15 Feb
2002
15 Feb
'02
8:41 a.m.
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 12:34:53 -0600
From: Dan Wright <dtwright(a)uiuc.edu>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Drive inventory
In-Reply-To: <3B55D7F383B0D31197D9009027541CBF1A1A3952(a)cmiexch1.cmi.itds.com>
Sender: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Reply-To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Christopher Smith said:
SGI is one company that makes sure the DAT/DDS drives they sell do audio DAT
too... I know that you can read/write audio tapes on an SGI you get if you
buy the tape drive from them, and possibly using a drive from another
manufacturer too. I imagine they do this since their machines are often used
in high-end multimedia type things...sill, kind of a cool capability and all
:)
Two comments. Nearly all current DDS cartridges have an optically-sensed
pattern at the beginning of the tape itself. This is termed MRS or
Media Recognitions System. A DDS drive is usually configured by switch
setting to treat tapes without the MRS stripes as read-only. DAT
tapes sold for audio purposes don't have MRS.
Back in the early days of DAT, there was a second competing tape format
besides DDS, it was called Data/DAT. This required pre-formatting of
the tape cartridges before use, and had the advantage that the tapes
were block-addressable and block-replaceable, like a disk drive.
The only Data/DAT drives I ever used (Gigatrend) were hardly ever
compatible from one drive to another. In fact they were seldom compatible
on the same drive from month to month.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
clowenstein(a)ucsd.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Clint Wolff (VAX collector) [mailto:vaxman@earthlink.net]
DAT is the same as DDS except for the
identification holes on the
case, and I would assume a royalty to the recording industry...
My Maynard/Archive/Seagate drive won't take DAT tapes. Irritating
because I wanted to write music to them at the time.
Well, if you mean that you wanted to write it in standard DAT format,
very few drives will handle that... most, though (every one I've
used, at least), will write DDS data to a normal DAT.