Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Vee don’t know zis maschine you speek of
A big news item in the last weeks has been the Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held in secret custody for over eight years. BoingBoing points to a story in the Gurardian that outlines the difficulties the Austrian investigators seem to have with the kidnapper’s Commodore 64:
However, Major General Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau, told reporters the computer would complicate investigators’ efforts to transfer files for closer examination.
There are emulators available which can make a modern PC capable of running Commodore 64 programmes but Maj Gen Lang said it would be difficult to transmit the data from Priklopil’s machine to a modern computer “without loss”.
Well, duh. Star Commander, a software that allows to connect a 1541 (the C64 floppy disk drive) to a PC has been around for ages. The necessary cables can be bought on ebay all the time if you are unable to solder them yourself. All the knowledge neccessary is on the internet, for free. And you could always ask one of the 151 Austrian C64 scene members if in doubt. The C64 must be the most-hacked, transparent and easiest to access piece of antique computer hardware by now.
