Station wagon full of tapes vs cigarette pack (was Re: thinking of the "ultimate" retro x86 PCs - what bits to seek/keep)

[Tor Arntsen]

On 3 June 2016 at 22:21, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2016, Mike Stein wrote:
>> How many station wagons full of 9-track tapes would fit into a (20)
>> cigarette box filled with microSD cards?
>
> Station wagon full of tapes = 51 GB
> Pack of stogies full of SD  = 2816 GB
>
> It's not fair using 9-track tapes, but let's go with it.

I actually used to drive from A to B or the other way with a car
(sometimes a station wagon) with tapes. 1" tapes, usually. This was in
Italy, and at the time (don't know if it's changed since then) I was
required to keep paperworks not too different from customs forms, with
the tapes. The reason was that to transport an amount of data over a
certain limit required documentation, according to the law.  Those
very large spools of 1" tapes could hold quite an amount of data, for
the time, thus the documentation. I didn't need it for just a few
CCTs.