How not to store optical media

Or how I finally broke down and bought that MkLinux book after all these decades. When I did own a PowerPC Mac as my daily driver it was an iMac back in 1999 and I ran OS X Server. I later bought a G4 to only find out that OS X didn’t support the G4. Linux had issues too and I ended up running OpenBSD on the G4. Which was fun, although for the ‘work at home’ bit, I ended up needing Windows NT 4.0, so I ran that in OS 8 on SoftPC. Yay.

I didn’t have any luck with Linux on Power as MkLinux wanted the beige hardware, and by the time I felt like digging in again to Linux, OS X had finally been ported to the G4 Sawtooth’s so it really didn’t matter.

What secrets lie inside?

I’d seen this book in a store but it was pretty expensive, and geared to such a tiny market. Although Mach does compile on the i386, why they didn’t include it was well to push Mach/Linux as a platform well that’s beyond me. Then again looking at the stunning success of Darwin on i386/x86_64 I guess the reality is, why bother.

I ordered this on Ebay, for the usual $5 plus $10 to ship, and it just showed up today! What mysteries lie on the CD-ROMs? I know others have posted stuff, but I wanted to hold them in my hands myself.

Uh-oh

I didn’t know if the CD-ROM’s were included, and I first thought I got lucky: not only were they included, neither had been opened up before! These CD’s had been packed way like this for the last 22.5 years! Now for the bad part.

Ink transfer

See that stupid leaflet in the back? Yeah well it turns out that it was a really stupid idea. No doubt this thing sat in the bottom of a stack for decades where the ink had been pressed for so long against the disk that it has transferred to the surface.

HOW ANNOYING.

Gag me with a spoon…

So yes, they actually advertise the book, namely the one that I had bought with some crap ink leaflet in the CD-ROM pouch and it’s transferred to the disc.

Sigh.

I tried rubbing alcohol but that had no effect. I tried rubbing with a credit card, and it got a little off, but I fear I’m just going to damage the surface more.

I can only imagine what other CD-ROM’s out there that haven’t been archived are sitting under hundreds or thousands of pounds of book weight having nonsense imprinted onto them.

At least the second CD-ROM doesn’t suffer this defect and I’ll be uploading it later.

No book review yet, I’m just sitting here with this impacted CD.

UPDATE

Thanks to Shawn Novak for uploading the R3 images so I can at least pull up the compatible machines:

The latest Qemu can pull it the image fine, however trying to boot up looks like the Mach kernel just isn’t compatible enough with the emulated Mac99 machine (which isn’t surprising).

I’ll need to mess with stuff to see if the G3beige can boot Linux on Qemu, and if the BootX (I think it’s bootx?) can load the mach kernel.

17 thoughts on “How not to store optical media

  1. This ink is maybe not soluble in alcohol. Try water if it’s a water based ink.
    Since book is not damaged by any liquid, I would guess it was probably stored in humid and hot warehouse so it would be a good idea to try warm water (unless it was stored in a volcano, you can expect 50°C water to do the trick).

    • There is also a possibility that hydrocarbon liquids may dissolve the ink so something like petrol/gas or WD-40 may work as well but I never tried on CD so I don’t know if it will damage disc itself.

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