telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (12/13/90)
Long time readers will recall that the archives for TELECOM Digest used to be located at Boston University when Jon Solomon was the Moderator here and an employee of BU. About the time of his departure from BU, the archives were moved to MIT where they are presently housed. The problem that came up was in the compression/uncompression of the old files to save space at BU, where space was at a premium. During 1988, Volumes 1 through 7 were compressed to save space on bu.edu. Later, in early 1989, the first part of Volume 8 was also compressed *at bu.edu*. For some reason, the compression technique was faulty, and we were unable to satisfactoily uncompress much of the old stuff. What we were able to get was put up at MIT, and you will note in your index to the Archives that Volumes 1 through 8 are spotty; various issues are missing. In addition, Volumes 4 and 5 were poorly handled from the start, and numerous issues never made it to the Archives, or got there in a bizarre, mixed up order. As my late friend, Gabriel Heater would say, "There is good news tonight!" ... for some long-forgotten backup tapes were found at waterloo.edu which filled in many of the gaps in Volumes 4 and 5. The same tapes had stuff from Volumes 2 and 3 also, but unfortunatly it was duplicated with what I already had on file. The main thing is, Volume 4 has been almost doubled in size. Many missing issues from Volume 5 have been restored. In addition, there were (as you very, very old timers will know) a number of messages sent out loose, in non-digest format during the fall of 1985, during a period when Jon Solomon was unable to care for the Digest due to some personal problems. Changes in mailing procedures, digesting procedures and other kinks also made Volumes 4 and 5 sort of messy, but at least we now have almost all the missing issues in custody once again from 1984 and 1985. Over the next month or so, as time permits, I will go through and try to weed out the duplicates, and organize the remainder into some kind of logical order. For now, you'll see some duplicate and overlapping files if you visit the Archives. We still need help from backup tapes with some of the old issues: Volumes 1, 2, and 3 are missing some issues. Volume 8 is missing quite a few from early in 1988. Of particular interest is Volume 1, issues 1 through 3, most of which is lost, except for the file 'first.issue.cover'. My very grateful thanks to waterloo for keeping those old tapes all this time! Anyone else have any dusty issues of TELECOM Digest in storage at their site? Patrick Townson