[Info-vax] TK50 - this is annoying...

[Paul Sture]

In article <k4ugd1$gtp$1 at dont-email.me>,
 Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:

> As stinky as the TK50 technology is now, it was better than what went 
> before it.  Both for DEC to create the installation media, for DEC to 
> support (and then have to replace disks in) the installation media, and 
> for the end-user to not have to swap the media nearly as often or to 
> call up DEC to get replacement media.
> 
> Booting a TK50 was a marvelous experience, back then.

It was indeed.  Building a backup tape with a boot image at the front 
had been on my wishlist ever since I'd used equivalent functionality on 
an IBM system in 1980.

VMS BACKUP was a great leap forward too.  Before that arrived, reading 
tapes from third parties was often a matter of trial and error.  And 
lots of patience.

Moving to today's products, IBM have announced the first LTO-6 tape 
drive:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/06/ibm_lto_6_drive/

The comments section has tales of saturating other resources using older 
LTO technology.

-- 
Paul Sture