11 Dec
2005
11 Dec
'05
4:37 p.m.
On 12/11/2005 at 7:14 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote:
Probably the most common was a verstion of the TI
Silent 700. It had a
box fitted on top containing 2 tape drives and a handful of boards of
logic to control them. You could use them like punches or readers
(save/load data either locally or to the line, copy data between the 2
tapes, 1 character at a time I think, etc).
Funny you should mention that. When I first got my MITS 8800, one of the
first problems was what to do for offline storage. ASR33's were pretty
expensive, so audio cassette was a natural. I used the modem board out of
a Silent 700 to work with a cheap audio drive. It wasn't fast, but it
worked. I eventually hooked up the recorder's motor control so the 8800
could start and stop the tape. I recall that BASIC for the system was
furnished on both paper tape and a (white case) audio cassette. But the
Silent 700 modem did double duty for me--it let me dial into the mainframe
at work as well as record and play back data tapes.
Cheers,
Chuck