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Media and mass storage
This category is here to show interesting data storage
media and devices used to read/write them. It covers both mainframe punched
cards and tapes as well as magnetic data streamers and magnetooptical/optical media.
Storing large amounts of data was always a problem. Early mainframe computers
had only punched tape/cards permanent memory. To read computation results
you had to take the tape and feed it to teletype manually (for example early BESM machines
required it). Later units had magnetic tapes allowing to store more data.
These computers were built into complex database systems. Punched cards or tapes were
used to load programs and data to magnetic tapes.
Later, hard drives became installed in upgraded mainframes. For example in
Odra 1305 it was possible to install up to 4 MFM drives (usually IZOT 8MB
or Seagate 21MB) per CPU, each one divided to 8MB partitions, each partition
addressed as a virtual magnetic tape recorder. Sometimes one tape was usually ELIB
(?testy?), a service tape, the other one was programming language or database
system. These machines were used in Poland to 2008, as Odra computers
serviced properly were very reliable.
As PC compatibles became more and more popular, it was
needed to store more and more data for backups or archival purposes. Many
companies developed special tape recorders for PC. They used linear or helical
system and were capable to store from 20MB to few terabytes (now). Because
tape writing is critical about interface speed (you can't easily move the
tape back because transmission stopped) these streamers were equipped with
fast SCSI bus.
In late 80s or early 1990s, another PC devices came to market: portable
data storage. In this page you'll see one of the first "thumb drives" available
commercially called PHd (Pocket Harddisk).
And some other interesting pictures (low quality scans!):
You can find many answers in my FAQ about mass storage It covers streamer tapes, CDs, some magntic and magnetooptical discs.
Click a unit to get information, photos and tips...
