

The Quietus: Rotting Tape and the Gentrification of African Pop: Why We Must Save the Nollywood Archive. “VHS magnetic tape is incredibly fragile and has a limited lifespan, especially when stacked haphazardly in the un-airconditioned corners of Lagos living rooms or the labyrinthine, corrugated-iron warehouses of Alaba International Market. As I write this, thousands of original films from the […]

The Quietus: Rotting Tape and the Gentrification of African Pop: Why We Must Save the Nollywood Archive. “VHS magnetic tape is incredibly fragile and has a limited lifespan, especially when stacked haphazardly in the un-airconditioned corners of Lagos living rooms or the labyrinthine, corrugated-iron warehouses of Alaba International Market. As I write this, thousands of original films from the […]

Turned up in my Calishat Snaps: Tristan Davey’s Punch Card Archive. I think it launched around February 2025 but I’m not sure. “At their peak of use, in the 1950s and 60s, hundreds of companies around the world printed millions of punch cards every month. Yet within a few years of their obsolescence they all but disappeared from the public consciousness. This archive captures a small selection […]

Turned up in my Calishat Snaps: Tristan Davey’s Punch Card Archive. I think it launched around February 2025 but I’m not sure. “At their peak of use, in the 1950s and 60s, hundreds of companies around the world printed millions of punch cards every month. Yet within a few years of their obsolescence they all but disappeared from the public consciousness. This archive captures a small selection […]

Tom’s Hardware: Relive the PC magazine cover disk era with 758-strong archive.org CD-ROM collection — 1.2TB treasure trove also includes Floppy Disks from as early as 1993. “Earlier today, our sister site PC Gamer revealed that there is now a treasure trove of its cover disks (floppies, CDs, and DVDs) archived and ready to enjoy. PC Gamer’s headline highlights the 758 cover disks on the […]

Tom’s Hardware: Relive the PC magazine cover disk era with 758-strong archive.org CD-ROM collection — 1.2TB treasure trove also includes Floppy Disks from as early as 1993. “Earlier today, our sister site PC Gamer revealed that there is now a treasure trove of its cover disks (floppies, CDs, and DVDs) archived and ready to enjoy. PC Gamer’s headline highlights the 758 cover disks on the […]

Library of Congress Blog: A (tiny) recording of Amelia Earhart’s 1932 London speech, played for the first time. “When her memoir, ‘The Fun of It,’ came out a few months later, her publisher (who was also her husband and promoter, George Putnam) threw in a nifty promotional gimmick: a tiny 78 rpm record of a snippet of that speech, tucked inside the back cover. A little over nine decades […]

Library of Congress Blog: A (tiny) recording of Amelia Earhart’s 1932 London speech, played for the first time. “When her memoir, ‘The Fun of It,’ came out a few months later, her publisher (who was also her husband and promoter, George Putnam) threw in a nifty promotional gimmick: a tiny 78 rpm record of a snippet of that speech, tucked inside the back cover. A little over nine decades […]

Harvard Gazette: Time has not been kind to VHS. “After winning the battle for dominance with the Betamax cassette, the VHS ushered in an era of amateur filmmaking, home movie collections, and video store rentals. Recognizing the value of the new format, Harvard curators quickly began amassing materials on VHS. Though no single tally of Harvard’s VHS holdings exists, a 2018 count of […]

Harvard Gazette: Time has not been kind to VHS. “After winning the battle for dominance with the Betamax cassette, the VHS ushered in an era of amateur filmmaking, home movie collections, and video store rentals. Recognizing the value of the new format, Harvard curators quickly began amassing materials on VHS. Though no single tally of Harvard’s VHS holdings exists, a 2018 count of […]

I mentioned the grant for this project years ago but not when the project launched: HBCU Radio Preservation. From the Who We Are page: “HBCU radio stations train students entering broadcasting careers and provide an outlet for communities to engage on issues while reveling in the sounds of the Black diaspora. Their rhythms and stories demand to be heard. And yet, the original programming […]

I mentioned the grant for this project years ago but not when the project launched: HBCU Radio Preservation. From the Who We Are page: “HBCU radio stations train students entering broadcasting careers and provide an outlet for communities to engage on issues while reveling in the sounds of the Black diaspora. Their rhythms and stories demand to be heard. And yet, the original programming […]

Hackaday: Zip-Drive Emulator Puts Big Disks Back On LPT. “[Minh Danh] is one of those who still has affection for Zip drives, and when his parallel port Zip 100 drive started to give up the ghost last year, he decided to do something bold: reverse engineer it, and produce an emulator. First software, and then in hardware.”

Hackaday: Zip-Drive Emulator Puts Big Disks Back On LPT. “[Minh Danh] is one of those who still has affection for Zip drives, and when his parallel port Zip 100 drive started to give up the ghost last year, he decided to do something bold: reverse engineer it, and produce an emulator. First software, and then in hardware.”

University of New Mexico: Bringing hundreds of New Mexico Spanish archives online. “Center for Southwest Research (CSWR) archivist Samuel Sisneros and Center for Regional Studies fellow María Feliza Monta-Jameson are at the helm of the New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project. They are working to preserve archival collections of audio and video interviews of native New Mexico […]

University of New Mexico: Bringing hundreds of New Mexico Spanish archives online. “Center for Southwest Research (CSWR) archivist Samuel Sisneros and Center for Regional Studies fellow María Feliza Monta-Jameson are at the helm of the New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project. They are working to preserve archival collections of audio and video interviews of native New Mexico […]

Popular Science: The archivist preserving decaying floppy disks. “In collaboration with retro computing enthusiasts who have built specialized floppy-imaging tools, [Leontien Talboom]’s recovered data from hundreds of historically significant disks in the library’s collection—including previously inaccessible lectures by physicist Stephen Hawking.”

Popular Science: The archivist preserving decaying floppy disks. “In collaboration with retro computing enthusiasts who have built specialized floppy-imaging tools, [Leontien Talboom]’s recovered data from hundreds of historically significant disks in the library’s collection—including previously inaccessible lectures by physicist Stephen Hawking.”

The Concordian: Concordia’s Visual Collections Repository shrinks services amid funding deficits. “Concordia’s Visual Collection Repository (VCR) has faced significant budget cuts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, making it difficult for the repository to sustainably provide access to its resources. The repository is the custodian of diverse archival moving image collections — housed in […]

The Concordian: Concordia’s Visual Collections Repository shrinks services amid funding deficits. “Concordia’s Visual Collection Repository (VCR) has faced significant budget cuts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, making it difficult for the repository to sustainably provide access to its resources. The repository is the custodian of diverse archival moving image collections — housed in […]

University of Miami: Preserving the legacy of the first woman US attorney general. “Through a major preservation effort led by University of Miami Libraries, damaged physical media from the Janet Reno Papers have been digitized and recently made available to the public, offering deeper insight into the former attorney general’s life and legacy.”

University of Miami: Preserving the legacy of the first woman US attorney general. “Through a major preservation effort led by University of Miami Libraries, damaged physical media from the Janet Reno Papers have been digitized and recently made available to the public, offering deeper insight into the former attorney general’s life and legacy.”

The Register: Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote . “Smart TV UIs are hard enough for adults to navigate, let alone preschoolers. When his three-year-old couldn’t learn to navigate with a remote, one Danish computer scientist did what any enterprising creator would do: He turned an old floppy disk drive into a kid-friendly content controller that starts streams […]

The Register: Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote . “Smart TV UIs are hard enough for adults to navigate, let alone preschoolers. When his three-year-old couldn’t learn to navigate with a remote, one Danish computer scientist did what any enterprising creator would do: He turned an old floppy disk drive into a kid-friendly content controller that starts streams […]

Without Why: The Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project. “A massive trove of legendary lectures by philosopher Hubert L. Dreyfus is currently confined to aging cassette tapes in a closet in the Berkeley Hills. With your support, we can build a professionally curated audio archive that preserves this irreplaceable material and makes it accessible to new generations of listeners. Dreyfus’s ideas […]

Without Why: The Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project. “A massive trove of legendary lectures by philosopher Hubert L. Dreyfus is currently confined to aging cassette tapes in a closet in the Berkeley Hills. With your support, we can build a professionally curated audio archive that preserves this irreplaceable material and makes it accessible to new generations of listeners. Dreyfus’s ideas […]

MakeUseOf: This free app turned my phone into a portable film scanner. “As someone taking on the task of preserving my family’s photo collection and getting into the world of half-frame film photography in 2025, I was surprised to find FilmBox surpassed my expectations.”

MakeUseOf: This free app turned my phone into a portable film scanner. “As someone taking on the task of preserving my family’s photo collection and getting into the world of half-frame film photography in 2025, I was surprised to find FilmBox surpassed my expectations.”

Nation.Cymru: National Library of Wales helps preserve Wales’ audio-visual heritage. “A key output of the project will be the creation of publicly accessible documentation detailing best practice for the digitisation of historic film collections. This resource will be shared widely, supporting other heritage and archival organisations in adopting effective preservation strategies.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/24/nation-cymru-national-library-of-wales-helps-preserve-wales-audio-visual-heritage/

Nation.Cymru: National Library of Wales helps preserve Wales’ audio-visual heritage. “A key output of the project will be the creation of publicly accessible documentation detailing best practice for the digitisation of historic film collections. This resource will be shared widely, supporting other heritage and archival organisations in adopting effective preservation strategies.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/24/nation-cymru-national-library-of-wales-helps-preserve-wales-audio-visual-heritage/

Tom’s Hardware: Gigantic VHS videotape hoard of thousands of videos stored in McDonald’s boxes being given away for free — Internet Archive looks set to claim the tapes of U.S. news output spanning 2004-09. “If you would like to rehome thousands of old VHS videotapes, there’s an incredible hoard of these nostalgic artifacts from the days of analog TV, stored carefully in McDonald’s boxes, […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/18/toms-hardware-gigantic-vhs-videotape-hoard-of-thousands-of-videos-stored-in-mcdonalds-boxes-being-given-away-for-free-internet-archive-looks-set-to-claim-the-tapes-of-u-s-news-output-s/

Tom’s Hardware: Gigantic VHS videotape hoard of thousands of videos stored in McDonald’s boxes being given away for free — Internet Archive looks set to claim the tapes of U.S. news output spanning 2004-09. “If you would like to rehome thousands of old VHS videotapes, there’s an incredible hoard of these nostalgic artifacts from the days of analog TV, stored carefully in McDonald’s boxes, […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/18/toms-hardware-gigantic-vhs-videotape-hoard-of-thousands-of-videos-stored-in-mcdonalds-boxes-being-given-away-for-free-internet-archive-looks-set-to-claim-the-tapes-of-u-s-news-output-s/

How-To Geek: Why digital photos from the 2000s are disappearing (and what you can do about it). “It might not feel like it,but digital photography is still relatively new. Yet once the digital shutterbug bit, everyone was taking photos all the time. The thing is, those digital photos from the early 2000s are at risk of disappearing forever—here’s why.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/18/how-to-geek-why-digital-photos-from-the-2000s-are-disappearing-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/