[Info-vax] OT: Has Ask Slashdot reached a hilarious new low-point?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <50290613$0$17957$4fafbaef at reader1.news.tin.it>,
	"Mazzini Alessandro" <mazzinia$$$$@tin.it> writes:
> 
> "Paul Sture" <paul.nospam at sture.ch> ha scritto nel messaggio 
> news:aa9nf9-t2d2.ln1 at news1.chingola.ch...
>> On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:22:59 +0200, Mazzini Alessandro wrote:
>>
>>> Drive aside :
>>>
>>> (cost for a 3TB normal hd + cheap usb3 / esata box )  -  cost for a
>>> single lto-5 tape +
>>> number of total rewrites of the disk vs limited rewrites of the tape.
>>>
>>> If it's purely to move data around because it's quicker than using a
>>> wan, the hd would likely win as operating cost, imo
>>>
>>> Anyway I remember that a lot of years ago, middle 90' at most, there was
>>> some program to use a dat as a device to be accessed as an hd. I should
>>> likely still have it somewhere...
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape
>>
>> But if you ever used DECtape in its TU58 incarnation, you will know how
>> painfully slow it could be.
>>
>> P.S. You are top posting.  The convention in this news group is to use
>> bottom posting.
>>
>> -- 
>> Paul Sture
> 
> 
> ah hops... I'm lazy posting actually ( a new "email" starts from the top ) 
>:P
> 
> No, not DECtape.. it was a "thing" for the x86 of the time. I don't remember 
> if I tried it out of curiosity, or not. If I remember right there was 
> another sw to turn the dat into an audio dat, for multi track recording... 
> but , may be wrong, I "think" it required possibly a dat with sgi firmware. 
 
This is all old hat.  1979.  Exatron Stringy Floppy.  A tape driver
that functioned as a disk-like mass storage device originally on the
TRS80 but later also on Commodores.  Don't know if it went beyond
that but I do know it was faster than cassette, slower but cheaper
than a floppy disk and had some real strange idiosyncracies.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>