This is a call for data, and/or comment and/or participation in a project to produce an index for the varios LIF images collectively known as "the Swap Disks." I'm sure that this has been done, probably more than once over the years, but I don't see an extant index out on the Internet. What I plan to do is to put up a wiki (Twiki, probably) at retrocalculator.com where people can add entries against file names in the raw LIF directory listings. I will have to ask for registration, because of the problem of SPAM bombing and vandalism that wikis are subject to.
Some inital thoughts I have, open to discussion:
The index should be free, like in beer, as the swap disks themselves are.
Personally, I'd prefer if it were Free, like in freedom, as in the Gnu Free Documentation or one of several Creative Commons licenses. This is certainly open to discussion.
The index doesn't have to be comprehensive to be useful. Therefore, wiki content will be distilled into the canonical index on a frequent basis.
The wiki should be free-form, but the index should be rigidly structured. This matches the needs of humans on the one hand and computer searching on the other.
I propose not to provide a discussion forum, since there is already a very nice one here, and the subject is on-topic. This is, of course, subject to Dave's requirements.
I can host a mirror of the swap disk archive or use the (now canonical) copy here.
If there is interest, new swap disks could be produced. I see no archive of 71B software other than the swap disks, for instance. I'd be glad to host one.
(I think) I have every machine whose software appears on the swap disks except for the 75D. Those would be the 41C, 75C and 71B. I also have the capability to load LIF formatted data on to each of those. That means I can try figuring out what a particular file does for each of the three machines. I can also convert media from LIF to modern formats.
I'm willing to do much of the work. However, my day job is about to spin up again, so It will be a part-time effort after the initial push. Help would be very welcome, and ought to speed the process along. But I'm committed to following through on this regardless, since it falls squarely within my hobby interest: old calculator software and systems.
If you are interested, please drop me a line, or reply here. I need to gauge how much interest there is before I go through the not inconsiderable labor of setting up Twiki. If it's just me and one or two others, I won't bother with that part.
Regards
Howard