When I was in grad school back in the '80s, 9 track magtapes were the standard for lots of things: backups and long term storage being some of them. (I still ha

When I was in grad school back in the '80s, 9 track magtapes were the standard for lots of things: backups and long term storage being some of them. (I still have one or two tapes in a box somewhere.) About 10-15 years ago, it dawned on me that I hadn't seen a working tape drive in quite a while. Any tapes, even if the media were intact (highly doubtful, and the point of the parent article) would not be readable. Much the same comment for boxes of punch cards. (My late colleague used to tear off pieces of the cards and use them for "filters" in his roll-your-own cigarettes.) I guess my point is, even if the media are reliable (holes in cardboard? pretty foolproof from an ink-on-vellum viewpoint) the entire surrounding ecosystem needs to survive for archival purposes.