SPS, or Softpres – The Software Preservation Society, formerly the Classic Amiga Preservation Society (CAPS), is a privately funded association of art collectors and computer enthusiasts striving for the preservation of computer art, namely computer games.
Unlike games from the 1970s (delivered on solid state ROM-modules) and games from and after the mid-1990s (delivered on optical media like CD-ROMs and DVDs which are supposed to last for decades), computer games from the 1980s and early 1990s were delivered on magnetic media like tapes or floppy disks and are now on the brink of extinction.
Founded by computer expert and preservation pioneer István Fábián in 2001, SPS already has digitally archived about 10.000 games produced for the Commodore C64, Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC, CPC and Spectrum to name just a few.
SPS is working closely with other associations, archives, museums and libraries around the globe to preserve the early years of gaming history. The technology and tools developed by SPS are unparalleled when it comes to forensic inspection of floppy disks.
KryoFlux was founded in 2010 by members of SPS in the UK and shortly after Germany to fund SPS’s R&D efforts and to sell and distribute SPS technology, which has been under constant development for almost a quarter century.
Its key product, the KryoFlux – “High Resolution Flux Sampler for USB”, interfaces legacy floppy disk drives to modern host computers and can create forensic flux level images. Such images are then processed with SPS technology to analyse and potentially recover any damaged data. Stream File data and the Interchangeable Preservation Format (IPF) allow for long-term storage of data ingested. Due to the forensic nature of data ingested and advanced machine learning processing, KryoFlux can either re-process data into image files even years to decades later and also recreate physical floppy disk media as needed. KryoFlux is the trusted gold standard for floppy disk analysis and archival at memory institutions around the globe.