Adrian Crenshaw
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2014–2026
52:47 · 25K views · Sep 30, 2012
Jason Scott's DerbyCon 2012 talk on rescuing the Prince of Persia source code from old floppy disks, working with the game's author Jordan Mechner. It is a story of digital archaeology and recovering data from ancient media.
Repeatedly recommended as a favorite tech talk and a great example of digital preservation work.
8 comments from Hacker News
My favourite example of digital archaeology from recent years is [LINK] - saving the Prince of Persia floppies. this video
Your second link reminded me of [LINK] (which definitely builds on some of Matt's work). [LINK] - C++17 for the Commodore 64. Probable language warnings for my other suggestions: * Rescuing Prince of Persia from the Sands of Time this video (was this talk ever given elsewhere?) * And You Shall Know Me By My Trail of Documentation - [LINK] * The History and Evolution of Computer Viruses - [LINK]
If you've not seen any of Jason Scott's other work, I personally recommend his talks on the Prince of Persia[0], Mario 64[1], and crackers fighting crackers via crack screens[2]. [3] This one is just funny. [0] this video [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
I missed that distinction when I posted the link. I'm sure they had difficulty rescuing Price of Persia. If you have some time to spare, watch this video (or read [LINK] and the many other sources)
Was going to say the same thing. It's a very nice trip down memory lane. Also, Jason Scott's talk on how he recovered the original source code from a bunch of dusty disks this video