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Seeking help to preserve WWII database on Windows 98
- leed25d 3y agoMy (late) uncle Ralph is probably in that database. Can I get a copy of the ISO? I'll help in any way that I can.
- jdthedisciple 3y agoI think you may wanna reply on Twitter.
- leed25d 3y agoI don't have an account there and I am not going to create one
- tommek4077 3y agoI don't see the discussion on Twitter as I have no account and do not see.the answers on Twitter, but don't you just need virtualbox? CD-Roms are still there and the the underlying tech is also still the same.
- notpushkin 3y agoLooks like it's an Access database. Perhaps convert it to SQLite and publish with something like https://datasette.io/ https://datasette.io/? I think the problem is, thread author doesn't know how to rip an ISO of the CD or move the database out; looks like they are getting help already though.
- dmurray 3y agoYes, if the author was technical enough to rip an ISO and host (or seed) it somewhere, there would already be 3 Github projects linked in this thread extracting and visualising the data.
- bilekas 3y agoIf they manage to get the ISO available can someone please share here ? I really don't want to sign up to Twitter just to follow along.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoVirtualBox dropped support for 9x versions of Windows some time ago, and although it's "possible" to get it working, it works very badly.
- noobermin 3y agoHow is it possible to do this? Isn't all you need is to emulate is at least a 386 or 486? They removed emulation of that cpu target?????
- LeoPanthera 3y agoNot just the CPU, but also the older chipsets that Windows 9x thinks is current. It only supports emulation of chipsets much newer than those versions of Windows.
- deaddodo 3y agoWhere did you get that idea? Windows 98 is still a default template in VirtualBox 7.0 and fully supported: https://youtu.be/yxJDK5xmTFQ?si=5yJScYparrURTAWH https://youtu.be/yxJDK5xmTFQ?si=5yJScYparrURTAWH And here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes You just don't get accelerated graphics or USB sharing.
- Narishma 3y agoIt happens to work but is not really supported. Mouse is super laggy, there are no guest additions and last time I checked it used a full CPU core at all times.
- deaddodo 3y agoThus: > You just don't get accelerated graphics or USB sharing. Every OS that has to use VESA in a VM is slow. It doesn't mean they're "unsupported". Unsupported would imply that the OS doesn't boot/function properly or that you have to do abnormal things to get it to work. It's not like Oracle offers some sort of guarantee that your Windows 7 guest will function or offer support if you have issues.
- 0xAE0 3y agohttps://nitter.net/mtruslowstorey/status/1703781076689121556 https://nitter.net/mtruslowstorey/status/1703781076689121556
- einr 3y agoIt’s Microsoft Access, ”works only on Windows 98” seems highly doubtful, especially as the screenshot in the post is Windows Vista…
- Dalewyn 3y agoIt's probably most likely that OP on Mysterious Twitter X simply doesn't know that's Windows Vista. It's ancient Windows, OP doesn't know Access, UI looks like something from the 90s, Windows 98 is the most famous of the 90s Windowses(?). As evidenced by how it's seemingly running fine on Windows Vista using whatever version of Access that is, either: A) Any newer version of Access should be able to at least open that thing fine. B) Whatever version of ancient Access that will open that should run just fine on Windows 11. Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility shines, especially in these types of circumstances.
- einr 3y agoI think the spanner in the works is that the CD-ROM bundles an MS Access runtime executable that is 16-bit and therefore will not run on 64-bit Windows. If you look in the top left of the window in the screenshot, the icon looks like Access 2.0, which was designed for 16-bit Windows. Given, as you say, Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility, it is very likely in my opinion that a modern computer running 32-bit Windows 10 (not Windows 11, as they dropped the 32-bit version and therefore finally dropped 16-bit software support entirely) would run this software fine. It is also likely, as you say, that modern Access could import the underlying database (does Access 2023/365/whatever import Access 2.0 databases? Who knows! Not I, I don't touch the stuff ;)
- gandalfian 3y agoI think their main computer being a Mac without a CD-ROM drive may be contributing elements as well. Interesting juxtaposition that they are struggling to take the files off a cd but confident they can produce a web database. But seems they found help so nice it's all ending well.
- 3y ago
- ilamont 3y agoGlad to hear people have reached out to help, but the sad thing is for every project like this there are a hundred more that die a quiet death every year. There's a universe of important and unique data tied to history and genealogy blogs, web databases, 20th-century software programs, and hard drive archives maintained by a single person. One of my favorites: https://fultonhistory.com/ https://fultonhistory.com/ (click on the "Go and Search My Archive" link). Tom has done an amazing job of scanning and posting old historical photos and newspaper archives, but will it last once he's no longer able to maintain it? I often hear suggestions like "let Ancestry take them over" or "the Internet Archive is the solution." I have to ask: Will either be operational in 20 years, or the data on them as easily accessible as they are now? Ancestry is currently operated by Blackstone, the third or fourth PE firm to do so in the past 15 years. Blackstone has no qualms with deleting services that no longer meet its needs (https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2023/08/ancestry-discontinued-its-world.html https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2023/08/ancestry-disconti...) or paywalling records and then jacking up the price every few years (https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-monthly-subscription-prices-help-provide-you-more-content-and-new-product https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-...). IA's web archive is a great resource, but it always seems to be begging for money and its founder's futile campaign against book publishers isn't helping.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago> I often hear suggestions like "let Ancestry take them over" or "the Internet Archive is the solution." I have to ask: Will either be operational in 20 years, or the data on them as easily accessible as they are now? And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. https://poets.org/poem/ozymandias https://poets.org/poem/ozymandias
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI think any resource of data like this - assuming it's a noncommercial project - should have an export functionality available at all times, and an ask to any visitor to download the file, archive it, and clearly label it. I like to believe that the best data repositories are the ones that are forgotten. That said, I hope someone comes up with a consumer-affordable, long-term storage medium soon.
- frodowtf 3y agoCan we agree on not posting anything directly from twitter? It's absolutely useless without an account.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 3y agoThere should be a communal throwaway account or some proxy site that uses one
- therein 3y agoReplies are retrievable via the API so any Nitter instance does the job for anonymously browsing Twitter. But yeah, I also don't appreciate the restrictions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HeckFeck 3y agoElon removed that restriction when he first took over, then apparently reintroduced it because of machine learning scraping the site; if you believe that. It is very annoying either way, so many interesting things that belong on their own page or even a blog lost deep in multi-tweet threads.
- delfinom 3y agoSoon to be more annoying because Elon has started harping about putting all of twitter behind a paywall for everyone. (Obviously cash flow aint looking good) haha
- HeckFeck 3y agoA shame, this will surely tank it. I can't imagine paying unless they also introduced guaranteed privacy (like Mastodon's data permission list - empty!) on their mobile apps. Fat chance. I'm not sure where to go as an alternative; Mastodon doesn't have the same community or blend of personalities and viewpoints as Twitter. Ah well.
- tokai 3y agoThe Air Force Historical Research Agency should be contacted to figure out if it is actually important data. I would be very surprised if that old cd is the only source of this information. edit: Reading the third paragraph here[0] it seems that all of this data is definitely stored at different museums and libraries. [0]https://ww2truslow.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/burns-documents-8th-af-history-10.pdf https://ww2truslow.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/burns-documen...
- squarefoot 3y agoJust a reminder that WINE [0] runs a lot of new and old Windows software pretty well, so that anyone wanting to consult the database could either load it either from a desktop Linux machine, a Linux VM, or even have it boot it directly to the database software since it can be easily embedded in a self booting Linux distro contained in a pendrive along the CD's data. 0: https://www.winehq.org/ https://www.winehq.org/
- thelastparadise 3y ago> it can be easily embedded in a self booting Linux distro contained in a pendrive Very interesting. Is there a framework or helper for this? Seems useful for things like games or audio DAWs in particular.
- squarefoot 3y agoNot sure it does exist, but shouldn't be hard to do by hand. One could either modify a live distro to embed the necessary software, or simply run the install process with a USB key as target, then boot from it just like an internal disk and proceed to install WINE and remaining software. Once WINE is installed, which is straightforward using the standard package managers for each distro, it runs automatically once a Windows application is clicked from a desktop windows, or called via "wine <windowsapplicationname>" from command line or a script, so that for example, if the database application in the subject is configured to auto start after the window manager is loaded, it goes straight into the Windows application as if it was part of the system. It shouldn't be that different for DAWs. By the way, I experimented a while ago with Alpine Linux and Yabridge to achieve a very small system that works as a host for both native and Windows .vst plugins. The goal would have been a MiniPC configured as synthesizer that boots very quick and does just that, with both studio use and live performance in mind. I got to the point plugins were converted but loading them failed. Probably using a musl based distro was asking too much, but I'll try again in the future (just moved to a new house, everything is packed) as Alpine Linux is so much faster and smaller compared to other distros that to me it makes the best candidate for building appliances where the operating system exists for the sole purpose of loading a dedicated software, therefore must not get in the way with resources consumption, automatic updates etc.
- politician 3y agoOne option: Photographs or Screenshots -> Tesseract OCR -> ChatGPT cleanup -> CSV -> Human validation -> public GitHub repo
- PaulHoule 3y agoIt looks like an application based on Microsoft Access. Where I work we still occasionally use Office 97 with all the strange things it does to take over your desktop and that paperclip. It works just fine in Windows 10 and could probably open that database and see the SQL tables, it would probably not be hard at all to load the SQL tables in Postgres. I did a data import project for that kind of database and I am waiting for the QA people to tell me I did it right. I do know I was unable to open the database w/ the current Office 365 and was told to go back and get the old Office.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago"works only on Windows 98" Pic is of Vista running on a HP DV6000. Perhaps Vista was the last OS to have a 98 application mode. He could do a Vista (or earlier) VM running on Hyper-V in Win 10/11 Pro (or hacked Home). If the WWII CD is ripped to an ISO, it'll mount like a CD. Vista install ISO: https://archive.org/details/vista_x64 https://archive.org/details/vista_x64 Windows 98 install ISO: https://archive.org/details/windows-98-se-isofile https://archive.org/details/windows-98-se-isofile
- lovasoa 3y agoThis looks like the perfect usecase to extract the data to sqlite, and slap a quick SQLPage UI on it !
- bitwize 3y ago1) Boot Access inside Wine and use it to export the tables into csv or similar. From there it's a relative doddle to import them into SQLite, Postgres, etc. 2) Use one of the open source Access file readers (e.g., Jackcess) to do the same. Make a backup first!