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> Anyone who wants the code can come by with a tape. What kind of tape would that be in those times?
by dale_glass 2y ago
> Anyone who wants the code can come by with a tape.
What kind of tape would that be in those times?
- hagbard_c 2y agoSome QIC format most likely - a fairly sturdy aluminium-backed cartridge containing two spools and a pressure roller with which the quarter-inch tape (hence the name, Quarter Inch tape Cartridge) was pressed against the tape head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge
- eschaton 2y ago“Drop by my office with a tape” probably would’ve referred to DECtape (TK50), the ancestor of DLT. That and QIC-24 were the sorts of tapes one would carry between offices in those days; TK50 was extremely common in the DEC world and QIC-24 was used pretty much everywhere else.
- slashdave 2y agoReel to reel
- thequux 2y agoMost likely 9 track (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape)
- eichin 2y agoYeah, too early to be QIC (also, to run this, you needed a VS-100, and to run a VS-100 you needed a VAX 11/7xx to put the controller card in, and basically all of those had 9-track tape drives.)
- hagbard_c 2y agoQIC was launched in 1972.
- eichin 2y agosure, but from actually using this hardware in the mid-80s and later, labs had QIC drives once they had suns, which was rather later on, and I don't think I ever saw a QIC drive on a VAX (a bunch of weird 9 track drives including a top loader, sure.) And microvaxes tended to have (non-functional) TK-50/TK-70 "linear" tapes (ancient ancestors of DLT)...
- hagbard_c 2y agoI've seen plenty of QIC drives on HP/Apollo systems, I've used them on HP 9000 series and on Suns from that era, they were quite wide-spread at that time.
- neilwilson 2y agoCould be a QIC tape drive, but likely to be reel given it's a Wang. QIC-24 was nine-track in a handy container - a bit like a compact cassette for computers.
- rjsw 2y agoMy 386 machine had a QIC-24 in 1987, I got a copy of X10R4 from my local university.
- astrodust 2y agoHopefully not paper.
- kjs3 2y ago9 track was the default; at least that's how we got it from MIT for our VAX, Sun and Sequent machines. QIC for the workstation class machines, tho I don't recall if we got QICs from MIT or someone copied it from the 9-tracks locally. I used a QIC to put it on the Sun 3/160 I used.