A collection of Warhol works were uncovered in March on a set of old Amiga floppy disks, according to a press release by the Studio for Creative Inquiry (via BoingBoing). The files were eased off of the disks with help from the Carnegie Mellon Computer Club, a collective that specializes in dealing with old computer hardware.

The works were obtained from hardware that was sitting dormant in the Warhol Museum, including "two Amiga 1000 computers in pristine condition," an "early drawing tablet," and "a large collection of floppy diskettes comprised of mostly commercial software."

The fact that the floppy disks contained commercial software as opposed to saved works initially disappointed the team. However, they soon discovered some original and signed works on a GRAPHICRAFT floppy after using a Kickstart ROM to boot the emulator. The images included drawings of flowers, a soup can, a self-portrait, and portraits of other individuals. "Much of the software of the era defaulted to (and in some cases only supported) saving files on the same disk as the software itself," the Carnegie Mellon Computer Club wrote in its technical report.

The press release notes that the art was produced on a commission from Commodore International, the manufacturers of the Amiga, for Warhol to demonstrate the machine's uses for art creation. The Amigas in question had labels warning that they were pre-production units not yet approved by the FCC, and "the drawing tablet appeared handmade."

A fuller description of the technical process is available in PDF form, and a documentary film about the project will screen at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in Pittsburgh on May 10.