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  • From: "Bill Geschwind" <geschwin AT email.unc.edu>
  • To: <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [internetworkers] Dumb question
  • Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 18:24:25 -0400

I can't resist a good trivia challenge and just had to Google this one.
I do remember using my Dad's Sinclair ZX80 with a cassette tape drive
back in the early 80s, so this question does bring back some memories. I
couldn't find anything specific on Google in the 15 minutes I searched
for specific data capacities, although I'm sure that by today's
standards it ain't much. With my Dad's ZX80 setup you could use standard
90 Minute audio cassettes or those special 'computer cassettes' that
Radio Shack sold. Those were about as long as a 5 minute audio tape and
cost a lot more than those 90 Minute audio cassettes and supposedly were
of much higher quality, and at the time I thought they were a royal
rip-off. Well, according to several sites, there were so-called
'minitapes' that could hold about 100K of data, and one site claimed
that a 90 Minute tape could hold approximately 100 pages of text. By
today's standard that ain't much and it's several orders of magnitude
less than the 650-680 MB that a CD-R will hold. Since audio cassette
tape is an analog medium, I'm sure that there is a lot of overhead for
error correction due to hissing and other noise problems to content
with, which would eat into the data capacity.

Hope this sort of answers your question.

- Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: internetworkers-admin AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:internetworkers-
> admin AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Gina Norman
> Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 5:43 PM
> To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Dumb question
>
> > How CDs compare to audio tapes is an easy question. Music
> > CDs were spec'd out to fit 74 minutes of music on them. 74 < 90,
> > so that's why cassettes will hold more. :-)
>
> Blast. I am obviously doing a really poor job of communicating today.
> Here's my question:
>
> Once upon a time, I used a cassette drive to store my little Basic
> programs that I wrote on my Vic-20.
>
> Each cassette tape had some capacity to hold data -- just like a CD-R
can
> hold 650MB, a cassette could hold _some_ amount.
>
> What was that amount? (Assuming I mean a 45 mins./side cassette).
>
> -Gina
>
>
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
~*
> ~*~*
> My brain seems to have a circuit-breaker-like mechanism that, when I
get
> confused and befuddled by the overwhelming monstrosities of my life,
> causes a default to the simplest and most pleasant of thoughts. Like
> Marshmallow Peeps. I *like* Marshmallow Peeps.
>
> Gina Norman And the only bit that
> gina AT vnet.net (me personally) really matters:
> ginanorm AT nortelnetworks.com (me at work)
> http://users.vnet.net/gina
> ginathelintqueen AT yahoo.com (me personally, again -- sick of me yet?
;)
>
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~;)~*~*~*~*~*~
*~
> *~*~*
>
>
> ---
> Come and play at the InterNetWorkers Web site!
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