John, I still have an operational CP/M O/S computer at the office, a Xerox 820-II with dual floppy drives (eight inch!) and keyboard. In case North Korea decides to attack again, I still have the one computer that doesn't need anti-virus. Happy New Years to all, Jim Benedict Guild Representative for Western Canada Guild of One-Name Studies: Guild member #4794 Calgary, Alberta www.BenedictGenerations.com ======================================================== -----Original Message----- From: goons-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:goons-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of John P Laws via Sent: December 31, 2014 11:11 AM To: 'GOONS' Cc: 'Tessa Keough' Subject: [G] Genealogy Do over Hi One-Namers everywhere Hi Tessa, I read your blog with interest and a certain amount of amusement, and I might say, have printed it off to refer to later. I'm pretty sure you started your research a lot more recently than me, I started forth on this perilous journey way back in 1972, I had heard of computers indeed I had used them in a work environment, The first-one, being the one the RAF had, in those far off halcyon days was the size of a double-decked bus, and we pushed in miles of punched paper tape from teleprinter's at one's unit, perhaps half way across the world, and got out reams of gobbledy-gook, usually caused by an input clerk entering an O instead of an 0, it didn't like that at all. In 1977 I moved from a card index of 25 shoeboxes of 5"x3" cards, to an Amstrad 6128 which wrote in CPM/AMSDOS and used 3" diskettes each side hold 64k of data, I have since then owned about 7 or 8 machines with 4 or 5 operation systems, and a equal number of different software packages & am currently using RootsMagic 7, and just occasionally a record pops up with a reference number that identifies it as being from the early days. A genealogical Do-Over sounds terrifying but shouldn't be so, My recommendations are as follows:- Cut your own furrow, on no account add anyone else's GEDCOM to your master file, create a fresh file clearly identified as being awaiting verification. Cite your sources, I still find records with no indication as to where the information came from, I recommend 'Evidence Explained' by Elizabeth Shown Mills (ISBN: 9780806317816) obtainable from Amazon & Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W Jones published by National Genealogical Society at 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370 USA www.ngsgenealogy.org. If you do nothing else use your software's problem checking for entries like where Mary Ann Laws had a child at 156 or the child that was born before it's parents birth or after their deaths. Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year John P Laws Registrar Laws Family Register Putting Flesh on the Bones of History http://lawsfamilyregister.tribalpages.com http://lawsandlawes.blogspot.com _____________________________________________ RootsWeb lists - surnames, regions, software, etc http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GOONS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message