[cctalk] Re: Chuck Guzis -- Equipment and Archive

Hello, First I definitely want to say that I am sorry for your family's loss. I stumbled upon the announcement of Chuck's death via a post by someone else which lead me to your post discussing his equipment left behind. I never got to interact with him but was getting ready to try contacting Chuck. I am a professional audio engineer along with magnetic tape researcher and archivist. I actually happened to be researching a type of computer platform tonite, I also run a independent multimedia publisher starting an in-house videogame development team, which lead me to the posts about Chuck, causing me to realize this was the same guy I had been following posts from online for years now but regarding data recovery from magnetic tapes including "datasette" audio cassettes. Outside of directly computer-related fields he has shown up as a topic in many tape medium related discussions, infamous for being the guy to come up with a working process for restoring "moisture rotted" tapes. There are actually loads of people out there saying it can't be done, that what he talked about was baloney, while others are baking old tapes in their kitchen ovens trying to figure out a way to do it too. I've been in the process of rebuilding my audio equipment lab after my own events of family tragedy and weirdness had me starting over from scratch recently. I had planned to introduce myself to Chuck later this year and specifically get details on the preservation and dehydration/restoration techniques he hammered out for tape humidity. I can't believe I ever waited. This is seriously a field that is both understudied while still being a storage medium built on more history than most but being ditched in such an extreme way by the public despite magnetic tape still being a very crucial part of data preservation in labs as well as government. I feel bad sending a message like this as I absolutely don't want to seem like I'm trying to take advantage of a tragedy or ask for any favors but as someone who takes tape preservation more seriously than most people, along with being family-connected to Joseph Roizen who helped develop Color Broadcast standards as well as many elements of what went into Video and Data on tape plus much more. It's very important to me in a historical sense that I reach out to you. I also very much appreciate the work you are doing by handling some of these affairs. I am only beginning to understand now just what an important man Chuck really has been and will honestly continue to be in these very quiet but influential capacities. More than anything, I am specifically interested in any details you can provide to me about his custom tape dehydrator. Any information provided or that I can get out of it or all else around Chuck's work with tape medium storage would not just be absolutely appreciated by someone who finds it professionally important but also understands the global historical importance. Needless to say, I would also do my part in working to share or document whatever wasn't already known and can definitely house for continued use any cassette/datasette (and vhs) equipment. I hope the weekend has been treating you well. Take care, Lichen Euchella gravityloop.org dynamicentitygravityloop(a)proton.me