20 Apr
2004
20 Apr
'04
2:51 a.m.
When you look at the cable trees on the back, you
might get the impression
that it is a 7-track drive
That is not a computer tape drive, but an instrumentation tape drive for
recording analog data. These were quite common in the 60s and 70s, and
were used to record telemetry from rockets, aircraft, ships, cars, or
really any lab experiment that generated huge amounts of real time data.
Most have large reals like this - you never wanted the tape to run out
just as the experiment started to get interesting!
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org