Archival File Sorting

I am attempting to come up with a file sorting scheme for archived materials used to maintain, document, and use vintage computers. The difficult in this comes from the varied nature of hardware and manufacture product segments.

The concepts here are not yet implemented and are an evolving plan.

Goals

Network Access

The files must be accessible over a SMB or FTP network mount. This means symlinks cannot be used. The way that network clients and servers handle symlinks is unpredictable.

Easy Archive Transfers

It should be possible to have access to a folder of all software that can run on a particular computer. Sometimes these computers also need to be able to write back to the archives as well.

No Dedupe

Relying on exotic filesystem features when working with vintage machines is just asking for weird edge case failures.

Folder Layout

The most critical choice to make is what the top level sorting method is. I'm going to standardize on Device Industries such as Computers, Video Game Consoles, and Video Processors. Hardware manufactures can cross these lines, but generally the devices within these groups have distinctly different uses.

After some consideration, for computers I have decided the Software Platform that determines the software compatibility with the hardware. One concession has been made for organizational simplicity. If a manufacturer was the intended sole producer of hardware for that platform it should go under a sub-folder for that manufacturer.

A Note about "IBM-PC"

The IBM 5150 PC was cloned with IBM's permission by many 3rd party companies. After IBM switched to Microchannel in the PS/2 line the clone manufactures renamed the bus in the IBM PC to "ISA" for Industry Standard Architecture. IBM abandoned their own PC compatibility and other companies banded together to create an open standard. The term "IBM-PC" is a vestigial leftover term that was used to establish that a product was "IBM Compatible" and that it would work with an IBM or any quality clone.

The exact same thing happened to the Altair 8800, when magazines or hardware vendors first discussed that platform they would call the bus in it the "Altair Bus". But that machine was also cloned by manufactures like IMSAI and the clones started calling it the "S-100 Bus" instead. The clones prevailed and now it is more broadly known as S-100 than by the original name.

So consider "IBM-PC" to be no different from "S-100". It's not meant to indicated that a computer is an IBM, it indicates that it is a widely supported platform based on the similar architecture. The companies that made it just weren't as clever as those who came up with "S-100".

Example Structure

• Computer Platforms
  • HP
    • Series 80
      • [SOFTWARE]
        • HP-85
          • [SOFTWARE]
        • HP-86
          • [SOFTWARE]
    • Series 200
      • [SOFTWARE]
        • HP-9836C
          • [SOFTWARE]
  • IBM-PC
    • [SOFTWARE]
      • Games
        • Doom
          • DOS
          • Windows 95
          • Linux
    • HP
      • Pavilion
        • [SOFTWARE]
    • IBM
      • PS/2
        • Model 30
          • [SOFTWARE]
  • Industry Standards
    • Keyboard
      • Creative
        • Prodikeys
          • [SOFTWARE]
            • Drivers
              • Windows
    • Sound Card
      • Creative
        • Live! X-Gamer
          • [SOFTWARE]
    • System Co-Processor
      • HP
        • HP BASIC Language Processor
          • [SOFTWARE]
            • Drivers
              • DOS
• Test Equipment
  • Power Supply
    • HP
      • 6633A
  • Logic Analyzer
    • HP
      • 16500C
        • [SOFTWARE]
• Video Processors
  • Scaler
    • Extron
      • IN1606
• Video Game Consoles
  • Nintendo
    • Super Nintendo Entertainment System
      • [SOFTWARE]
  • Sega
    • Genesis
      • [SOFTWARE]