Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[David Minton <david AT designhammer.com>]

My question is, was the tape storing the data bits digitally, or in an
analog form? I suspect the later. This would account for the incredibly low
density of the media for "data" versus music.

David

On 8/5/02 6:24 PM, "Bill Geschwind" <geschwin AT email.unc.edu> wrote:

> 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?
> ;)
>> 
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>> *~*~*
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>> 
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