Why?

Well, here's the long story, should you choose to read through it all:

The catalyst that got us started with this project was actually a friend who has owned his own company for years, and bought a MightyFrame to run his enterprise in late 1987.

Years later, they regretted recently throwing out some paper records they had kept for years, which contained information that predates the data they kept in their subsequent computer systems. He approached me to see if they could ever resurrect the data on their old MightyFrame, still stored in that building.

Well, we did restore that MightyFrame to factory-new operation, and then began to piece together a restoration from the company's original Maxtor XT-2190 hard drive from that MightyFrame.

More about that project can be found at http://MightyFrame.com

So, what does the MightyFrame have to do with the Microtech?  Absolutely nothing...except it seems that, before my friend used the MightyFrame at his company, he apparently used a Microtech, although he has no recollection of it whatsoever.  But, while hunting for backup tapes for the MightyFrame, he produced the tapes we feature here on this site.

And, as it turns out, the data that we were hoping to retrieve doesn't look like it was ever on the circa-1987 Convergent Technologies MightyFrame that we restored.  While we are far from done with that project (as we have yet to complete a full error-corrected restore from the machine's mal-aligned hard drive), the information we seek is more likely found on mystery QIC tapes from 1983 or so.

Prior to my obsessive effort on the MightyFrame, nobody has ever documented online the restoration (or restoration effort) of one.  But with Tom Trebisky's fantastic and generous help, we were the first to report online the restoration of one to a factory-new state, having no previous experience with this vintage of machine (or UNIX/LINUX for that matter) before we started.  As we see it, it's more of a testament to my obsession and persistence than my skill.

So, we thought we would increase the difficulty level while we were at it, and restore a machine from older "mystery backup tapes", which are more likely to have the information we seek.  These tapes have a completely unknown format, without even having access to the original hardware.  At least with the MightyFrame, we had the original hardware.

We've already cracked the code on the ancient non-standard QIC tape format, and have extracted the bytes from the backup tapes (with only a handful of errors to correct)

And, in case you were wondering, I am doing all of this "for fun"...yes...a hobby.  Why?  I guess I'm just strange that way...that, and the appeal of accomplishing things like this that nobody else within my sphere of influence has ever attempted, much less accomplished, I find very compelling.