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[#] Thu Apr 06 2017 08:43:21 EDT from zooer

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Two old 9 track tape drives.  One of them is a reel to reel with automatic tape loading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEL8wnW5uvs



[#] Thu Apr 06 2017 16:31:16 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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I spent a lot of time with 9 tracks.... The vacuum autoloaders were very convenient.

[#] Thu Apr 06 2017 22:29:40 EDT from kc5tja

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A friend of mine got hired by Exatron.


Yes, *that* Exatron.

[#] Tue Apr 11 2017 16:38:22 EDT from nonservator

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At 48, I'm still one of the few people I know who has actually used 8" floppy disks. Friend's mom worked at a university as a secretary on an IBM word processor that consisted of an L-shaped desk with a green screen monitor, Selectric-style keyboard, and an 8" drive. (Nobody else wanted it, and she felt guilty paying only the minimum bid, so she paid five bucks for it at the auction.) Don't even think I have pictures any more, and certainly don't remember the model. But boy, was that thing a conversation piece.

[#] Wed Apr 12 2017 11:48:07 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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I used a TRS-80 Model 2, which had 8" disks. I also used an S100 based machine that had an 8" as well, but the specific model escapes me at the moment.

[#] Sun Apr 16 2017 00:07:07 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I started out with computers on the S-100 platform as well, when I was a very small nerd. A local company called SPS built them as white boxes. They were typically paired with off-the-shelf terminals and printers. The computer Ragnar is thinking of is probably one of them.

It always felt like a "real computer" long after it was obsolete.

[#] Mon Apr 17 2017 14:52:08 EDT from triLcat

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Yeah. my trash-80 model III had 5.25s.

That could hold a whole bunch of games and then you could turn them over and use the other side for a bunch more games... Then came things like colors and graphics, and suddenly a game was more than 10kbytes :)

 



[#] Wed Apr 19 2017 10:40:17 EDT from fleeb

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I remember those model IIIs. Fun stuff. Built a database engine in BASIC.

[#] Wed Apr 19 2017 12:58:17 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Today, there are already people who ask "why does the 'Save' icon look like that?" because they've never seen a 3.5" floppy disk.

10-20 years from now, when all storage is solid state and HDD's are a relic of history, there will be people who ask "why is it called a 'disk' ... and why is the symbol for it a cylinder?"



[#] Wed Apr 19 2017 17:00:39 EDT from kc5tja

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You gave me an idea -- for my next application with a save icon in it, I'm going to use reel-to-reel tape instead of a floppy disk. ;)

[#] Wed Apr 19 2017 18:36:39 EDT from zooer

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I hate auto save of any application, Google Drive uses auto save.  Many times when working on something I like to "save as" using version numbers.  With auto save it is more work to copy a document, rename it, and work on it.

Why do they say "Dial a phone?"

And I hate when people use "filming" for their cell phone.  Film is a chemical process, video is an electronic process.  Fuckers changing the language, anybody who uses "film" when they are shooting video are worse than Zuckerberg.  (yeah I said it.)



[#] Fri Apr 21 2017 09:54:20 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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ooooohh, that was a big one, even 25+ years ago when my best friend and I were "those two guys with that damn camera."

"Are you filming?"

"No, we're videotaping."

And now, even the tape is gone.

[#] Fri Apr 21 2017 12:23:39 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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My son when he was little came across the payphone I have in the basement (a rotary one!).... He asked me if it was an old cellphone.

[#] Fri Apr 21 2017 12:47:54 EDT from fleeb

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"Just like the one Perry Mason used in his car..."

[#] Wed Apr 26 2017 22:30:18 EDT from ax25

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I am more of a cassette and Kansas City Standard format man myself.  Just kidding of course.  I used whatever "standard" that Clive Sinclair and his buddies came up with.  I even spent extra on the tapes that had the little reel to reel in the plastic case.  Still have some of them.  Should really transfer that before the earths magnetic field does them in.  Damn magnetic field.  Curse thee.



[#] Thu Apr 27 2017 12:43:27 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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I had hundreds of tapes for my PET. I enentually (way down the road) got an SFD-1001 floppy drive, which was a whopping 1mb! I was able to fit ALL the contents of all the tapes onto a single floppy.

[#] Mon May 01 2017 09:31:34 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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If the earth's magnetic field doesn't do them in, print through will. :)

Nowadays, the popular storage medium for retro enthusiasts is an SD Card attached to a controller that emulates the target host's native interface.
Wouldn't you like to send *that* back in time 35 years to yourself.

[#] Mon May 01 2017 22:28:37 EDT from kc5tja

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This begs an interesting question -- would rotating/flipping old magnetic media periodically help the longevity of said media?

[#] Tue May 02 2017 10:01:15 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Yes, and archivists do exactly that.

[#] Sun May 21 2017 11:33:22 EDT from alex222

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I have a tandy coco that



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