"In the old days we...."

[Mick-Cork]

Who remembers tape drives to store data? Who has ever used one? Remember when mainframes were the cool kids on the block, like the PDP-11? IBM was seen as firmly a member of the establishment?

Yep, cut my teeth on PDPs. Company I was with then migrated to a Honeywell mainframe, multi-platter disk drives loaded into 'washing machines'! I was an Ops shift leader at the time.

The mainframe cost about £5m and I remember one evening being scheduled for a £250k performance upgrade. I was curious so I stayed close to the Honeywell engineer during the process. He basically pulled out a card from one of the slots in the central processor and that was it. On asking, he explained that the card simply throttled the speed. £250k!

The same engineer used to come in regularly to perform 'maintenance' He used to go swimming beforehand and when he arrived he'd hang his towel in the processor cabinet to dry it out.

That mainframe had one game installed (Star Trek) and you accessed it with a teletype line printer. You had to search for Clingons by travelling through quadrants, and every time you moved it would print out another page. We used to amuse ourselves on the evening shift with it, but we must have got through some trees!

[fstjohn]

We had a Burroughs online card punch. Punch speed was optional and the high speed punch was twice as fast as the low speed and multiples of the rental price. Difference was which step you put the drive belt on.

[MurphCID]

I learned in my intro to Computer Science class using punch cards on a Honeywell system at college. The old systems just seemed so impressive, and powerful, when in reality my phone has more computing power. But those early mainframes did give us Unix.

[SteveR]

At one time, I had an Iomega Zip 250 MB USB External Drive. Despite it appearing similar to a "hard drive", I believe (if I remember correctly) it was actually equivalent to a "tape drive". I spent big $$ buying the "disks" for back-up.

That reminds me of my overall backup saga. In the "early days" I was on Windows and backed-up to 3.5" disks. One day, I actually had to do a restore, and found out that the "new" Windows restore option could not read the "old" backup disks. Thanks Microsoft. Oh well. Moved-on to a non-Microsoft backup program (name long forgotten) where I backed-up to non-writable CDs. To get over that accumulation of use-once disks, I invested heavily in read/write CDs (that I still have, but are obsolete by today's standards) for a while. At some point, I eventually used the Iomega as the back-ups were getting lllloooonnnngggg. Now I am under Mint and I wrote my own (automated) TAR back-up program which is primitive, but works. Fortunately, storage on USB hard drives is now cheap.

We are also entering the Christmas (buying) season. Today I picked-up the mail and dwelled on the absence of colorful mailers hawking computer paraphernalia from long gone stores such as CompUSA. No mailers from Best Buy either. Back in the day, I also subscribed to a variety of computer magazines, now I don't have any subscriptions. Times have changed.

[AndyMH]

Iomega Zip 250 MB USB External Drive.

Zip drives were floppies, and originally think they were 100MB with a parallel interface. I was using them in the late 90's early 00's for backup. I know they were floppy because I took several apart to make sure they were completely destroyed - they had sensitive material on them.

Now I am under Mint and I wrote my own (automated) TAR back-up program which is primitive

Yes it is. In the same timeframe, my company server was running Xandros serving a bunch on win98 PCs. I was using DAR (disk archiver - disk equivalent of TAR) running under scripts I developed for backups. It was my first foray into linux. When I came back from the dark side in 2016, looked for DAR and couldn't find it (it's in the repos for LM19) and developed my own backup scripts using rsync. Now, you are spoilt for choice. Currently use backtintime, but other alternatives. Infinitely better. Time to get up to date?

[SteveR]

Iomega Zip 250 MB USB External Drive.

Zip drives were floppies, and originally think they were 100MB with a parallel interface. I was using them in the late 90's early 00's for backup. I know they were floppy because I took several apart to make sure they were completely destroyed - they had sensitive material on them.

Thanks for the clarification, I was using the "wrong" terminology since floppies have virtually disappeared and my memory is fading. Nevertheless, while they were floppies in physical appearance, I believe that the data stored was done in the manner of a tape drive. But I my memory may be "off".

[MartyMint]

There are USB interface ZIP drives. They had magnetic read/write heads more like floppies, not reels like tape drives.

[GS3]

I remember a device that would back up data to a VCR. Connect it to your VCR and it would record data on a video tape. I suppose it somehow simulated a TV signal.

[DAMIEN1307]

I remember a device that would back up data to a VCR. Connect it to your VCR and it would record data on a video tape. I suppose it somehow simulated a TV signal.

Ahhhh, Yes, Those were the days my friend...lol...DAMIEN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QptZ8tYZAkE

[SteveR]

A bit off topic. But in researching the Iomega Zip 250 MB USB External Drive, I indirectly ran across 3.5" USB External Floppy Disk Drive Portable 1.44 MB FDD. I didn't know such a product was available! Allows "new" computers to use "old" floppies by using a USB cable. Maybe that information will be useful to someone with a library of old floppies.

[RollyShed]

A bit off topic. But in researching the Iomega Zip 250 MB USB External Drive, I indirectly ran across 3.5" USB External Floppy Disk Drive Portable 1.44 MB FDD. I didn't know such a product was available! Allows "new" computers to use "old" floppies by using a USB cable. Maybe that information will be useful to someone with a library of old floppies.

I have one connected right now and have been going through my old floppies over the past months.

[MurphCID]

My kids never had to use floppies, they were on the way out when they started using computers.

[AndyMH]

Somewhere I've got a usb 3.5" floppy disk drive. I remember 8" floppies

[cliffcoggin]

I still use pencil (a wooden stick with a core of graphite and china clay down the middle), and paper (a laminar sheet comprised of randomly laid interlocking cellulose fibres). It's permanent, non-hackable, needs no batteries, and even works in space!

[AndyMH]

Does a lump of charcoal and a wall in a cave beat that?

[antikythera]

I didn't know such a product was available! Allows "new" computers to use "old" floppies by using a USB cable. Maybe that information will be useful to someone with a library of old floppies.

I have an External Floppy Drive from Sony. It's still regularly used because I service some industrial machinery that relies on floppy diskettes to load in patterns to cut and also servicing and diagnostics programs.

[farkas]

by cliffcoggin » Tue Dec 29, 2020 10:32 am
I still use pencil (a wooden stick with a core of graphite and china clay down the middle), and paper (a laminar sheet comprised of randomly laid interlocking cellulose fibres). It's permanent, non-hackable, needs no batteries, and even works in space!

Latest development! Erasers.

[AndyMH]

Over here we call them 'rubbers', yes I know...

[cliffcoggin]

Message deleted because the censor does not understand English slang.

[MurphCID]

Listened to music on reel-to-reel tapes, and when we were really wild men, plugged in the 8-track. We protected our copies of vinyl, and treasured them. I had a rule, play it once to get rid of any excess vinyl in the tracks, put it on reel to reel or cassette, and then never play it again until I needed to make another cassette (or tape). For classical music we only purchased DDG (Deutsche Gramophone) or Archiv, rarely CBS Masterworks. For best sound, really expensive headphones, plugged in using an RCA jack (remember those?).