Turning Junk Back Into Useful Hardware

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project: how you can help save historic space data, Boing Boing

"The LOIRP team managed to obtain original tape drives from the 1960s (covered in dust in a farmer's barn) and a full set of original Lunar Orbiter analog data tapes (threatened with erasure) containing all images sent back to Earth by the five spacecraft between 1966-67. None of this had been functional or usable since the late 1960s. From the onset the project has been run on a shoestring budget. The LOIRP effort is housed in an abandoned McDonalds burger joint at Moffett Field, California (also known as "McMoons"). The LOIRP folks used spare parts bought on eBay, discarded government equipment, new hardware reverse-engineered from math equations in 50 year old documentation, modern laptops, the expertise of retired engineers and scientists, and the dedication of young students."

What Do Star Trek and Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Have in Common?

"As you will recall Kirk, Spock and McCoy go back in time to the 1930s. At one point Spock has to hack his 23rdcentury tricorder with early 20th century electronics to get data off of it. In our case, we used early 21st century electronics to hack mid 20th century electronics to gain access to 45 year old data."