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

[Paul Sture]

On 2018-08-18, already5chosen at yahoo.com <already5chosen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

Probably the case.  COBOL's EBCDIC ability was very useful before
networking was ubiquitous, but I doubt there's much call for it now.

Having written that, in the early 90s the oil industry was using a
lot of tapes that were the output from seismological surveys, and they
had huge archives of the things, which needed special storage (humidity
etc) and were kept for years.  There was a small industry devoted to
rescuing the data from old tapes.  I wonder what happened that that?

> 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.

I would have jumped at the opportunity many years ago, but probably as
part of a (smallish) team rather than by myself.

-- 
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
intelligent are full of doubt.                 -- Bertrand Russell