Magnetic tape filesystem

[jwsmobile]

On 2/8/2015 4:50 PM, Tom Sparks wrote:
> I am wondering if there were any magnetic tape filesystem?
>
> I know that some micro you could give a name to your data/program on the
> audio cassette and they had a catalogue feature
>
> I also know about Linear Tape File System (LTFS)
>
> Has anyone tried putting cp/m or fat filesystem on audio cassette?
>
>
I am sure you are thinking for tapes in smaller computers, but the 
Univac III originally had only UniServo tape drives, and used tapes for 
the OS.  All tapes written had the OS written on the front end of the tape.

There were several variants of the OS until disk units were added, and 
then the production run ended.

Most tape sets were written with specific jobs as the target, and the 
tapes had instruction decks added after the OS portion to control the 
run of the job.  However most of the tapes had the OS written at the 
front of the tape, since many operations required rereading the OS in 
various incarnations, and no single tape was tied up being the tape that 
did all the OS reads.

Systems would have many drives.  I believe the one I have has 6 or 8 
drives, as an example in addition to using punched card for input.

thanks
Jim