Drive inventory

From: Carl Lowenstein <cdl_at_proxima.ucsd.edu>
Date: Fri Feb 15 16:41:38 2002

> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 12:34:53 -0600
> From: Dan Wright <dtwright_at_uiuc.edu>
> To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Drive inventory
> In-Reply-To: <3B55D7F383B0D31197D9009027541CBF1A1A3952_at_cmiexch1.cmi.itds.com>
> Sender: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
> Reply-To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
>
> Christopher Smith said:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Clint Wolff (VAX collector) [mailto:vaxman_at_earthlink.net]
> >
> > > DAT is the same as DDS except for the identification holes on the
> > > case, and I would assume a royalty to the recording industry...
> > > My Maynard/Archive/Seagate drive won't take DAT tapes. Irritating
> > > because I wanted to write music to them at the time.
> >
> > Well, if you mean that you wanted to write it in standard DAT format,
> > very few drives will handle that... most, though (every one I've
> > used, at least), will write DDS data to a normal DAT.
>
> SGI is one company that makes sure the DAT/DDS drives they sell do audio DAT
> too... I know that you can read/write audio tapes on an SGI you get if you
> buy the tape drive from them, and possibly using a drive from another
> manufacturer too. I imagine they do this since their machines are often used
> in high-end multimedia type things...sill, kind of a cool capability and all
> :)

Two comments. Nearly all current DDS cartridges have an optically-sensed
pattern at the beginning of the tape itself. This is termed MRS or
Media Recognitions System. A DDS drive is usually configured by switch
setting to treat tapes without the MRS stripes as read-only. DAT
tapes sold for audio purposes don't have MRS.

Back in the early days of DAT, there was a second competing tape format
besides DDS, it was called Data/DAT. This required pre-formatting of
the tape cartridges before use, and had the advantage that the tapes
were block-addressable and block-replaceable, like a disk drive.

The only Data/DAT drives I ever used (Gigatrend) were hardly ever
compatible from one drive to another. In fact they were seldom compatible
on the same drive from month to month.

    carl
-- 
        carl lowenstein   marine physical lab   u.c. san diego
                                          clowenstein_at_ucsd.edu
Received on Fri Feb 15 2002 - 16:41:38 GMT

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