3 ms·

Interesting. I would have really liked having one of those. Strange that it did not spread? I wonder what the practical reliability was. For comparison breathi

Interesting. I would have really liked having one of those. Strange that it did not spread? I wonder what the practical reliability was. For comparison breathing in the same room as my first CD-burner made it fail. "your 500MB hard drive is overflowing with software, games, and documents." Mh ye no. Zero people filled up their HDs with documents.

orbital-decay 3y ago
>Strange that it did not spread? I tried this thing as a curiosity many years later. It sounded nice in theory, but was pretty slow and unreliable compared to the specialized streamers. It required a fairly janky driver, and depended on the quality of the VHS recorder and the tape. Seeking was also a problem. Besides, HDDs out-sized VHS pretty quickly.
ithkuil 3y ago
When I was a kid I helped setting up the computers for my father's small business. The disks did fill up because of documents. I think he counts as people too You know, it really depends what you use a computer for.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  With a 500 Mb HD? How is that even possible (at the time)? But ye, of course I am exaggerating. Surely there were maybe a handful of persons.
  - jfil 3y ago
    I took some artistic liberties in the introduction :-) In practice, it seems that the ideal customers for this system were Sysops/BBS operators, small businesses that used their 1 computer to the max, and people who had lots of logs (possibly astronomers or academics running experiments). This also explains why it never hit mass-production: very few people needed 2GB of storage (a single tape). Let alone needing multiple tapes.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      I just needed something to nitpick nice write up :)
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    I don't remember the exact sizes of the harddisk(s) but it was late 90s early 2000s and the small business I was talking about was a small publisher, so many of the documents were large DTP files, postscript files ...
Arech 3y ago
I've just covered a few points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142648 There were some inherent problems associated, but nonetheless, it was quite known back then, at least in ru.

orbital-decay 3y ago

>Strange that it did not spread? I tried this thing as a curiosity many years later. It sounded nice in theory, but was pretty slow and unreliable compared to the specialized streamers. It required a fairly janky driver, and depended on the quality of the VHS recorder and the tape. Seeking was also a problem. Besides, HDDs out-sized VHS pretty quickly.

ithkuil 3y ago

When I was a kid I helped setting up the computers for my father's small business. The disks did fill up because of documents. I think he counts as people too You know, it really depends what you use a computer for.

rightbyte 3y ago
With a 500 Mb HD? How is that even possible (at the time)? But ye, of course I am exaggerating. Surely there were maybe a handful of persons.
- jfil 3y ago
  I took some artistic liberties in the introduction :-) In practice, it seems that the ideal customers for this system were Sysops/BBS operators, small businesses that used their 1 computer to the max, and people who had lots of logs (possibly astronomers or academics running experiments). This also explains why it never hit mass-production: very few people needed 2GB of storage (a single tape). Let alone needing multiple tapes.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I just needed something to nitpick nice write up :)
- ithkuil 3y ago
  I don't remember the exact sizes of the harddisk(s) but it was late 90s early 2000s and the small business I was talking about was a small publisher, so many of the documents were large DTP files, postscript files ...

Arech 3y ago

I've just covered a few points in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142648 There were some inherent problems associated, but nonetheless, it was quite known back then, at least in ru.