16 Mar
2000
16 Mar
'00
10:16 a.m.
You rang a bell with the comment about other units using the same
standard, a TI "Silent 700 ASR" data capture terminal is sitting in my
storage shed somewhere----neat panel up above the keyboard with lots of
lights and switches and 2 very fancy looking cassette transports. must
use those same cassettes.
Craig
Tony Duell wrote:
DEC claimed that you couldn't use regular
audio cassettes with the TU60
because they couldn't handle the high tension used by the drive. Sounds like
it could be hype but you never know. I mean, what's the point of building a
peripheral that uses regular audio cassettes, except that it *doesn't* use
regular audio cassettes? Worst of both worlds.
Ah, but it was a 'standard' at the time. I believe ECMA34 is a standard
for recording data on such drives, but I have no idea if the TU60
followed it. I suspect it was at least similar.
There's a similar cassette drive mentioned in the P850 user manual of all
places. And I've seen stand-alone RS232-interfaced drives which could be
used for data entry or data capture (Facit certainly made these, as did
dozens of other manufacturers). And I have somewhere a 'Racal Digideck'
which seems to be an drive module for such tapes.
In other words, DEC were making a peripheral that accepted tapes used by
a lot of other systems.
-tony