Course materials for MIT 6.031 (c. 1974) scanned

Paul Koning paulkoning at comcast.net
Tue Oct 1 19:22:09 CDT 2019



> On Oct 1, 2019, at 8:15 PM, Toby Thain via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2019-10-01 6:28 p.m., ben via cctalk wrote:
>> Strange Paper tape lasts forver,Digial media is lost after the latest
>> server crash
> 
> Both better have backups. Paper tape doesn't do well in fires and floods.

I remember Mylar punched tape.  That stuff is amazingly strong and waterproof.  I've seen it for paper tapes that were intended to be read thousands of times -- OS boot tapes for example, or the correction data tape for an instrument in my father's lab.

DECtape is pretty waterproof; there have been reports of reels accidentally being run through the laundry and coming out perfectly readable afterwards.

	paul



More information about the cctalk mailing list