4 Sep
1999
4 Sep
'99
9:37 a.m.
Bruce Lane wrote:
The Seattle Times ran this in the Aug. 30th edition.
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/technology/html98/muse_19990830.html
I noted, with some amusement, that the author of the article doesn't seem
to understand the difference between drum and disk storage. His use of the
term "drum memory disk" was a bit of an eyeball-roller.
Other than that, it's a decent article. Enjoy.
It's a bit lacking in substance, but you're right, it is decent. At least
it doesn't make wild claims.
I was trying to think of some strange excuse that could make the phrase
"drum memory disk" meaningful. (Some UNIXes have a /dev/drum which is really
a disk; I also have an article from alt.folklore.computers which describes
one system's "firehose drum" which is really a disk, or maybe it's the
other
way around.)
But I think the computer in question (made by Royal Precision -- is that the
same as Royal McBee?) really does have a drum.
The part I liked was this:
A display case shows the progression of storage disks, starting with
one from 1965 that's the size of a tractor-trailer tire. It held 2.5
megabytes of data and had to be sandblasted to be erased.
Had to be sandblasted to be erased? Huh??
-- Derek