Using audio cassette

From: Sellam Ismail <foo_at_siconic.com>
Date: Tue May 15 23:05:40 2001

On Wed, 16 May 2001, Tony Duell wrote:

> Are you planning to have some kind of automatic high-speed seeking (I
> assume so, since waiting 45 minutes (one side of a C90) to read a
> block is rediculous). In which case you've not only got to modify your
> transport to allow for electronic selection of a fast forward/rewind
> mode that keeps the heads in contact with the tape, but also you've
> got to have some kind of block marker (maybe just a gap in the data on
> the tape) that can be detected when the tape is moving at high speed.
> It's possible (and has been done many times), but it's not a trivial
> problem.

You're assuming he won't do something clever such as add an electronic
counter so he can fast forward to just before the desired block?

> In general the seeking speed is about 5 times the normal play/record
> speed on this sort of drive. That's still 9 minutes to seek from one
> end of the tape to the other. This will get boring fast.

As I suggested, he can use the magnetic tape to wrap around some drum to
create a cool drum memory device :) There can even be multiple tracks,
with either one moveable head or multiple heads for faster access.

> You do realise that any 8 bit micro will easily go faster than an
> audio-cassette based storage system.

I think the intent here is to create a more classic-type design rather
than a modernish design.

Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
Received on Tue May 15 2001 - 23:05:40 BST

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