Zane H. Healy wrote:
From the following web page:
http://www.anacomp.com/Magnetics/Memorex/m-ctdlt.html
We have
CompacTape 350 o
CompacTape II 350 o
CompacTape III 1540 o
DLT (all versions) 1850 o
I also believe the DLT is helical scan versus CompacTape's linear scan
technology.
Actually shouldn't the list read more like:
TK50 CompacTape 95MB 350 o
TK70 CompacTape II 270MB 350 o
TK?? CompacTape III (DLT) 20GB/40GB 1540 o
TK87 CompacTape IV (DLT) 35GB/70GB 1850 o
Jerome Fine replies:
Special thanks to Chuck McManis and Zane Healy for the
URL and the information.
Based on the data within the above tables (and at the URL),
there seems no doubt that DEC practised their usual
antics back in the 1980s when they practised their standard
marketing policy of adding "nothing". From my experience
with CompacTape and CompacTape II, I can definitely
say that these two tapes ARE VERY DIFFERENT:
The CompacTape is usually labelled with a BROWN
designation and the CompacTape II is usually BLUE!!
Does anyone remember if there was also a price difference
between CompacTape and CompacTape II?????????
Incidentally, on a PDP-11, my experience is that about
70 MBytes can be written using a TK50 and that takes
about 50 minutes if streaming mode can be maintained.
To verify that information took many hours. For a TK70,
I have been able to write about 275 MBytes on the tape
in about 1 hour and verification takes between 1 hour and
20 minutes and 2 hours depending on the hardware
configuration and other things I do not understand - the
key point is that verification is at worst, only twice as long.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
