Obsolete media (was: Whats the screwiest thing you collect?) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

30 Nov 1999

It's no secret that Roger Merchberger &lt;zmerch(a)30below.com previously has
uttered:

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Merchberger &lt;zmerch(a)30below.com&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Obsolete media (was: Whats the screwiest thing you collect?)

...
 Rumor has it that Richard Erlacher may have mentioned
these words:

 Our local government facilities offer 8200 format
to whoever asks for it,
but they never offered 6250 BPI in the bureaus I occasionally visited. 
We sent off 6250dpi tapes quite often... I suppose it's a regional thing.

 The 8500 has twice the capacity of
the 8200 and the 8500C and 8505 have twice that. 
On the 8505 / 8500C - your doubled capacity depends on the compression
ratio... if you achieve a 2:1 compression, you have indeed doubled your
storage. On the 8505's I worked on, I normally achieved 1.7:1.

>  Currently used 8mm drives
>have twice what they have and the newer ones not only have doubled that on a
...
 >112 meter tape, but quadrupled the transfer rates
at the same time.  Now,
>the tape drives I see them using hold nearly 60 GB all on a cartridge of
>which two will fit in your shirt pocket if you're not as fat as the average
...
  American.

Well, that limits me to one... assuming that I'm as fat as an average
American... (how fat is the average American???) Anywho, I'm ~25lb
overweight thanks to 2 heart attacks & I've not made time to exercise. Is
that average? 

YES

...
  Now,
wouldn't YOU rather carry a $5 cartridge in you shirt pocket rather
than 15 9-track reels, and how about buying them and storing them? 
Actually, between the two, I'd rather have the 15 9-trackers... they're
cool. Of course, I'd rather have 3490 cartridges & drive... they're even
more cool. I can't *afford* the drives (new) and there's no used ones about
to scavange / rescue / trade for, so 'll take what I can get...

I'm not disputing the fact that the 8200's are superior / cheaper /
whatever... I've worked with those, the 8505's pretty extensively & quite a
few 4mm drives as well (just picked one up for myself to play with - it's a
tra de...) I just disputed that an 8200 cart. held a "truckload" of
9-trackers.

I was, when I made the original remark, grossly hyperbolizing, but in the
spirit of "Why the h*ll didn't they do that much sooner?"  My 8505XL
routinely gets about the 1.7x compression from hardware compression and
somewhat improves the already-compressed data it gets from the old backup
software.  One volume, mostly text, gets bout 2.2x, though.   My 160 meter
tapes are adequate for a nominally 15GB system backup.  I find that so long
as I (or my clients) have backup devices which allow the entire backup set
to be recorded on a single element of the medium in question, they have good
backups whenever they're needed.  With the ones requiring manual media
shuffling, all bets are off.

Dick

...
 Prost,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   ---   sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right???  Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.

If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice. 