Random Access Tape 2457
Mike Ross
Hehehe. In my branch of the service (USAF) we had Burroughs, Sperry, Univac, DEC, around 25,000 reels of tape (I was stationed where all their software was written in the early 80's).
We were in a building that at one time had housed radar controls for the Gulf Coast missles. Radar gone, mainframes in.
We were on one floor, and our critical "off-site" storage facility was on a different floor - but in the same building.
When Burroughs & Sperry were duking it out to see who would supply USAF with the next round of mainframes, we built a couple of rooms on the same floor as the off-site storage, one for each vendor, to run 'em through their paces & see which one we liked most.
Their "off-site" storage was back on the same floor as the production machines.
"Off-Site Storage?" Thought that meant a different building.
Go figure.
Your little raid-in-a-box devices reminded me of that, and gave a nice chuckle.
Still seems you'd need separate physical devices, if nothing but for peace-of-mind, but I do agree, the hardware is getting more and more robust.
toober' To pick nits, they were not bits... That system was trinary - hole, no-hole, or notch. There is a pretty good book from the 1950s that...
I'm also of the mind that we'll drop disc once really cheap static memory becomes available, or perhaps come up with some form of state change via light, sort of a cross between RAM & CDRW.
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