Re-awakening the Philips Videopac: From an old tape to a vintage feeling on a modern screen

Preserving data for a specific system usually depends on the system in question. Different strategies for different file types are necessary to preserve all data for a system. In this demonstration we present tools developed for preserving data for a home computer system from 1984. We present how a tool we developed can be used to retrieve data stored on audio tapes and how this data is migrated to nonobsolete formats. We also present how the data is migrated on a bit-stream level only and can then be used in an emulated environment using a recently developed emulator for the system’s hardware. We further show the features of the emulator that allow its proper usage for digital preservation purposes. The purpose of the demo is to demonstrate different types of digital objects for a system, the information layers of these digital objects and how the proper preservation strategy is chosen. Preserving static digital objects and understanding the difference to preserve dynamic and interactive digital objects like software is a key preparation for the preservation of distributed software as in Software as a Service (SaaS) and even whole business processes.