There is this concern that a lot of digital media will become inaccessible due to changes to storage formats (floppy, cd, dvd, bluray …), protocols (com, usb, bluetooth), operating systems (windows 95, 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8), (serial port vs USB vs Firewire) hardware and so on. I recently had to deal with this in a very interesting way. I bought LEGO Mindstorms Invention System 1.0 about 14 yrs back. I may have played with it for a couple of weeks at best and then just kept it aside. Now that my 4 yr son is showing interest in various toys and LEGOs, I opened up my old box and wanted to make sure everything works fine. I have the entire set with all the parts and the software it came with (only issue is the rubber cover of the connector wires which are degrading). The software was meant to run on Windows 98. I have a iMac with a Windows 7 running in a VM. However, the IR tower I have is based on a serial port and there is no serial port on my iMac. First thing I did was ordered a Serial (9 pin) to USB adapter. It came today and I was all set to start the program. The RIS software runs initially in a guided mode (which apparently can be disabled by clicking Control-About (About is a button on the software) which I came to be aware only at the end of going through a painful training mode). One of the steps in the training mode which I couldn’t go past was to download the firmware. The adapter seemed to work fine because I could see the IR receiver to light up and also could see the brick counting from 1 to 20 and repeat. It was supposed to count up to 1600 but that never happened. That’s when I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Wasn’t sure if the adapter had a problem, if the program running in a VM was a problem, running within Windows 7 was a problem.
After a bit of search, I came to know about two things. One is, there is an excellent open source software called BricxCC which is an alternative to RIS and the second info is a website where I could download Mindstorms 2.5 SDK. These two helped me overcome the hurdles and complete the training. What has to be done is to start the BricxCC and it has Download Firmware within Tools. What it does is, it asks for the firmware file and uploads it to the brick. If you have the original RIS 1.0 you would have an older firmware (firm0309.lgo) but the Mindstorms 2.5 SDK provides the later firmware. BricxCC didn’t have any problem uploading the firmware while the original RIS system couldn’t do it.
Anyway, just thought I will pen this down for my own future reference (since the firmware needs to be uploaded every time the batteries are changed on the brick) and also to contribute back to the open knowledge. Have fun with your old LEGO toys. Or may be just wait for the upcoming LEGO EV3 and not worry about all these incompatibility issues.