Late 2015, I was given an Apple Macintosh SE/30 in a mass collection of old computers and software. The donation came from the father of a man who worked with Douglas Adams on Starship Titanic. Sadly, the past owner died at a early age. When I collected the computers, there was some paperwork and BAFTA certificates around the development of the game. The father has kept these.
When I powered up the computer, I discovered that it belonged to Douglas. It appears the computer was used as a server for his and his wife’s email, contacts and calendars. Some data is on the computer, but there was also an external SCSI hard disk, but sadly it has failed and currently no data can be read from it. Believe me, I’ve tried! I will not be publishing any data on-line that I have found on this computer. I have contacted Douglas’ agent, but I have not received any replies to my emails.
I have now passed this computer onto The Centre for Computing History shortly to preserve this important computer that played an major piece in Douglas’ career as a writer.
Feel free to contact me if this discovery interests you.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish… (And the Apple SE/30)
Please give the SCSI drive to a data recovery firm. If they’re true nerds they should do it for free.
Wow, what a great find! I echo the request that you please try to pass the external drive on to someone who is skilled in data recovery and/or hardware repair. This is a resource of mind-bogglingly great historical and literary significance. I mean, you might have thought that the manuscript of the Magna Carta was significant, but that’s just peanuts to this!
thirded. This has actually happened before. Joy (I think that was his wife’s name) gave some old stuff to someone who did a data recovered and found drafts and short stories. Some of it went into The Salmon od Doubth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salmon_of_Doubt
Andy, if the drive was stored powered off for months at any point in the past, then you probably have either a “stiction” (actually surface tension) problem, or a thermal-calibration problem. Both can be easily fixed without paying the big boys several £1000s. Give me a shout if interested.
her name was Jane, here’s what happened in 2004 http://www.vintagemacworld.com/iifx.html
Crack that SCSI drive open and you’ll find out what kind of porn he was into!
Very interesting. I have a copy of the Starship Titanic game – the box is signed by Douglas.
My wife & I always listened to books on tape before going to sleep. We particularly liked Adam’s stories since they were read by the author himself, and he did great voices. When he was at E3 in Atlanta for Starship Titanic I tried to stumble through explaining our love of his audio books and it came out really terribly. So now I have an autographed Starship Titanic poster with a note underneath that says “DON’T FALL ASLEEP”
Awesome find, nice work