Obsolete media (was: Whats the screwiest thing you collect?)

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Tue Nov 30 20:59:47 1999

Rumor has it that Richard Erlacher may have mentioned these words:

>Some years back, the GOV switched from 9-track to 8mm, using the Exabyte
>8200 as its standard. This was because you could hold what was formerly
>stored on a truckload of 9-track tape on a single cartridge which would fit
>in your pocket.

A 2400foot tape at 6250tpi will give over 170 Meg or so, at my rough
calculations... (as in not counting the BOT, EOT and stuff like that...)
and even at 1600tpi it'll give over 43 Meg storage. An 8200 in
noncompressed cartridge will store 2500 Meg, which produces equal storage
to 15 9-tracks _at_ 6250tpi, or 58 tapes at 1600tpi.

Having worked with the Gubbermint, I do know that they supported the
6250dpi datarate (if you could...) and I've carried 15 2400foot 9-track
tapes all at once when I worked in the tape library at EDS Auburn Hills
back in '89-'90. Hardly a truckload to me... or am I a *lot* stronger than
I think... ;-)

I will admit that even back then, we used a lot more 3490 tapes, which
could store 550Meg per cartridge (and we had 8-cartridge autoloaders...
4Gig was a *lot* of storage way back then...).

Cheers,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   ---   sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right???  Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Tue Nov 30 1999 - 20:59:47 GMT

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