At 04:00 PM 1/13/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Long before anyone glued rust to a strip of plastic and called it recording
>tape, audio was recorded on spools of wire.
>
>Whatever you can record audio on, you can record data on. Wire recorders
>are actually incredibly durable, and until recently, the airplane 'black
>box' cockpit voice & data recorders were wire recorders. There are a ton of
>them still in service. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that's what the
>guy had at the flea market.
Well, to slightly shift the paradigm from classic computers to classic TV,
I saw a voice wire recorder on Hogan's Heroes -- it was made up to look
like a sewing basket.
At first, I thought -- uh, yea, right! -- but then I thought about it and
it's no different than a record album, but in a different form factor.
On the show, they spliced the wire to reformat a message on the wire... do
you know what type of wire was used on these types of voice/data recorders,
and how would you splice them?
(oh, and could you re-record over a previously used piece of wire?)
Just curious,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger | Why does Hershey's put nutritional
Programmer, NorthernWay | information on their candy bar wrappers
zmerch(a)northernway.net | when there's no nutritional value within?
> Long before anyone glued rust to a strip of plastic and called it recording
> tape, audio was recorded on spools of wire.
In one episode of "The Secret Life of Machines", Tim played with magnetic
recording. He recorded a little bit of info on a bandsaw, he stuck some rust
to scotch tape and recorded on it, and visited a BBC warehouse where they
had some truly amazing video recorders (large reels of steel band instead
of tape).
It's a shame the Discovery channel doesn't show those anymore.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
Long before anyone glued rust to a strip of plastic and called it recording
tape, audio was recorded on spools of wire.
Whatever you can record audio on, you can record data on. Wire recorders
are actually incredibly durable, and until recently, the airplane 'black
box' cockpit voice & data recorders were wire recorders. There are a ton of
them still in service. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that's what the
guy had at the flea market.
Kai
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Ismail [SMTP:dastar@wco.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 3:51 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Recording data to a strand of wire?
>
>
> I was talking to this guy I met at a flea market and he said he has a
> storage device that writes data to a spool of wire. Can someone elaborate
> on this?
>
>
> Sam Alternate e-mail:
> dastar(a)siconic.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer,
> Jackass
>
> Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
> See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
Peter Prymmer wrote:
> incorporate integrated circuitry into what would become S/370 computers.
> Interestingly the architecture (or its modern desecndant) was not put on a
> single microprocessor until just a few years ago (1995 saw the 3490 CMOS
> mainframe on a chip). I would not for a moment call these devices mere
Are you sure? I remember when I was at IBM the PC/370 was available -
this would have been 1985-86 or possibly summer 1987. I believe this
was based on the 68000 circuitry with different microcode.
Tony, what date is your little 370-alike? And how many chips?
Philip.
Well, let no one tell you that size doesn't matter. <g>
Last night I was thinking about how I went about replacing the foam in my
RK05 drives. The only thing that I changed was the foam. I disconnect no
wires.
So, I thought that maybe platter speed may be effected by air volume. The
foam on the cartridge air inlet was about 3/32" thicker than the old foam.
This difference was enough to reduce the air volume into the disk pack
(there is a little bump on the air inlet that pushes a door open on the
pack). The extra foam I guess did not allow the door to open enough. This
lack of air produces enough drag on the motor spindle to stall the motor.
Mystery solved.
Rich Cini/WUGNET
<nospam_rcini(a)msn.com> (remove nospam_ to use)
ClubWin! Charter Member (6)
MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking
============================================
At 08:20 PM 1/12/98 +0000, you wrote:
>Well, this specs is for that desktop model 70-E61 and $40 seems bit
I agree then. I'm not too up on the IBM numbering scheme.
>Hee hee...this is desktop which is called model 70 and the portable
>lunchbox is P70 which uses 386 either 16 or 20mhz (ahem...sleepy
I've got a P70 then. (Not sure if it's 16 or 20mhz.)
>performance and no cache.) The P75 is also lunchbox in same way
>BUT, it's real, honest 486DX 33 machine with scsi interface and
>plasma display to boot. That is one I would like to have.
Hmmm... Me too.
Y'know, I once saw an honest-to-god IBM stand-alone plasma monitor in a
surplus shop. 17" I think (or thereabouts). Pretty neat, but priced a
little high.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
-----Original Message-----
From: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca <jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 9:30 PM
Subject: Re: Firsts
Oops it seems like I inserted the signature in the middle of a word or
something like that. Try the link in this one
>Hi Francois,
>
>Have a care, are your webpage set up correctly? I got 404.
>
>Jason D.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francois Auradon.
Visit the SANCTUARY at http://home.att.net/~francois.auradon
-----Original Message-----
From: Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram(a)cnct.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: Firsts
>Paul E Coad wrote:
>The TRS-80 Model 100 and it's amigos the Nec 8201 and Olivetti ??? had
>no handles, unless you bought an overpriced briefcase add-on. I know
>there's no handle on the Everex I take back and forth to work, that's
>what my rucksack is for. In fact, I think _most_ modern notebook
>portables are without handles of their own.
T-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francois Auradon.
Visit the SANCTUARY at http://home.att.net/~francois.auradonhat's probably
why they are called laptops and not portables.
