The first web page and the NeXT Computer

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Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: astroboy on June 29, 2013, 05:59:48 PM
There is currently in the press a story about the efforts to restore the first web page, one that involves a lost password in a NeXT computer.

The page Jones received from Berners-Lee is locked in Jones' NeXT computer, behind a password that has long been forgotten. Forensic computer specialists are trying to extract the information to check time stamps and preserve the original coding used to generate the page.

-Would be that hard for the guys here to solve that problem? :P

Read more on:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/search-for-first-web-page-proving-elusive-for-cern-scientists-1.1320785

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/world-we-have-lost-the-first-webpage-professor-oh-i-have-a-copy-of-it-right-here/276387/

http://first-website.web.cern.ch/blog/1991-web-page-found-password-lost
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: gtnicol on June 29, 2013, 07:24:57 PM
I think some folk here are involved with it. I guess the password issue might be the least of the issues... sounds like they're also trying to preserve timestamps etc?
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: mikeboss on June 30, 2013, 10:22:45 AM
AFAIR paul jones's cube could not be booted because the hard drive died.

https://twitter.com/smalljones/status/337532096480428034
https://twitter.com/smalljones/status/337670585742135298
https://twitter.com/smalljones/status/337662602484269056/photo/1
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: gtnicol on June 30, 2013, 11:49:05 AM
I think I have that proceedings somewhere here :)

If it's one of the old maxtor drives, freezing it, then warming it might unstick the heads.
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: gtnicol on June 30, 2013, 12:00:07 PM
One of the interesting things here is that in 1991, the hypertext community was very much more advanced than the WWW, especially in terms of linking structures etc. In fact, that's still the case today... but look at what has overtaken the world.

I guess there's an argument to be made for simplicity.
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: mikeboss on June 30, 2013, 02:47:46 PM
Quote from: "gtnicol"I think I have that proceedings somewhere here :)

If it's one of the old maxtor drives, freezing it, then warming it might unstick the heads.

maybe you could contact him and tell him about the procedure?
-> http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/about-paul-jones/
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: Rob Blessin Black Hole on July 01, 2013, 11:24:50 PM
I spoke with him on the phone and they had a grad student specialising in forensics ,  he was going to try and recoup the data, I'm assuming the way to do that if heating the drive to 120 degrees didn't work , would be to find a donor drive(s) of identical make.  Then rebuild the drive spin it up and copy from a to b using cloning tools . Or with Forensics read the data directly from the platter via software and highend hardware. A highend data recovery shop would be a  good call imho as this is a rare deal.

Any of you out there that own a NeXT hard drive with old stuff on it may want to take a gander as they are looking for the first webpage and haven't officially found it.

I've been dealing with spinning a  symphony of old  drives and first clearing them of dust on the treasure hunt here .

I think the earliest now is circa October 1991 and I know quite a few cubes / slabs from Universities / Individuals were surplused without wiped drives or cleaned Optical Disks. We were early adopters to the web and you or I may have the illusive page without realising it.

The page reportedly has a hypertext list of people at Cern with phone numbers  that Tim Berners Lee put together.


Best Regards Rob Blessin :idea:
Title: The first web page and the NeXT Computer
Post by: pentium on July 11, 2013, 07:08:47 PM
I have one of the old Maxtor drives NeXT shipped with that went through a crash or something along the lines.

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