About four years ago, I ordered digital copies of the FAA's Low Altitude Enroute IFR maps L1 and L2 through the National Archives and a contractor who actually made the disks. The maps were in effect on November 24, 1971 and contained the navigational information that the NWA airliner would be using on it flight from Seattle to Reno.
When the contractor sent me the disks, they would not initially work on my computer. After quite a bit of work between the contractor and myself, we finally got the problem resolved. I made duplicate disks of both maps and sent them to Sluggo and he in turn posted them on his web page.
Recently, I tried to make duplicate copies of my "archive disks" in order to send the maps to the WSHM. But I have not been able to get any of the disks, which have worked in the past, to open. No reason for this can be determined. I am using the very same computer as before and only the normal upgrades to Windows 7 and to Internet Explorer 11 have been made.
I took the disks to one commercial shop and they told me the disks were corrupted. I have no idea how that could have happened and doubt if it did.
Do any of you computer wizards have a suggestion for correcting this problem?
When you say "disks" what kind of disks?
I'm assuming CD-R's
or are these flash drives of some kind?
CD-R should last 20 to 50 years at least.
What kind of format are these maps? Is there some proprietary format? what kind of suffix do the map files have in windows? When you say "would not work in my computer" what application was being used to "read" them....?
Snowmman, I donated those disks to Fred Poynter's group at the WSHM and he apparently got them to work. You might check out the Cooper information at WSHM for their current status, but I think they were online there for some time. I do not have any of those disks at the present time.
Here is the long story on that problem. When I started getting involved with the Cooper matter, I spent quite a bit of time (and money) getting copies of the IFR maps and other information that the airliner crew were using on the evening of the hijacking.
First, I had to check with the National Records Administration to determine if they even had a copy of those maps. They did and referred me to several subcontractors that worked with them and could digitize the maps for me. Those maps were quite large and the cost for digitizing them was either $20 or $25 per square foot. I selected a subcontractor and after they were digitized, I attempted to download the data from the subcontractor's site.
Despite claims of compatibility between their computers and mine, things just didn't work very well in practice. It took repeated, and I do mean repeated, attempts to get the bugs ironed out so that I could download the data onto disks. But we were eventually able to get it done. I duplicated the disks and sent copies to Sluggo.
Since I prefer to work with hard copies of the maps, I took the disks to a photographic facility in Tucson that had equipment capable of printing large items. They got the job done. My total investment in those maps was about $400.
