[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Dave Froble]

On 8/18/2018 7:42 PM, already5chosen at yahoo.com wrote:
> On Sunday, August 19, 2018 at 12:33:18 AM UTC+3, Paul Sture wrote:
>> On 2018-08-07, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> On 8/6/2018 11:21 AM, Bob Koehler wrote:
>>>> In article <pk7pe6$c30$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>> One of the reasons why unix and C became so popular in the early days
>>>>> is because the C library provides platform independent access to i/o,
>>>>> storage and a shed load of other functions. If I write a c program for
>>>>> any flavour of unix, or linux and don't try to be too clever, it will
>>>>> almost always compile and run on anything else.
>>>>
>>>>      You obvioulsy haven't done enough with ioctl().  Or am I being "too
>>>>      clever"?
>>>>
>>>>      Years ago, I found I had to get into ioctl() just to identify the contents
>>>>      of a magtape.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Basic always worked well with magtape.
>>
>> COBOL does too, and VMS COBOL can understand EBCDIC too.
>>
>>> Worthless capability now.  What's a magtape?
>>
>> Tape is not dead yet:
>>
>> "Reel talk: You know what's safely offline? Tape. Data protection outfit Veeam inks deal with Quantum":
>>
>> <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/14/veeam_gets_taped_up_by_quantum_in_antiransomware_deal/>
>>
>>
>> --
>> The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
>> intelligent are full of doubt.                 -- Bertrand Russell
>
> Tapes are not dead as backup media. Because types are still a little cheaper per GB than reliable HDs. And significantly lighter.
> Tapes are long dead for any other use.
> So, the only program that has to know tape IO control codes is your backup program. But you likely wouldn't want to write it by yourself.
>

Back in the day, we used tape for backup.  However, we were interested 
in days, weeks, months, and maybe years.  Now I think back 20-30 years, 
and figure that if I had a tape that old, either it would not be 
readable, or, I would not have a tape drive for it.

Short term backup, yeah, but long term stuff, maybe not.

I keep stuff on several disks, on several computers, and still I worry. 
  Nothing is forever.