26 Aug
2005
26 Aug
'05
6:20 a.m.
>>>> "tom" == tom ponsford
<tponsford at theriver.com> writes:
tom> A somewhat related question:
> What I have is an industry-standard data cassette
- they look
> almost exactly like home audio cassettes except for the 2mm notch
> in the top middle of the case, and they typically have red or
> white plastic flaps rather than bust-out-tabs for write protect -
> i.e. you can write-enable a tape by flipping the flap over the
> hole again.
>
tom> I just found a data casette system I'm trying to find info on
tom> and it uses the same cassette with the 2mm notch. The casette
tom> labeled as a DC-40FL.
tom> The cassettes go into a tape machine made by MFE industries an
tom> MFE 2500.
tom> The machine has 6 toggles: local copy, rewind, on line, binary,
tom> send, receive. A rotary baud rate selector: 110,300, 1200, 2400
tom> and several lights: online, binary, send, recieve
tom> On the back there are, what appears are two serial port
tom> connections a 25 pin male connector labeled MODEM ans a 25 pin
tom> female, labeled TERMINAL.
Sounds vaguely like the dual cassette decks on the TI Silent 730 -- a
mid 1970s terminal, 300 baud, printed on thermal paper. The ones we
had (in college) mostly were the kind with the cassette decks. The
notion was that they were replacements for the old paper tape on oru
teletypes. You could even control them from the host, via control
codes of one kind or another. I started writing a simple "PIP"
program for that, but I don't think it ever finished -- those things
were clunky enough and slow enough that it just didn't seem to be
worth the effort.
paul