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In Reply to: RE: R.I.P. iPod: Sony unveils cassette tape that can hold "65 million" songs posted by Green Lantern on March 09, 2015 at 18:19:27
...I'm going to wait for the new 8-track tape.
Follow Ups:
I Preferred 4-track but it never caught on
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
BTW sorry green if this sounds like Im trying to slam you. Im really not.
Its just this notion of magnetic tape holding CRAZY amounts of data as being anything new.
Being a computer nerd from years gone by, this is nothing earth shattering. Never mind the notion that dating back to the 50s they were doing this.
But to keep it remotely comparative to today, in the mid 90s on up, magnetic tape was clearly shown as being one of the most cost effective ways of storing large amounts of data.
In a way, its kind of a nod to the notion of how analog sounds better. LOL.... Im not a die hard on this way of thinking. But its funny how it applies in a weird sort of way here if you wish ;)
Theres nothing stopping any company to hone in on what could be achieved applying better compression algorithms than every before on better and narrower record and playback heads. It makes complete evolutionary logic to me. Just as has been proven before, its not terribly practical for "consumer" use today. Read/write times would be terrible compared to silicon.
Organic storage will be the next evolutionary tech is my guess. No not us plugged into the matrix ;). Just not relying only on silicon or mag for storage in general.
In closing. If you posted this in tonge and cheek, and I just went on this over detailed explanation only to make an ass of myself.... well... add me to the list of those who have done so LOL...
All the best man :)
Capacity was in the 2GB to 4GB range, depending on the tape length and chosen data rate. It was inefficient as it used regular 1990's analog VCR technology. In fact, it used consumer VCR's.
When I read your post I immediately thought of what I was doing back in the early 90s as a audio teen nut. I found that my walmart GE VCR would record just audio if asked. At the time allot of HiFi VCRs wouldnt record if a video signal wasnt present. So I copied allot of my friends CDs to VCR tapes as the sound was far better than cassette. Didnt have a HiFi reel to reel at the time. Was the only cost effective way I could do it. Again worked great. Killer SQ for this young lad ;) my semi nerd friends dug it along with me.
Yea its funny that figure you put out of 2-4gb sounds sad by todays standards but that was actually pretty darn large. In the early 90s I had a Colorado tape drive to backup my computer. Folks spent far too much on my adventures as a kid. Thats folks! But even compressed it only did 320mb. Yup about 1/3 a gig. And this is with actual computer technology. And around the mid 90s the average HD was around 1-7 GB. If you were lucky. Many computers sold with less. So to have retro fitted an analog consumer tape product to do data, thats not bad AT ALL! Talk about a bottle neck for data. Theres a reason we no longer place out phones on a set of cups serving as speakers and mics to get our computers on the net LOL....
Yeah like I was trying to say in my original rant. Can anyone here imagine just how much data one could store on a high caliber VCR tape given a device was tailor made to make proper use of it for computers?!? OMG I imagine the capacity would be staggering! Just look at how small the narrow the tapes used in consumer computer backup were in the 90s.
I found this net article were someone linked to a cool serial device he made to do just that. VCR backup to computer in 97 or so. Amazing idea. Folks need to remember how expensive video capture cards were for PCs back then. Never mind the fact most home computers werent even powerful enough to do it properly. Then were to put said large data.... so on... What a neat concept. Barcode frame storage for meshing the 2 worlds. Brilliant! And cheap! I assumed most just used the audio stream on a VCR in the 90s. Again like old cassette drives one could find with an old commodore 64.
One fellow pointed out even using this old tech he estimates one could possibly get nearly 16gb on a VCR tape
"Different method (estimate): 320x240x8bitx30 frames/secx3600secs/hourx1byte/8bits=8.29GB/hour or 16.5GB for a two hour tape.
That works out to a bandwidth of ~2.3MB/s or 18Mbit/s. I don't think you will get over 3Mbit/sec (375kB/s, 1.35GB/hour) because of analog bandwidth limitations (~3Mhz). For example, going 320x240x1bit (black&white, no greyscale) may be more reliable."
So many cool, talented folks in the world. I love it!
The VHS tape never had a digital tape drive partner as best I know so data was stored in an analog fashion using regular ole VCRs. There was a tape drive based on the Panasonic professional video recording systems modified for data storage but those stored only 50GB.Today's popular LTO 6 tape technology will store up to 2.5TB natively and ~6TB using data compression. StorageTek's T10000D tape and tape drive are capable of 8.5TB native and ~16TB compressed with an archival life of greater than 30 years.
I used audio cassette tapes to backup my KIM-1 computer many years ago.
I no longer own audio cassettes or VHS tapes and I'm thinking of selling off all of our DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Too much crap to store and maintain when it's all available for instant streaming or download.
Edits: 03/10/15
The Russians are super hip to tech often. Major interest by the youth to this day.
I too would agree VHS never incorporated any kind of digital data. Funny thing is allot of the data tapes in the 90s also were, for the most part, analog based too. The thing they had to their advantage was time stamps of sorts to track where the tape was in its use. Much before its time in the consumer realm for most magnetic media. That was always one of the big hurdles back in the day. Synchronization. Folks often dont understand what convenience having stuff like AES/EBU or TOC does for data transfer and communication between our wonderful toys. Back in the 80s-90s only high end expensive pro gear had such capabilities. Once DAT tapes came along things got much better, bigger, faster so on...
I thought it was cool then I read how that ArVid used ;
"A VHS recorder unit should be connected to an ArVid ISA board via a composite video cable. Unit operation is controlled by a remote control emulator using a LED"
It was work arounds like this that allowed enthusiastic techs to incorporate consumer and computer worlds like this. Great idea! Takes away much of the guess work and failures.
You were into some really neat computer stuff back in the day abe! A man of many interests and talents. I like it. Im with you on the ditch antiquated media to a point too. I still dig my vinyl and CDs. But use my computer far more.
A KIM-1 eh? Never had one to mess with. My first real computer was an old 8086 AST computer the school was tossing when I was a kid in the very early 90s. Had a fellow nerd bud who's dad was into computers big time. Always had me yearning for more and better. Next came a packard bell 486-SX 20mhz my folks picked up from a discount mail order catalog. Boy that was a Cadillac for me! Felt so lucky. 4mb ram and a 107mb HD. Got to own and play with allot of the old timers over the years. VIC-20, Laser-128 so on.... Such good memories of those days.
Thanks for the info! Really cool stuff IMO.
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