New subject: Obsolete media (was: Whats the screwiest thing you collect?)

30 Nov 1999

Our local government facilities offer 8200 format to whoever asks for it,
but they never offered 6250 BPI in the bureaus I occasionally visited.  It's
actually fact that though they offer 8200 format, that's because it's a
common subset of what they use.  I'm not sure that's the case with the
800NRZI  or 1600PE formats they previously made available but I bought into
the 8mm stuff because of the media cost.  The 8500 has twice the capacity of
the 8200 and the 8500C and 8505 have twice that.  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.

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?

Dick

-----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 8:06 PM
Subject: Re: Obsolete media (was: Whats the screwiest thing you collect?)

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

>Some years back, the GOV switched from 9-track to 8mm, using the Exabyte
>8200 as its standard.  This was because you could hold what was formerly
>stored on a truckload of 9-track tape on a single cartridge which would fit
...
  in your pocket.

A 2400foot tape at 6250tpi will give over 170 Meg or so, at my rough
calculations... (as in not counting the BOT, EOT and stuff like that...)
and even at 1600tpi it'll give over 43 Meg storage. An 8200 in
noncompressed cartridge will store 2500 Meg, which produces equal storage
to 15 9-tracks @ 6250tpi, or 58 tapes at 1600tpi.

Having worked with the Gubbermint, I do know that they supported the
6250dpi datarate (if you could...) and I've carried 15 2400foot 9-track
tapes all at once when I worked in the tape library at EDS Auburn Hills
back in '89-'90. Hardly a truckload to me... or am I a *lot* stronger than
I think... ;-)

I will admit that even back then, we used a lot more 3490 tapes, which
could store 550Meg per cartridge (and we had 8-cartridge autoloaders...
4Gig was a *lot* of storage way back then...).

Cheers,
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. 