>>>> "Vintage" == Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at
siconic.com> writes:
Vintage> On Thu, 26 May 2005, Paul Koning wrote:
Al> Or magnetic drums, which did NOT have the access time problems of
Al> tape or cards (but, unfortunately weren't an IBM invention)
> Did the drum come before RAMAC?
Vintage> Yes. Many years (I believe about six).
> An obvious difference is that drums, being
head per track devices,
> always had rather low capacity.
Vintage> And disks are much more efficient than drums anyway.
I don't think head per track disks are necessarily any more efficient
than head per track drums. They overlapped somewhat in time, and I
think the capacity was reasonably comparable.
I was thinking more in terms of space. A disk is much more efficient in
this regard. You can stack N times the number of disks in the same space
that a drum takes up.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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