Commodore 64 Confuses Austrian Police

toomanyairmiles writes, "It seems that Wolfgang Priklopil, the communications technician who kidnapped Austrian pre-teen Natascha Kampusch, relied on a Commodore 64 as his primary machine. Interestingly this is presenting some problems to the Austrian computer forensics people. Major General Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau told reporters it would 'complicate investigators' efforts' and would be difficult to transfer the files to modern computers 'without loss.' Could this be the latest in the criminal world's security strategy? Can we expect to see Spectrums, Archimedes, and Atari STs turning up in police investigations soon?"

The Charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we expect to see Spectrums, Archimedes, and Atari STs turning up in police investigations soon?

What are they going to charge them with? Living in the stone age?

FINALLY

[drfrog]

My Basic skills will rule them all

let me at it!!

[illuminatedwax]

I'll have that bugger fixed in no time!!! ...as long as it involves writing elementary BASIC loops, LOAD "$",8,1 or beating Space Taxi or Questron.

Even Better

[coop247]

I also hear they are having trouble getting information from his IBM typewriter. Apparently he used White Out to clear the data.

C64 Data Cassettes

[Aokubidaikon]

In my mind I see the secretaries at the Austrian police station behind their typewriters, listening hard and trying to make sense of what exactly is being said on those strange tapes...

if he was really serious..

[Anonymous Coward]

If he was really serious about losing data, he would have used Windows 95... Mu ha ha ha!

Simple answer

[lostngone]

We must ban all Commodores, to save the children of course. Think of the children!

Re:The Charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

This person was found to be connected to the terrorist Junis, a friend of Jon Katz. No doubt he is pirating movies and watching them on his computer.

abacus porn?

[lostngone]

If the C64 confused them wait tell they find people storing porn on an abacus or two.

Re:Forget security by obscurity...

[loraksus]

There are still active CP/M user groups around. Why the hell? I honestly don't know, but there are. I recall selling a bunch of old equipment - 8086 boards, 10mb hard drives, etc, and the guy was overjoyed that his club got new stuff to play with. This was 2 years ago too... I guess the one man's junk saying is true.

Re:This is retarded

[triso]

Seriously, I have a Commodore 64 sitting right next to me hooked up to a dos box as a hard drive. Data is data. You just need a x1541 cable. There are lots of free software tools to facilitate this, and the d64 and t64 formats are well supported. You can even use audio tapes and a soundcard to transfer files. Once you have the data on the PC, there are multitudes of C64 emulators to run the software directly. I've been doing this since the late '90s. Google is your friend.

Quick! Volunteer your services as a computer forensics expert and profit at $500.00 per hour.

Only on slashdot...

[f97tosc]

does the story about a girl kept in a dungeon for eight years revolve around the kidnapper's computer. Tor

From TFA

[Per Wigren]

Police have been digging pits and using long probes to poke around the property,

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually surprisingly reliable, 5 1/4" floppies have always had far fewer problems for me, bad sectors a plenty on 3 1/2" media but i don't once remember needing to leave Central point utilities trawling a 5 1/4" disc for several hours to repair bad sectors.

Top Ten Reasons Why Austrian Police...

[shoma-san]

Can't Transfer the Files:

10.There's no USB port
9. Austrian govenment mandate that all computers must be able to play music from "The Sound of Music".
8. Investigators were at Oktoberfest the day they taught pre Windows XP forensics.
7. Unable to install popular folk dancing software on Commodore 64.
6. Jokes about the situation being hopeless but not serious in Austria have become true.
5. Police still worried about riots after UPC Arena name change.
4. There's no USB port
3. The floppy drive is WAY to big
2. The modem baud rate is slower than pooh ...and the number one reason why Austrian Police Can't Transfer the Files:

1. Can't copy and paste without a mouse

Re:Only on slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another visitor?! Stay awile. Stay FOREVER!!

Re:Forget security by obscurity...

[wideBlueSkies]

>>10mb hard drives, etc, and the guy was overjoyed that his club got new stuff to play with.

He was probably looking forward to undeleting the contents of the drives. How long do you figure it took him to do so?

Hope you scrubbed them first.

Arial???

[srh2o]

Of course they'd lose information. Haven't you seen how bad Arial screws up ASCII porn... Uh Nevermind

Re:Question

[smilindog2000]

But why would someone go out of their way to continue to use it?

Are you kidding? Obviously, because the hottest geek chick on the planet is into them! See:

"Super-hot super-smart geek-chick" [wikipedia.org]

Re:Question

[bar-agent]

It may be that he was just a generally all-round weird guy.

The whole "girl-in-a-dungeon" thing is certainly indicative.

Re:Why go that far?

[Sathias]

Quickly becoming a meme:

Only a terrorist wouldn't use Windows.

One man's linux zealot is another man's freedom fighter?

Re:Top Ten Reasons Why Austrian Police...

[dysfunct]

8. Investigators were at Oktoberfest the day they taught pre Windows XP forensics.

Against common American belief, Bavaria is not part of Austria. That's Germany you're thinking of. I want to make it clear that our police force does *not* require special events to get drunk.

Re:Simple answer

[Surt]

We must ban all Commodores, to save the children of course. Think of the children!

Thanks, that's exactly the thing that got us into this mess in the first place.

Attention perverts:
STOP Thinking of the children!

Commodore Security for Dummys

[AcidTag]

10 REM hide your stuff from the fuzz 20 POKE 53280,0 : POKE 53281,0

One comment...

[ovapositor]

Dumb Asses. They just need to go to the goodwill and get a complete.. tricked out vintage system of their own. Data loss my eye.

Re:Commodore 64 has an RS-232 interface.

[psoplayer]

Now see? All they had to do was post the question on slashdot as how to connect a C64 to modern machines and they could have had the files off in a jiffy. But NO... they just had to try to figure it out on their own.

Re:Question

[soft_guy]

The guy kidnapped a little girl and kept her for 8 years. He's obviously a nut case. I don't think you can back his choice to use a Commodore 64 with reason.

On Slashdot, we don't think he's crazy for hideous crimes. We think he is crazy for using an old computer.

Re:Question

[nizo]

Plus you can make them double-sided with a simple hole punch! Don't try that with your usb thumb drives kids.

Re:battery life?

[dougmc]

try a trs-80 mdl 100

I have one of those! Got it at Goodwill back in 2001 or so for $9.95.

Of course, here's the funny story. I got the computer, and figured `ok, what do I do with it?' ... so I tried to remember BASIC, and put in this program as soon as I got it working at the office -- 10 I = I + 1
20 PRINT "HELLO THERE # ", I ;
30 GOTO 10
(sorry if I got this wrong. This is the last time I did any BASIC, and it was years before that that I'd last done any.)

In any event, it's still running today. It's up to (let me check) 509176235. It's doing roughly 4.2 iterations/second, with most of the cpu obviously going to scrolling the display. Of course, if I do the math, that only works out to about four years, so I'm not sure what the discrepancy is.

In any event, it's lasted several office moves, and now it's in my garage, with a wal-wart transformer connected and some AA's in the battery slot. The batteries will run it for a remarkably long time, and I just replace them every year or so.

I've been tempted to pull it out and play with it a bit, but I'm reluctant to lose all my uptime ...

Re:Commodore 64 has an RS-232 interface.

[iocat]

Dude, they're in EUROPE. Someone just needs to head for the University, find the demo party, pry Dieter away from his Amiga and be like "oh qiuck, we need the data from these floppies... yes, if you want to make a mod so the data all prints out along a sin-wave line while the SID chip kicks out the collected works of David Hasselhof, that's fine... oh my, you can make the text appear on shiny spheres? So much the better!"

Re:Top Ten Reasons Why Austrian Police...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOST: One sense of humour. I have temporarily replaced it with an inflated sense of self importance, but this is beginning to have adverse effects on my slashdot posting. Reward offered for its return.

Re:Question

[Scrameustache]

My guess is that he got the machine thirty years ago, it did what he needed, and he never felt a need to replace it.

Exactly.
Coincidentally, he did the same with a girl, 10 years ago.

MY questions are: Why are people questioning the hardware choices of a psycho kidnapper? Are they actually looking for a coherent thought process they can relate too? Do they want to find one? Should they turn themselves in the nearest psychiatric ward if they do?

Re:Question

[TheoMurpse]

You sir are the Steve Wozniak of the using-Amigas-to-pirate-movies scene.

Re:Yes. Super hot.

[houseofzeus]

You wouldn't call them smart just because they're hot, would you?

If it was going to get you laid.... :-p

Re:except ...

[Stormwatch]

So in the future DRM will prevent people from listening to Britney Spears? This is Slashdot, damnit, you're not supposed to defend DRM here!

Re:Question

[identity0]

WTF is wrong with wrong with using an old computer?! I'm typing this on an old 386 right now, in fact.

In the basement, I have an Altair that I kidnapped from the local uni 25 years ago, that I've been teaching to read Perl and play with Lego Mindstorms. I've named her "nappy", because she likes the nappies and ice cream. I feed it to her on punch cards. We are such a happy computer family together, I don't have to hit her much anymore. I love you, you love me, lalalalaOH SHIT THE COPS ARE HERE@!^&@!!

+++ATH
NO CARRIER

Re:Question

[Reservoir Penguin]

Please help!!! I was kidnapped by Moodie-1 20 years ago and forced to port Linux to his collection of obsolete computers!