zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

[Tony Duell]

> Especially for long term archiving, I think that things like simple, open 
> formats are more important than making sure that everyone's grandma can 
> figure out how to use the archive... ie, assuming that the person has a 
> grasp of being able to learn new things, and some idea of logic are IMO 
> reasonable assumptions.  

You alos need to consider what is the most likely sort of person to want 
to access this archive. It's an archive of boot disks, PROMs, etc for 
what are _now_ somewhat obscure computers, and which will presumably be 
even more obscure in the future. The sort of person to need that sort of 
data is likely to have quite a bit of computer knowledge already, and is 
not going to have problesm with tracking down a copy of gnu tar or 
similar....

-tony