🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <106...@convex.convex.com> da...@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
>>Remember DECtape?
>Sure do.

I've even have one DECtape... but unfortunately there are no devices
I can mount it on :-( . I used it on old 11/40 as my archive DISK :-)
under RT-11.

>Strange but true.

The first direct-access :-) tape I've seen was the 1/2" tapes of BESM-6.
It contains 1000 (octal :-) 1K word zones (each word is 6 bytes long).
One should format tape before using. Moreover operating system DISPAK
allows users to use tapes instead of disks and vice versa :-).

I was *very* surprised when I discovered block-oriented tapes in Unix.
These funny special files are still alive and working. :-) Thus I see
no problem in writing DECtape driver for Unix.

>Stranger and more rare
>was the TA11/TA90 (I think it was 90..) -- 96k on an audio cassette.  Yes,
>you could run RT11 with that as your system device (you got two drives in
>each box).  I've actually seen a set of RT11 V1 DECcassettes.  These seem to
>have been packaged with low-end 11/10's for lab stuff.

Gee! The Soviet clone for this device is called CT-1. Our SM-4 (11/34)
had such a device but it was always broken. The only thing I've done
with this device - I wrote Unix kernel to it and played it back on
cassete audio player. Sounds nice. :-)
(Just imagine an ugly large boxes equipped with cassete tape drives! :-)

Curiousily but this device is still in mass-production :-) A new Soviet
clone of VAX-11/730 :-) (SM-1700) is equipped with a pair of such beasts.

	Vadim Antonov
	DEMOS, Moscow, USSR
	(It is a joke!)